Marilyn Miller

Marilyn Miller was born Mary Ellen Reynolds in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a telephone lineman, and his first wife, the former Ada Lynn Thompson.

The tiny, delicate-featured blonde beauty was only four years old when, as "Mademoiselle Sugarlump," she debuted at Lakeside Park in Dayton, Ohio as a member of her family's vaudeville act, the Columbian Trio, which then included Marilyn's step-father, Oscar Caro Miller, and two older sisters, Ruth and Claire.

They were re-christened the Five Columbians after Marilyn and her mother joined the routine. From their home base in Findlay, Ohio, they toured the Midwest and Europe in variety for ten years, skirting the child labor authorities, before Lee Shubert discovered Marilyn at the Lotus Club in London in 1914.

Miller appeared for the Shuberts in the 1914 and 1915 editions of The Passing Show, a Broadway revue at the Winter Garden Theatre, as well as in The Show of Wonders (1916) and Fancy Free (1918). But it was Florenz Ziegfeld who made her a star after she performed in his Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, at the famed New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street, with music by Irving Berlin. Sharing billing with Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers and W.C. Fields, she brought the house down with her impersonation of Ziegfeld's wife, Billie Burke, in a number entitled Mine Was a Marriage of Convenience.

She followed as a headliner in the Follies of 1919, dancing to Berlin's Mandy, and reputedly became Ziegfeld's mistress, though this was never proven. Miller attained legendary status in the Ziegfeld production Sally (1920) with music by Jerome Kern, especially for her performance of Kern's Look for the Silver Lining. The musical, about a dishwasher who joins the Follies and marries a millionaire, ran 570 performances at the New Amsterdam.

After a rift with Ziegfeld, she signed with rival producer Charles Dillingham and starred as Peter Pan in a 1924 Broadway revival, then as a circus queen in Sunny (1925), with music by Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. A box-office smash, it featured the classic Who?, and made her the highest paid star on Broadway. In 1928, after reuniting with Ziegfeld, she starred in his production of the successful George Gershwin musical Rosalie then in Smiles (1930) with Fred Astaire, a rare Ziegfeld box office failure.

Miller's movie career was short-lived and less successful than her stage career. She made only three films: adaptations of Sally (1929); and Sunny (1930); and Her Majesty Love (1931), with W.C. Fields. Her last Broadway show, marking a major comeback, was the innovative 1933-34 Irving Berlin/Moss Hart musical, As Thousands Cheer, in which she appeared in the production number, "Easter Parade".

As it turned out, her appearance in As Thousands Cheer was her last professional outing. Miller quit the show after her boyfriend and future husband Chester O'Brien (a chorus dancer who served as the production's second assistant stage manager) was fired for allowing the Woolworth department store heir Jimmy Donahue to sneak onstage during a scene in which the actress was impersonating Donahue's cousin, the heiress Barbara Hutton. After Miller's death, this incident gave Irving Berlin the inspiration for a film musical, On the Avenue, for which he received a script credit in addition to writing the songs.

At the time of her death, Miller was described has having been in retirement.

In 1930, Miller was briefly engaged to the actor Michael Farmer, who later became a husband of Gloria Swanson. In 1932, she announced her intention to marry the movie actor Don Alvarado, but the wedding did not take place.

Miller was married to:

*Frank Carter, an actor and acrobatic dancer, whom she married on 24 May 1919 at the Church of the Ascension in New York City. He was killed in a car accident in Cumberland, Maryland, on 9 May 1920.

*Jack Pickford (R), an actor and the brother of film star Mary Pickford; previously married to the popular movie actress Olive Thomas, he was a drug and alcohol abuser. They were married in 1922, separated in 1926, and divorced in Versailles, France, in November 1927. Miller had attempted to secure a divorce in the Paris courts in the spring of 1927, but her published comments about how easy it would be to end her marriage in France "stirred the ire of the Paris Tribunal with the result that the court would take no action on Miss Miller's petition". The actress filed for divorce the following July in the nearby city of Versailles, whose tribunal eventually ended the marriage.

*Chester Lee O'Brien, a chorus dancer, who she married on 4 October 1934, in Harrison, New York. Several years older than her groom, Miller reportedly spent more than $56,000 on O'Brien during their brief time together. O'Brien, who later was known professionally as Chet O'Brien, went on to become a stage manager for such Broadway productions as Brigadoon and Finian's Rainbow.

The mausoleum of Marilyn Miller in Woodlawn Cemetery

Miller had a long history of sinus infections, and her health was compromised by an increasing dependency on alcohol. According to reports shortly before her death, she entered a New York hospital in early March 1936 in order to recover from a nervous breakdown. Three weeks after she entered the hospital, however, she developed a toxic condition and died from complications following surgery on her nasal passages. She was 37.

She died in New York City on the morning of April 7, 1936 and was given a funeral at Saint Bartholomew's church on Park Avenue which drew 2,500 people, including former mayor Jimmy Walker, Beatrice Lillie, and Billie Burke.

The procession led to Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, where Miller was buried alongside her first husband, Frank Carter, in a mausoleum she had constructed to house his remains.

Miller's last name was taken from her step-father, Oscar Caro Miller, while her first name was a combination/adaptation of her birth name, Mary, and her mother's middle name, Lynn. Initially calling herself Marilynn, she would drop one of the n's, at the urging of Florenz Ziegfeld.

Census records reveal perhaps a half a dozen "Marilyns" in the United States in 1900; by the 1930s, following Miller's stardom, it was the 16th most common first name among American females.

In the late 1940s, Norma Jeane Baker (nee Mortenson) changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, at the urging of Ben Lyon, a one-time actor turned casting director at 20th Century Fox, who said she reminded him of Marilyn Miller.
Marilyn Monroe would 'become' Marilyn Miller herself when she married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956.

In 1949, a sanitized biopic,
appropriately entitled,
Look for the Silver Lining,
starred June Haver as
Marilyn Miller.

Miller was also portrayed
by Judy Garland in MGM's
film biography of Jerome Kern,
Till the Clouds Roll By
(1946).

Rare film footage of the real
Miller can be seen in the
2004 PBS documentary series
Broadway, the American
Musical.

A decaying sculpture of Miller, in the title role of Sunny, can still be seen atop the old I. Miller [no relation] Building on West 46th Street just off Broadway in Manhattan.

In the only published biography of Marilyn Miller, author Warren G. Harris called her "Ziegfeld's most dazzling star" and the premiere musical comedy star of the Jazz Age.

"She had rivals who may have been better dancers, singers, actresses, or mimics, but no one individual could equal her when it came to combining all those talents."

One of the poems from Patti Smith's 1972 book Seventh Heaven is called "Marilyn Miller".