Excerpts include:
Miller on Louis B. Mayer:
"He had a crush on me, but I was so dumb that I didn't realize that he was sidling up to me. Finally, he asked me if I would marry him, but by this time, I had met {future husband} Reese Milner. I said, 'Mr. Mayer, I'm going to be married to someone else,' and he went home that night and took a bunch of sleeping pills and they had to take him to the hospital. His ego was so hurt, he wouldn't speak to me after that."
Miller on Introducing Lucy and Desi: "The history books don't give me credit for it, but I introduced Lucy to Desi Arnaz when we did TOO MANY GIRLS. I said, 'I want you to meet Desi Arnaz and you know what, you guys are going to married,' because I'm very psychic. She laughed because she thought it was so funny, but she later fell madly in love with Desi."
Miller on Being the Mother of Pantyhose:
"When I was under contract with RKO, I wore these long black stockings and the wardrobe ladies would sew them on briefs. If I got a run, they'd say "cut" and I'd have to take them all off and put on new ones. One day, Mr. Willis {hosiery maker} of Hollywood came by the set and I said, 'Mr. Willis, why don't you make some stockings like you make for ballerinas, like tights, but let them be silk,' and that was the birth of pantyhose. I kind of figured that I was the mother of pantyhose and I'll bet all the men hate me, but I thought it up."
B>PRIVATE SCREENINGS: Ann Miller features a generous selection of clips from Miller's many great musicals including ON THE TOWN (1949), starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in the first musical with numbers shot on location in New York; KISS ME KATE (1953), starring Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson in an adaptation of the Cole Porter stage hit and others.
Miller signed on with MGM in 1948, followed Broadway success and years of low-budget musicals at Columbia Pictures. She shot to stardom when Cyd Charisse broke her leg and had to bow out of Easter Parade (1948), co-starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. The film established Miller's on-screen image as a witty, fast-tapping showgirl. From then on, she was a fixture in MGM's great musicals, stealing pictures with numbers like her paean to "Prehistoric Joe" in ON THE TOWN and her show-stopping "From This Moment On" in KISS ME KAT. With the decline of the Hollywood musical, Miller left MGM in 1956, switching to stage and nightclub work. She scored as a replacement for Angela Lansbury in the Broadway company of Mame and had another Broadway hit teaming with Mickey Rooney for the burlesque tribute Sugar Babies.
C-48m. Closed Captioning.
