Marilyn Miller: Ziegfeld's Most Dazzling Star
Oh, Marilyn! The glorified American dream girl, who is my favorite Ziegfeld girl. Despite the fact she only made 3 films and was mostly active on Broadway, she is so special to me. I can't exactly explain why, but what I can say is there is something so fascinating about her that has me hooked. Not too long ago I finished reading her wonderful biography The Other Marilyn by Warren G. Haris, which I will largely be using as a reference for this blog post. The book is packed with compelling info. I wish I could share everything I read, but I don't want to make this too long so I'm basically just going to go over the fundamental details and the good stuff.
Also want to add that despite her legacy being overshadowed by the far more popular Marilyn — there is no association between them. This Marilyn was undeniably the first Marilyn to become famous, even popularizing the name.
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| The first thing you'll notice when you open up her biography is this absolutely beautiful picture of her from 1930. |
Marilyn was born Marilynn Ellen Reynolds on September 1, 1898, in Evansville, Indiana. Upon entering show business, she would shed off an extra 'n.' Marilyn was the fourth and last child of Edwin W. Reynolds and Ada Thompson. Indeed she was the family baby, born beautifully and delicately formed with golden hair, greenish-blue eyes, and an iridescent smile. No doubt she was the belle of the family.
Against her husband's wishes, Ada had all her girls enrolled on the stage. The marriage dissolved when Marilyn was still in diapers and she wouldn't see her real father until many years later, but her mother did marry again to Oscar Caro Miller whose surname she acquired.
August 20, 1903, was the date Marilyn made her professional debut. That same summer, Marilyn's nursemaid took her to a Nickelodeon for the first time, and from that day forward, she had the dream of becoming a ballerina. To make baby Marilyn happy, Ada cut up some old skirts and petticoats for her into a resembling fashion of a ballet dress. Her sister Ruth called her "Lumpy" because she looked like a lump of sugar and since that day, "Lumpy" became her lifelong nickname. This also inspired her childhood stage identity as "Mademoiselle Sugarlump." Now isn't that adorable? As the years went by, Marilyn got to study classical ballet with Theodore and Alexis Kosloff, who were considered some of the greatest dancers from the Imperial Theatre of Moscow. She later attended the Ned Wayburn School where she was drilled in tap and acrobatic dancing. Another beautiful blonde who attended these same studios was Marion Davies, who became a good friend of Marilyn's. In fact, when the two were hardly teens, Marilyn would giggle over the way Marion pronounced certain words with her stammer.
Marilyn first came to Broadway in 1911 -- a year before several of her family’s show business friends were killed on the RMS Titanic. When she reached her glorious teens, she became known to the public in The Passing Show of 1914, which ran on Broadway for 133 performances. The show made a star out of Marilyn overnight and ran again for the next two years. One newspaper review read:
The real hit of the entire performance was little Miss Marilyn Miller, who is youthful and pretty, who dances as if she enjoyed it, and who as an imitator approaches very closely to Miss Elsie Janis.
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| 18-year-old Marilyn in The Passing Show of 1916. What a darling! |
Marilyn signed a contract with Florenz Ziegfeld in 1918 and soon became one of his most prized jewels. Why didn’t he have her sign with the Follies earlier? Well, that’s because Flo liked to buy his stars already made. Thus, once she became a popular draw with the public, he’d snatch her away from other theatrical producers. Oh, the old saying rings true — there’s no business quite like show business!
She was one of his biggest stars, but never his mistress. One of the most common rumors surrounding her is that she had an on-and-off affair for a couple years with Ziegfeld, but that myth has been debunked. Although Flo sure as hell tried to win her affection like he did with almost all his girls. He tried to hide it from his wife Billie, but she already knew it. Billie wasn’t very fond of Marilyn for that reason, but she was impressed with her act, however, and said of her:
Marilyn was the vision of perfection, representing in beautiful flesh all the things that all his life Flo Ziegfeld had sought to dramatize. Marilyn summed up and symbolized the grace and joy which were what Flo reached for in everything he staged. She was, as every male with reasonable eyesight knew, extraordinarily enticing and special.
Flo did try to overpower her from marrying Frank Carter, her great love, but failed. The love affair between Frank and Marilyn began during the raging war. Ada and Caro did not approve of their relationship and ordained strict rules that Marilyn needed to be home no later than one o'clock sharp. Ironically, the war was what brought them together, with both of them very active in the war effort. On one evening, Marilyn sold 1,250,000 dollars worth of liberty bonds in Times Square. In this case, there was nothing that Flo Ziegfeld or her parents could do to stop them. They also had the help of their friend Eddie Cantor, who would generously sneak a way for the two to be together. Ada and Caro had no objections to Marilyn hanging out with Eddie, who was a happily married man with lots of kids for dinner after the show. When the curtain came down, Eddie would put on his dinner jacket and take Marilyn to Frank's apartment. Then he'd go to one of his favorite icatessens and kibitz with friends until it was time to pick her up and take her home.
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| Marilyn in bridal costume for Sally, 1920. |
Marilyn married the love of her life, Frank Carter, on May 29, 1919, at the Church of Ascension in New York City. Within less than a year of marriage, Frank was killed in an automobile accident and Marilyn was heartbroken. Marilyn said of her late husband, "Frank was a husband to be proud of, I was terribly in love with him. He filled my life. Have you ever had a load lifted from your mind? Well, that's how I felt when I married Frank. It made the whole world brighter. We were just two chums. We talked over our plans and how we'd develop our careers. We built castles in the air in our spare hours."
During that tough season of her life, Eddie Cantor, Gus Van, and Joe Schenck tried their best to comfort Marilyn and make her laugh. Cantor remembered, "We couldn't make her laugh, but we could keep her from sobbing herself sick." But he later remembered there was a time he managed to make her laugh until she couldn't sleep.
Marilyn made platinum with Sally in 1920. It was the biggest Broadway musical hit of its time, running 570 performances. Years later she made her film debut with Sally in 1929, in which you get to see her in wonderful color. I'll talk about her film career in a bit, but first I want to share some of the reviews of Sally.
VARIETY: "Ziegfeld has turned the clock back fifteen years and produced a pictorial extravaganza reminiscent of 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Babes in Toyland' There's enough material to make two or three comic operas, a couple of revues, and a perfectly good farce."
THE GRAPHIC: "Ziegfeld has eclipsed all his former productions, even the most famous of the 'Follies'!
THE NEW YORK CLIPPER: "Miss Miller is a delightful throughout. Not only does she strike the keynote of loveliness in her terpsichorean bits, but she sings in a manner just as delightful. She strikes her zenith in the butterfly ballet. She was greeted with as much applause as the well-known Babe Ruth receives when he dispatches the globule on a hurries flight over the Polo Grounds grandstand."
Although Sally was a great success, Marilyn was deeply upset that Frank was not there to see it on Opening Night (shortly before he died). When Eddie Cantor came to her dressing room to congratulate her, she broke out into his arms and sobbed. Trying his best to cheer her up, Cantor paraphrased some advice Will Rogers once gave him: "Lumpy, this should be the happiest night of your life, I have a feeling that Frank did see it, and from a very good seat!”
Marilyn received countless movie offers while she was in the Follies, but they poured in once Sally opened. While she took her time in considering the offer, Ziegfeld would get anxious and buy her an emerald brooch, a chinchilla coat, or some other ultra-expensive presents to persuade her not to accept, but Marilyn had no dreams of becoming a movie star. She preferred to work in the theatre, which was far more prestigious. If moving pictures weren't a silent medium, she would have been more interested. The idea of someone paying 35 cents to not watch her sing or dance she considered a waste of her talents. It makes sense that she chose to make three pictures when the talkies came. However, she was not fond of filmmaking because she needed her beauty sleep, and keeping in mind how early you have to get up to be on a film set did not go well with her.
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| Marilyn and her second husband Jack Pickford |
Then along came Jack in Marilyn's life. The two first met at a Fourth of July party at Ed Wynn's house in 1921. When Marilyn's dog, Bolivar Brown, wandered off into the woods, Jack was the only man who volunteered to help her find her dog. It took them a long time, but by the time they came back, they were holding hands. It's no secret Marilyn was instantly attracted to Jack considering the slight resemblance he bore to Frank Carter. She said of him: "Jack is the only man I've met since my husband's death who reminds me of him. He's the same type physically, dark-haired and slender, but his eyes are dark gray while Frank's were black. Jack is like Frank reincarnated--the same point of view and everything."
Within a short time, they had fallen for each other due to their apparent similarities. It's also a coincidence that both of their spouses passed away and were buried in the same cemetery. Although their wedding date was set for August 1, they married on July 30, 1922, at the Pickfair Mansion.
I know Marilyn and Mary didn’t think the world of each other, let’s just say, but I love seeing two of my best girls together! The reason for this was that Marilyn saw Mary as a threat to her marriage with Jack. And to tell you the truth, Mary didn’t think much about any of Jack’s spouses. Partially, this is due on account of Mary’s overprotecting and mothering tendencies she had for her baby brother. Whose to blame her though? Only, it was Jack who was no good for Marilyn and I’m pretty sure she knew it.
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| Mary touching up Marilyn's hair for a screen test |
Due to Jack's drug and alcohol problem, the marriage unsurprisingly suffered and Marilyn was granted a divorce on November 2, 1927. To clear some myths and misconceptions, the idea that Marilyn experimented with drugs was possible due to Jack's eager persuasiveness, but to me, very unlikely. As stated in her biography, there was no way she would have been able to appear in a strenuous three-hour musical such as Sally, which she did six days and eight times a week virtually nonstop for three solid years. Not to mention, it would have been evident with her sinus infections and serious migraines.
Yesterday I was up all night desperate to find some kind of candid footage of her and behold...I found this little gem of her with Fred and Adele Astaire off of newsreels.net, doing their little dancy dance for a split second in a rare, backstage preview of one of Ziegfeld's shows (Smiles I assume).
Towards the end of her life, Marilyn became increasingly exhausted with shows and her blinding migraines did her no good. Her sinuses did not improve either, and required surgery done on her nasal passages. At the time of her death, she was described as being in retirement.
What really pisses me off is a nurse would come to Marilyn's apartment every evening after dinner and inject her with insulin (and they expected her health to improve?) The doctors eventually described that she had developed “a toxic condition” like yeah, I wonder why... If she could’ve received the proper care and hospitality, her life probably wouldn't have ended so soon. This is also on behalf of the surgical technology and the lesser resources they had then. Normally, when someone got sick in old times they were goners. Either way, I couldn’t imagine Marilyn living a long life to tell you the truth. Not that I wouldn’t want her to, but she was the dying kind of star. And in a way, it kind of saved her career. Marilyn herself claimed she didn't want to grow old, and wanted to dance for the rest of her life. Even though I would’ve loved to see her live to change her mind, she was not fortunate enough in that sense.
Several minutes before her death, she opened her eyes. A nurse told reporters later, "She said not a word. She smiled, a rich, deep comfortable smile, and then closed her eyes and passed away." Her sister Claire and husband Chet O'Brien were there at her bedside. To end on a more positive note, here is something sweet Moss Hart had to say about a reencounter he had with her:
“Marilyn was beautiful. I could not remember when she was more beautiful. All the thrill of the days when I saw this lovely dream girl on the stage came back to me. I think I had been very much in love with her, and very much in awe, too.”