LEST WE FORGET MARILYN MILLER
(September 1898 - April 7, 1936)

"The Pavlova of the tired business man, the Taglioni of the world of musical comedy and of jazz, the Fanny Elssler of a whole generation of college boys in search of diversion."
                                      Boston Transcript, April 11, 1936

Born Mary Ellen Reynolds in Evansville, Indiana, 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.  They were rechristened the Five Columbians when her mother joined her stepfather and two older sisters.   They toured the Midwest and Europe in variety for ten years, skirting the child labor authorities, before Lee Shubert discovered her at the Lotus Club in London in 1914.  By the time of her Broadway success at the age of twenty-two, she had changed her name in three ways.  She took the last name of her stepfather, Oscar Miller, substituted Lynn for her middle name, and on the advice of Florenz Ziegfeld, dropped the second "n" in Lynn and added the second name to her first, thus becoming Marilyn Miller.

While she appeared in the 1914 and 1915 editions of The Passing Show for the Shuberts at the Winter Garden Theatre, as well as The Show of Wonders (1916) and Fancy Free (1918), it was Mr. Ziegfeld who made her a star.    She performed in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918 at the New Amsterdam Theatre on W. 42nd St., with music by Irving Berlin.  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 was a headliner in the Follies of 1919, dancing to Irving Berlin's Mandy and 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.  It ran 570 performances.  Dorothy Parker memorialized her performance in verse:
From the alley's gloom and chill
Up to fame danced Sally
Which was nice for her,
but still rough upon the alley.
How it must regret her wiles, all her ways and glances.
Now the theatre owns her smiles, Sallies, songs and dances....

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 ($3,000.00 a week). She reunited with Ziegfeld in 1928 and starred in his production of the successful George Gershwin/Sigmund Romberg musical Rosalie. 
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. Her most popular numbers were those in which she impersonated Joan Crawford and
Lynn Fontanne.    In 1934 she married Chester O'Brien, a young actor in the show. A contractual dispute caused both to quit the show before the end of its 400-performance run. She officially announced her retirement, and her husband, content to live on her wealth, made only occasional efforts to secure work.  In the spring of 1936, one of her frequent sinus infections was severe enough to put her in the hospital.  A toxic condition developed and she died at the age of thirty-seven.

A sculpture of Ms. Miller, in the title role of Sunny, can still be seen atop the former I. Miller Shoe Company (no relation) building, 1552 Broadway (167 W. 46th St.) in Times Square. It is one of four statues sculpted by Alexander Calder between 1927 and 1929 for the building's facade, representing famous theatrical professionals of the time.  In 2013, after years of neglect, the building and sculptures were restored.

Although she was very young when she died, Marilyn Miller did leave her mark on the American theatre.  She once said,
"I am more interested in dancing than anything else in the world."  She was a dancer first, and her contribution to the American musical stage lies in her gift of ballet to Broadway. She brought a range of styles to her performances--from classical to clog to contemporary.




RESOURCE:  Notable Women in the American Theatre. 1989  Noreen Barnes
Wikipedia
Reference:  Harris, Warren G.  The Other Marilyn, a biography.  1985