#ClassicFilmReading: Miller's High Life by Ann Miller

Oh how quickly this became one of my favourite Old Hollywood autobiographies!

Ann Miller was a capital-S Star and wrote like one. This is everything you'd want in a juicy Hollywood tale: charm, wit, a lot of glamour and a lot of tea!

This is my third book review for Raquel Stecher's Classic Film Reading Challenge. Follow along on social media using the hashtag #classicfilmreading!

I love how candid she is throughout this book. Namely: "My love affair with Hollywood has been like a bumpy marriage. It's had its ups and downs but I'm still hanging in there and it may be a while yet before you'll find me on a street corner with a dancing bear and a tin cup." 

And: "I'm always being asked whether I have regrets. I'm not one to look back and mope and I don't believe in wasting time dwelling on the past."

She's the first admit that she never became a big movie star (which she attributes to avoiding the casting couch) but that she had fun just the same and starred in many beloved films, among them Stage Door, Hit the Deck, Kiss Me, Kate, You Can't Take It With You, and Easter Parade. She was one of the best dancers in Old Hollywood. As she writes: 

"I don't know how many thousands of miles I have tap-danced in my life—probably several times around the world—but a Hollywood press agent once put a speedometer on my feet and it recorded that I was dancing 500 taps a minute, which he established me as the fastest tap dancer in the world. If anyone wants to refute this, go ahead." (Emphasis mine)

But gosh, the woman had fun. She and her mother left her philandering father behind in Texas when she was still a teenager, went to Hollywood because a psychic predicted fame (the number of actresses who had a psychic tell their mothers they'd be famous...I'd have 15 cents if I got a nickel for every time it happened in a book I'd read for the Classic Film Reading Challenge: Natalie Wood, Mary Pickford, and now Ann Miller). 

via misshayworth5

She was discovered by Lucille Ball and Benny Rubin (a talent scout at RKO) at the Bal Tabarin in San Francisco, and when she was brought in for a screen test, her father had to forge a birth certificate saying that she was born in 1919. 

It came out while she was working on Stage Door in 1937, she mentioned it in passing in front of women in the wardrobe department and then was brought up to management. She breezed through the accusation, and said that Ginger Rogers and Lucy stopped all talk of her age whenever it came up on the lot. Ginger, she says, helped facilitate her big break in Stage Door by agreeing to dance in a tall top hat and high heels so she'd be as tall as Ann, who wore a smaller hat and shorter heels by comparison. 

Reading this, you know that Ann loved her life and her lifestyle. She met a lot of famous friends on the RKO and then MGM lots: Ginger, Lucy, Linda Darnell, Jimmy Stewart among them. She also loved to travel, particularly to the Middle East, and Egypt, for which she felt a special affinity. And it's all but confirmed (as much as past lives can be) that she was a 'lady Pharaoh' in a past life. She once danced an Egyptian-style belly dance 'from memory' as a child despite never having seen that type of dance before; attributing this to her past life.  

And don't get me started on astrology, because Ann was a big fan of the stars. Several times she reasons that something happened the way it did because she's an Aries, which, look, I get. I'm on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius and I'm constantly blaming my Scorpio side for things. 

Ann also loved the elegant, feminine things in life. She could tell what perfume someone was wearing by smell, collected hats and earrings and loved dancing contests. She once tied with Ginger on a Charleston contest, to her disbelief. 

She was also very proud of her Heinz commercial in the '70s, which she says was one of the most expensive ever made (at the time). You can watch it here: 

And this really has nothing to do with anything else I've written about, I just love how oddly specific this sentence is: "Yes, those were the Fabulous Forties and I was there, lapping it up like a kid at Santa Claus time." Who calls Christmas 'Santa Claus time'? I might have to adopt it. 

Ann ultimately transitioned to Broadway and television after her film career ended in 1956. Her last films were The Opposite Sex and The Great American Pastime but she considers her turn as Mame on Broadway to be one of the pinnacles of her life. 

But don't feel too sorry for her. Throughout the book she's adamant that she was happy with her choice to quit films when she did. She didn't like the 'new' way of making movies in the '60s, including nudity. Here's what she wrote: "I do not delude myself that I was ever a Big Star. I never played politics, I never slept with producers, and I was never on call to entertain the bankers who flew out from New York. I kept my legs crossed when I wasn't dancing and so I ended up neither a Big Star nor a little one, but a happy medium—in pretty pictures like Easter Parade, Kiss Me, Kate, and Hit the Deck, pictures I'd be proud to show my own grandchildren if I had any." 

via auldcine

And it must be said that Ann wrote this with the help of a writer, Norma Lee Browning. The tone is totally Ann's, but there are several footnote clarifications from Norma. Ann even pays her special attention in one story: "Look, I don't really remember all these dates. My collaborator, Norma Lee Browning, checks them out."

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention all of the Old Hollywood tea Ann spills in this, so here we go:

• Met Rita Hayworth at Fanchon & Marco Dancing School; ditto Jane Withers and Judy Garland.
• Noted that there was tension on set between Ginger and Katharine Hepburn. Ginger apparently hated that Katharine instituted a four o'clock tea time. 
• Jimmy Stewart often found her crying on the set of You Can't Take It With You and would give her a candy bar to cheer her up. She ate them all and gained 25 pounds. She cried because she wasn't used to pointe shoes and her feet were in constant pain.
• Used by Harry Cohn as a way to scare Rita Hayworth into submission. One of her best friends, Linda Darnell, was used similarly to keep Loretta Young in line by Darryl Zanuck. 
• On Judy Garland during Easter Parade: "Such fantastic genius. Such a waste of talent. And the problems she created on set! Sometimes she merely wouldn't show up and we had to shoot around her. Other times, she would bring her baby daughter Liza with her to work, happily distracting the rest of the cast and crew." 
• Loved making Texas Carnival with Esther Williams and Red Skelton. "She had a marvelous sense of humor, always laughing and laughing, never moody. And producers were forever chasing her around because she was considered one of the sexiest actresses on the lot." 
• She called her Esther Hazy because she was near-sighted and had her eyes half-closed most of the time. 
• When MGM sold its props and costumes at auction in 1970, she didn't buy any of her old costumes (Debbie Reynolds did). She bought Esther Williams' bullfighting suit from Fiesta. 
• Dating Conrad Hilton at the time his son Nicky was engaged to Elizabeth Taylor. Attended the wedding. Nicky once commented that she'd have been a great stepmother. 
• Loved Ginger Rogers for a lot of reasons but singles out the "honest-to-goodness" soda fountain she had at her house as one of them. Said she always wanted one in her house too, but never got around to it. Ginger also threw skating parties at a roller rink on Sunset Boulevard. 
• Arlene Dahl, she writes, might be more superstitious about astrology than she is. Planned the birth of her final baby so that it would be born under the right sign. 
• Considers Gloria Swanson as one of the forbearers of the organic/healthy eating trend because she was one of the first to bring her own healthy alternatives to dining establishments. 

And the blind items! Ann should've pivoted to gossip columnist. I'm still trying to figure these ones out, so if you have any suggestions, I want to hear them in the comments.

Here's the first one: "I also happened to be at Ciro's the night of that famous—or infamous—'incident,' when a very popular and beautiful dark-haired Big Star actually made love to a well-known director behind the bar...By the next morning everyone else in town knew about it and by now it has become part of the scandalous Hollywood folklore." 

Another blind item: "I was still at MGM when two of that studio's biggest star ladies were caught in bed together in Palm Springs... And then there's that elegant hotel in Madrid that won't accept Hollywood celebrities as guests because one of our town's most glamorous stars, three sheets to the wind, lifted her skirts and piddled on one of the potted plants in the hotel's front lobby. Right in front of a group of important guests." [I'm guessing the Madrid story is Ava Gardner?]

And the third: She went on a publicity trip to Istanbul with two older stars, both of them Oscar winners, who treated her horribly the entire time. She writes, "Both much older than I, both Oscar winners, both living, still beautiful and glamorous, both married to wealthy men—and both will remember the incident when they read this." 

One was a very devout Catholic; they invited her to tag along on a trip to the Holy Land, alongside Louella Parsons and Kingsbury Smith, a reporter for Hearst papers, and lambasted her for getting dolled up for the photographers without telling them. One said to her, "We don't have a big studio behind us anymore, the way you do. If we'd known about the photographers, we would have had our make-up on and our hair in place." 

If you can find this book, which seems to be out of print, so you'll have to find it on Thriftbooks or at a used book store, you won't regret reading it. It's so vivid and descriptive, and you'll walk away with a new appreciation for this dancing dame.