The rich steel heir threw his eight-month-pregnant wife down the stairs in their home, breaking her back and injuring the baby. Not long after, the effervescent dancing star gave birth while in a steel harness. Her only child named Mary died within a few hours, and her husband's influential family zipped the girl away to a hidden burial spot her mother was not to find for another 55 years.
Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier was born April 12, 1923 on her grandparents ranch in Chireno, Texas. Expecting a boy, Mr. Collier named his daughter 'Johnnie.' Johnnie's father was a well-known criminal lawyer who defended famous gangsters Bonnie and Clyde and Baby Face Nelson. Vicious Pretty Boy Floyd used Crayolas to draw six-year-old Johnnie a picture of a peacock as she sat on his lap in the state prison on a visit there with her dad.
Mrs. Collier had enrolled her three-year-old little girl in dancing lessons to help strengthen her legs because of a case of rickets. At age seven the tot made her first public appearance as a dancing Pink Rosebud in a Police and Fireman's Ball. When Johnnie was 10 she met Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson at a local theatre and he gave her a quick tap-dancing lesson. She liked the style of dance very much, and decided to concentrate on it with further lessons. One night, after visiting her grandmother, she came home and found her daddy in bed with a strange woman. When hearing-impaired Clara arrived Johnnie yelled 'Mother, pack your bags!' Her parents divorced, and Clara Collier whisked her daughter off to Hollywood, determined to get into show business. There, the pair hocked everything, including the car, in order to survive.
Johnnie was enrolled in Fanchon and Marco's dancing school. The five-foot-seven, 11-year-old brunette, pretending to be of legal age, was hired to dance for $25 a week at the Sunset Club, a small lounge where gambling went on upstairs. Using the stage name of Ann Miller, she practiced her machine-gun tapping for the thrilled patrons. She also danced at the seedy Black Cat Club, where she scooped up the coins customers threw into her skirt, to help pay the bills. Times were tough. There was no alimony for Clara, and her handicap kept her from working. One Christmas, a neighbor baked Clara and Ann a chocolate cake. It became their entire holiday dinner.
Before long, Ann was netting unbilled extra roles in the films Anne Of Green Gables (1934), and The Good Fairy (1935), and she got to dance in Devil On Horseback (1936). The next year the 13-year-old future musical star was dancing for a four-month run in a show at the popular Bal Tabarin nightclub in San Francisco. There she was discovered by Lucille Ball and comedian Benny Rubin. Back in Hollywood, Ball introduced Miller to executives at RKO Studios. Pretending she was 18 with the help of a fake birth certificate supplied by her father, Ann landed a seven-year contract, and a role in the film New Faces of 1937 (1937). Her first great part was in Stage Door (1937), where she danced with Ginger Rogers, and acted with Ball, Kathryn Hepburn, Eve Arden, and a slew of Hollywood's most famous stars.
Other films in which Ann appears include Radio City Revels (1937), the Best Picture winner You Can't Take It With You (1938) with Jean Arthur and James Stewart, and Room Service (1938) with the Marx Brothers. Miller introduced Lucille Ball to Desi Arnaz and, some years later, the famed couple bought RKO. Ann's last film at the studio was Too Many Girls (1940), in which she co-starred with friends Lucy and Desi. Then she appeared on Broadway in George White's Scandals in 1939 and 1940, where she won rave reviews.
In 1940 Miller moved to Republic Pictures where she enlivened many otherwise dreary films like Melody Ranch (1940) with Gene Autrey in his first musical film, and Hit Parade of 1941 (1941). Other films, many aimed at promoting the war effort, include True To The Army (1942), Priorities On Parade (1942), Reveille with Beverly (1943), What's Buzzin' Cousin? (1943), Hey Rookie (1944), and Jam Session (1944).
In 1945, Ann briefly dated powerful MGM boss Louis B. Mayer. When the much older mogul asked Ann to marry him, she turned him down. Moaning and groaning to her on the phone, Mayer swallowed sleeping pills, and immediately sent his chauffeur to summon her to his death bed. An ambulance arrived first and he recovered. Later, Ann married recent boyfriend Reese Milner, a rich steel heir. They lived on the biggest ranch in California and raised prized Hereford cattle. The marriage ended quickly after Reese threw Ann down the stairs of their home. Miller filed for divorce from her hospital bed. Returning to Mayer for a job, he told her, 'If you'd married me, none of this would have happened.' She was still in a back brace when she feverishly danced to 'Shakin' The Blues Away' in Easter Parade (1948) co-starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. Earning fantastic reviews, Ann was given a seven-year contract, and proceeded to make her most spectacular technicolor musicals. Her films at MGM include On The Town (1949), Small Town Girl (1952), Kiss Me Kate (1953) which was extravagantly filmed in 3-D, and Hit The Deck (1955). Her last musical was a remake of the 1939 film The Women named The Opposite Sex (1956).
The glamorous, outgoing and articulate Ann was also hired as MGM's Good Will Ambassador. She travelled the world in gorgeous designer ensembles representing her studio with personal appearances and speaking engagements. When she flew to Morocco in July of 1957 to appear with Bob Hope on the Timex TV Hour, she entertained 5,000 troops in 120-degree weather as she sang 'Too Darn Hot.' Ann set a record for the world's fastest tap-dancing at 500 taps a minute.
In 1958, Miller married her second millionaire, Texas oil man Bill Moss who '... looked exactly like my first husband. Three months later, he broke my arm.' A third marriage to another oilman, Arthur Cameron, was annulled within a year, though they remained friends.
Ann believed whole-heartedly in the spirit world, and said she was often visited at night by the great MGM dancing star Eleanor Powell. Miller insisted that in a past life she was Hatshepsut, the first queen of Egypt, whom she believed was murdered, along with her sister, by their half-brother. She visited Egypt three times, where she cried incessantly. On her last visit, a guard in a Cairo museum escorted her towards the sarcophagus of a female pharaoh. As Ann approached, she claimed she was bitten by an asp, as Cleopatra was. Although no asp had been seen in Egypt for thousands of years, Ann was flown out by helicopter, and spent three weeks in a hospital where she nearly died. She stated, 'It was a warning. The spirits don't want me to return there.' She also said. 'I've been recycled many times, honey. My hand has so many lifelines, it looks like an old monkey's paw.'
From 1966-1970, Ann became a hit on Broadway in Mame. In 1970 she turned to television and starred in the most elaborate commercial ever made for Great American Soups. Miller tap-danced on an eight-foot can of soup surrounded by dozens of high-kicking chorus girls, 20-foot fountains, and a 24-piece orchestra. Then, tapping her way into a kitchen, her husband cried, 'Why must you always make such a big deal out of everything?'
In 1972, in St. Louis, on opening night of the musical show Anything Goes, Ann was knocked in the head by the steel beam of a fire curtain. Although as a consequence she was unable to walk for two years and suffered permanent vertigo, her life actually had been saved by her well-known, enormous, lacquered black wig. In 1979, she made a comeback , and a fortune, in Sugar Babies with former teenage Hollywood acting schoolmate Mickey Rooney, which ran for two years on Broadway and seven more years on the road. In 1998 she appeared in a successful revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.
In 1972 Ann Miller published her autobiography, Miller's High Life, and more memoirs in 1981 with Tops In Taps. In 1990 she published Tapping Into The Force, which recounted her psychic experiences. Her last screen appearance was in Mulholland Drive (2001).
Ann was the recipient of dozens of prestigious awards that include The Best Legs Award from The Hall of Fame, The George M. Cohan award for Best Female Entertainer in 1980, The Golden Boot award for her appearances in Western Films, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Southern California.
Suffering with osteoporosis, and regretting never having children or having found someone with whom to share her last years, the vivacious Ann said 'No matter what you've achieved, honey, if you aren't loved, you ain't nothing but a hound dog ... . I can still tap, but who wants to pay an old lady to tap sitting down?'
In 1999, a friend of Ann located Mary's grave. After Ann died of lung cancer Jan. 22, 2004, the baby was exhumed and her little coffin was laid on top of her mother's. They were buried together next to Clara.
Sources: They Had Faces Then by John Springer and Jack D. Hamilton; The Movie Stars Story Edited by Robyn Karney; Ann Miller Web sites.
Steve Starr is the author of Picture Perfect-Art Deco Photo Frames 1926-1946, published by Rizzoli International Publications. A designer and an artist, he is the owner of Steve Starr Studios, specializing in original Art Deco photo frames, jewelry, and furnishings, and celebrating its 37th anniversary in 2004.
Visit the glamorous studio at 2779 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago where adorning the walls is Steve Starr's personal collection of over 950 original Art Deco photo frames filled with photos of Hollywood's most elegant stars.
Photo of Steve Starr July 25, 2002 by Albert Aguilar. You may email Steve at SSSChicago@ameritech.net
