Ann Miller

I bet Juddeh had some good ones.

Nice girl, but she smells like old vag and feet.

I forgot she died. I am old ya know.

Here's the old thread....

...and my favorite story from the old thread:

Halfway through an Oscar Hammerstein benefit in L.A., Ann turned to her escort and asked if anybody had seen Oscar. “Ann,” replied her astonished date, “Oscar Hammerstein died in 1960!” “Well, how would I know?” shot back Our Girl Annie. “I’ve been on the road!”

She’s a hoarder!

Who's Ann Miller?

When Ann was doing "Sugar Babies" on Broadway, someone had asked if she would be working on Passover.

"Oh, honey, I never do game shows," she replied.

Molly Shannon as Ann Miller.

She always made such a big production out of everything.

Eve Arden told this anecdote on the Dick Cavett show. During shooting on Stage Door, the cast got word that Jean Harlow had died. As they gathered together to discuss the news, Ann Miller stood by chewing gum and exclaiming, "Poor Jean Harlow!" (Snap, snap), "Poor Jean Harlow!" (Snap, snap)

She fucked Louie B. Mayer for many years.

On her income tax forms, under occupation she wrote "STAR".

Mean bitch.

That Cyd thread is tearin’ it up, hunny. Almost 300 replies. I saw that movie she made with Vincent Minnelli, Two Weeks in Another Town. After that, I had to go spend two weeks in another town! The two of them, not to mention some others, makin such a foul film. To be honest, I just felt sorry for them!

Ann Miller slapped her maid, who was black. I guess she was a racist who enjoyed a clean livingroom.

Did she get guys hard?

She was VERY popular on the talk shows (Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, etc...)

When it was announced in 1970 that the novel "Exodus" was being made into a Broadway musical called "Ari". Anne Miller contacted the producers telling them that she was interested in auditioning for the role of Jackie.

Of course, the story is one time she fell down and broke her hair!

Fucking LB Mayer got her away from obscurity at Columbia, but she was never a major star at MGM, always a second stringer. The drawback to such a big studio was that ghere was even competition for that.

By all accounts, a complete class act. One of the best things to come out of Texas. Ever.

I love her.

A genuinely lovely human being.

She'll take a dick. A dicka dick

A dicka dick,

A dicka dick,

A dicka dick!

A dicka dick...

It's always been so interesting to me to hear the old MGM stars muse about how superior their studio was and how they did everything with class, blah, blah, blah...but was it just a more superficial thing?

I wonder about the huge stars of other studios like Bette Davis, Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart at Warner's or Rita Hayworth at Columbia or Alice Faye, Betty Grable and Tyrone Power at Fox or Bing Crosby and Bob Hope at Paramount, etc. Did they feel they weren't well-taken care of at their studios or did they think that, sure, MGM had the glamourous veneer and big budgets but our studios had better scripts and directors and produced more intelligent and sophisticated films.

I guess what I'm asking is was MGM's supposed superiority a real thing in its time or is it all just sentimental nostalgia perpetuated by some musical sequences in That's Entertainment I, II and III?

Leg Up! from SNL

Just call me Coco, everybody else does.

The other big studios had their strengths and got some great movies made back in the day as well. MGM might have been the biggest, and they were known especially for their musicals and also probably having the most stars under contract that they minted and nurtured. Though Judy Garland might take exception with the way she was treated; she's the most famous case of a studio basically turning a really talented girl who tended to overweight and put her on a regimen of overwork, and pushing uppers and downers on her. Universal, which had fewer stars and was a smaller studio, at least treated their number one star, Deanna Durbin, with mostly respect, though she rebelled later on by not wanting to play the same roles after a while (even retiring quite young and wealthy and never returning). Jack Warner had battles with Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland over roles and contract matters at Warner Brothers, and de Havilland eventually sued and won (Davis had tried and lost years earlier).

20th Century Fox actually had probably the best, most vivid color in their films, especially their musicals, and I believe their orchestra was considered probably the best in Hollywood back then. Darry F. Zanuck was a notorious womanizer; the studio would basically shut down when he was on his "lunch hour" fucking his starlet du jour. Fox also mainly had one reigning female musical star at a time (Shirley Temple perhaps being the exception while Alice Faye was the adult one overlapping). MGM's films were more often on tv before cable tv was invented. "The Late Show", or the "Late Late Show" was more likely to be showing an MGM film than one made by any other studio. I recall they had some Saturday afternoon showings of Shirley Temple films from Fox, but by and large it took revival houses (where classic films were shown) for more of the other films to be seen, until the age of VHS and beyond.

Perhaps Ann Miller and some of the other people under contract were treated reasonably well for the most part--though some folks did have their affairs going on to get them parts in movies. After all, the studio gave them as part of their contracts free dancing, singing, acting lessons, taught them deportment, how to present themselves, how to speak well, etc. Someone like Miller, a fine dancer, was probably burning tons of calories with all those circles she made wildly spinning around and practicing all day, so she probably ate well enough and wasn't starved and doped up like they handled Judy Garland. Also studios back then had PR people hired in case they got pregnant, arrested, etc. to protect the studio's investment and keep them out of trouble and only present their stars in ways to make them look good. Old Hollywood is quite fascinating indeed!

[quote]the studio would basically shut down when he was on his "lunch hour" fucking his starlet du jour.

Um, just, no. Though not a Jew, Zanuck, nor any other studio head would stop an entire factory of employees while he got his knob polished.

But I do think it's true that there was metaphorically a DO NOT DISTURB sign on Zanuck's door for that one hour a day, r28. Production continued without him.

Did Scotty Bowers find "dates" for her?

^^ I don't think Annie ever needed help in finding an escort.

My mother always referred to her as “that black haired bitch”!

My mother had been a dancer when she was young and would watch the stars in the old movie musicals and comment on whether or not she thought they were good dancers. Whenever an Ann Miller movie came on, my mom would go, "Oh, there she is again, the twirler. That's all she does - twirl, twirl, twirl!"

To this day, when I see Ann Miller, I always think of my mom saying this.

I have a personally autographed B&W 8x10 of Miss Miller that she signed, "Good Luck in 1998!" I found it on eBay for $15 and bought it, as that was the year I graduated high school. It's proudly displayed on my fridge, though I should frame the poor thing.

When she was on tour, her wig box kept setting off the metal detector.

Seems that Miss Annie had a wig made of the finest gauge black wire so it would stay in place for the entire show! And NO Aqua Net needed!

This is a great thread. Love you, DLers.

Her 40's movies are so much fun, but they were (are?) so hard to find. I had to finally resort to buying them from "collectors", since they were never shown on TV. I'm sad that all that entertainment is down the memory hole.

To her dying day, her minge was jet black, poufy, and stiff.

R28 That's all you got from that posting? It's kind of Hollywood lore that Zanuck "shut down the studio" when he was fucking on his lunch hour. Basically that means while filming and so forth went on, any decisions he need to make or be aware of were on hiatus for that hour while he got off his jollies. I guess he might have been considering casting options as he was shtupping his latest starlett though.

If it doesn't actually shut down the studio, then why state as such? The studio ran just fine for that hour without him. What is so wrong with being factual?

I don’t think she fucked Mayer. Does this make me naive? She strikes me as someone almost asexual, probably because of her commitment to her craft. Sex for her was probably a pretty boring affair. Spread it for an oil man every couple of years, and that’s it!

Ann was the last American virgin.

I think by the time Annie arrived at MGM in the late 1940s, LB Mayer was too old, almost 70, for sexual dalliances. Did he ever really have a reputation for serious sexual harassment beyond some leering? He apparently spent his leisure hours at the races where he owned several prized horses. And he loved to go out dancing. Annie often talked about going out to night clubs with him to dance and how she'd always bring her mother along.

She was a leading star at Columbia before she went to MGM. I wonder if she was ever on Harry Cohn's casting couch.

Leads in B-movies at Columbia and some supporting in A-films like "You Can't Take It With You".

R41: Another way to put it would be that she was a fag hag and like a lot of them, hated sex. Her marriages were all rather short.

Thank you, R38. My new band is going to be called Jet Black, Poufy, and Stiff.

I'm renaming my law firm.

I’m her son Dance. Yes, my name is Dance Miller. I’m gay of course, how could I not be?

She left me several of her hair helmets. Sometimes I put them on and pretend I have to humor Mickey Rooney standing next to me.

Mayer married again after Ann rejected his proposal. Former actress Lorena Layson.

She was a smoker, no? I have a candid photo of her, and I always ask people if they can see the pack of Camels.

yep and died of lung cancer.

Ann, like Fred Astaire, didn't end up doing as many films at Metro as many of their longer-contracted MGM co-stars did, but her and Fred's fewer films were often such hits and so iconic that the two of them became very associated with that studio's golden years of larger-than-life contract player stars.

R8 Ann sounds like a dancing Sam Goldwyn.

Was Ann much of a real star, though? It seems like she always got the second lead.

She and folks like Gloria DeHaven were more talented than some of the leads, like June Allyson, for instance, but didn't get the lucky breaks or maybe didn't want to put out frankly. Hell, even Shirley Temple around age 12 found herself on a visit to MGM to Arthur Freed exposing himself to her!

[quote] Hell, even Shirley Temple around age 12 found herself on a visit to MGM to Arthur Freed exposing himself to her!

But she WAS a star. Are you implying Shirley put out?

No, Shirley laughed out loud at him, kind of humiliating him. But even a huge star like Shirley, at a young age, had to deal with jerks trying to get their jollies either by exposing themselves to them or propositioning them.

At Columbia Ann was second-fiddle to Rita Hayworth. Ann played the leads in some B musicals there while Rita got the A's. Harry Cohn finally decided to give Ann an A musical with The Petty Girl but she chose to get married instead and her husband didn't want her to work.

I read a while back that she was married several times and had one child that died only hours after birth, I know she had a nose job to make her nose appear very thin when she was still young, She's is from the early era of Hollywood, along with Lucille Ball, the Marx Brothers, Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn and Eve Arden.

I vaguely recall several years ago (pre-internet days) reading somewhere that Ann had some sort of connection to The Church Of Satan at one time. The author didn't go into details, but understandably a wild claim like that has stuck with me. I think about that from time to time, but I've never been able to find anything about it online. Has anyone else ever heard this? Or is it a figment of my imagination?

@ 51: Everyone smoked from the early 20th century on.. This is why so many people died of cancer or cardiovascular disease or both until at least the mid 1990's. The rate on smoking related death went down quite a bit after people eased up on smoking publicly and at home. No one really knew back then how bad cigarette smoking is for our health and the big tobacco companies kept pushing cigarettes to the consumer making a tidy profit for decades.

I think Ann's training taught her never to be photographed with a cigarette or drink.

R61 - Ann with her interest in spiritualism has been linked to some wackos but I have never heard the one about Satanists. Are you thinking of Jayne Mansfield?

r56 I don't think Ann was more talented than June Allyson, who was good in some dramatic roles as well as comedy. I assume you're referring to The Opposite Sex where June got three big musical numbers and Ann got nothing. That was tragic and unfair.

But can you imagine Annie as Jo in Little Women? Did they even have tap dancing in the 1860s, with hoop skirts?

{quote]I don’t think she fucked Mayer.

My creative writing teacher who worked for People Magazine was going to write Miller's biography, but the publishers only wanted the story if she'd include her affair with Mayer. She refused and the book never got written. At least by him.

An obscure little story to make up that would impress no one, or the truth. I'm going with the truth.

I never knew Ann Miller was offered or considered for the film The Petty Girl, an old obscure favorite of mine.

It was a sweet little B musical, a totally fictionalized story of George Petty, the famous WWII cheesecake illustrator, played by Robert Cummings. The title character was ultimately played by Joan Caulfield, a delightful blonde actress whose career didn't go very far. The role was that of a beautiful but rather repressed college professor who's wooed by the artist and improbably becomes his muse as he discovers his real talent in "leg art." I remember as a kid watching the film which often played on The Late Show.

R64, I think you're right. I must have watched a flash of something discussing Jayne Mansfield's connection to Anton LaVey and somehow processed it as Ann Miller of all people!

R66 - Ann writes about Mayer in her first memoir but says they had a platonic friendship.

Who else was Mayer reputed to have screwed (literally)? There were plenty he screwed figuratively (like William Haines and Luise Rainer) of both sexes.

Both Greer Garson and Lucille Bremer had men in high positions at MGM who they were screwing who got them work. Garson's really helped her up to top echelong there during the 1940s when Norma Shearer retired. Bremer only had several notable films, including the classic "Meet Me in St. Louis", but big bomb opposite Fred Astaire in "Yolanda and the Thief". There were probably others who had their "casting sugar daddies" at MGM and other studios.

"echelon" not sure how "long" he was. hehe

That's true of Lucile Bremer, who was supposedly Arthur Freed's mistress but I've never heard those kind of stories about Greer Garson. I think LB Mayer was in awe of what he perceived to be Garson's dignified and elegant lady-like talents from the moment he brought her over from England for Mr. Chips, but she never had to screw him for roles. He idolized her and felt she brought a certain polished cache to the MGM stable.

[quote]He idolized her and felt she brought a certain polished cache to the MGM stable.

Oh, dear.

Was it a cache of smuggled gems?

I'm sure Greer got on her knees to get good roles in the beginning, just like most actors and actresses did in the studio days.

Greer had a great supporting Oscar start in "Goodbye Mr. Chips" and was starring in "Pride and Prejudice" by the next year. I forgot who her studio executive/lover was, though she was very talented and lovely and quite good on screen.

Had a friend back in the early 70s who played Mother Burnside with Miller in an Atlanta production of Mame, not all that long after she had done it on Broadway. She said that Miller had a big tap number inserted into That's How Young I Feel and after her solo, Annie literally tapped herself backwards upstage and dipped into the wings where she was thrown on a board and an oxygen mask put on her face. After a minute or two, while the chorus carried on, her assistants moved her upright and shoved her back onto the stage to finish the number.

I always took my friend's story with a grain of salt until I moved to New York a couple of years later and heard from many people that that was how she did the number on Broadway.

^ Forgot to add that my friend adored Annie and said she was one of the nicest and most professional people she ever worked with. But that she was weird.

[quote]Ann writes about Mayer in her first memoir but says they had a platonic friendship..

Would YOU admit to sucking that cock?

Total whore and sex fiend. She couldn’t stop fingering herself everywhere she went!!

LB also had a thing for Ginny Simms - whose husband encouraged the affair......

Frank Sinatra said LB broke his hip when he fell off Ginny Simms.

Ginny Simms had a lovely singing voice, but not much screen presence.

Is Ginny Simms one of the actresses sitting in the front row with LB Mayer in that famous anniversary photo? There are 2 or 3 questionable choices there and I've always wondered why they were given such prominence.

Yes and now you know why R83.

If Ann wasn't intimate with LB Mayer, then how did she know what he smelled like after a night of hard drinking?

Ann said she lost her virginity to her first husband.

[quote] She couldn’t stop fingering herself everywhere she went!!

You're confusing Ann with your grandma. Same hair and all.

[Quote] You're confusing Ann with your grandma. Same hair and all.

Millie Helper couldn't help herself.

Millie could've been just as big a star as Ann. She even wrote her own material!

R76. I was nominated for Leading Actress for Chips, my dear. Perhaps you’re confusing me with poor Olivia.

Back during the Gay 90s. c.1996 or 1997m when I was living in West Hollywood, my mom visited from San Francisco. One night I took her to Kate Mantellini, and guess who was seated about twelve feet across from us, dining solo? Ann Miller. My mom is more of her generation than I am and was thrilled as could be. For me, as a resident of LA at the time, it's an unwritten rule that fanning out at celebrity encounters is simply not cool, so you you keep the gushing down to a minimum, if at all.

The friendship was Platonic. The affair was business.

R22 is hilarious. Elizabeth Ashley is coked out of her mind and her head falls into frame during Ann’s interview. Joan was really good at interviewing those old Hollywood gals. Always preferred her interviews to Johnny’s.

[quote]was MGM's supposed superiority a real thing in its time or is it all just sentimental nostalgia perpetuated by some musical sequences in That's Entertainment I, II and III?

This question should be it’s own thread topic.

Fuck Cyd Charitable, her two threads went on too long! And! They weren’t even about her half the time. Hunny, Nanette Fabry? It’s good, but - WHAT ABOUT ME?!?!? How bout it, babes? Give some hits!!!

You twirl and tap rather than dance. You spent too much time at poverty row studio.

They just don’t make that styrofoam packaging for the kwarter pounder anymore!

She killed L B Mayer by hitting him with her hayer.

Thanks, boys.

Can we please get back to what I do best? "Hope you don't mind my legs..."

A treasure.

[quote] I'm sure Greer got on her knees to get good roles in the beginning, just like most actors and actresses did in the studio days.

Arf!

R79, She also wrote of a platonic friendship with Conrad Hilton.

We share the same birthday, April 12th.

So do David Letterman and David Cassidy.

Jealous, bitches?

I always found her fascinating. She stands our in every film she made. She's so polished, poised, and well groomed. Incredible dancer but I agree, there is something weird about her. Maybe it's her total independence and uniquely odd persona, especially in her elder years with that helmet hair and diva presence.

She was very pretty when young, with an unusual face and prominent cheekbones. Not purely beautiful, but stylishly attractive.

This is a really nice photo of her when young. You rarely saw her hair so loose and natural.

She shit in my hat once.

Here's her face looking odd. There's something about her cheeks that scream chipmunk.

During her marriage to Reese Llewellyn Milner, while pregnant with daughter Mary in her last trimester, she was thrown down the stairs by Milner and went into early labor. Her baby Mary lived only three hours on November 12, 1946.

R105, this mean you also share a birthday with Tiny Tim. According to Ann, this makes you “Astro-twins, hunny.”

R110, Ann is buried with that baby daughter.

That's a GREAT interview R102, thank you for posting. Ann is so honest, it's terrific. She's sure kooky, too! Love her.