Marilyn Miller

Marilyn Miller, born Mary Ellen Reynolds on September 1, 1898, in Evansville, Indiana, was a tap dancer, singer, and actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1914 to 1933. The daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a telephone lineman, and his first wife Ada Lynn Thompson, she was the youngest of the Reynolds daughters. She died on April 7, 1936, at age 37, from complications following nasal surgery.

Miller's performing life began at age four, when she appeared as Mademoiselle Sugarlump at Lakeside Park in Dayton, Ohio, as part of a family vaudeville act called The Columbian Trio. That group included her stepfather Oscar Caro Miller and her older sisters Ruth and Claire; when Miller and her mother joined the act, it was renamed the Five Columbians. Based in Findlay, Ohio, the troupe toured the Midwest and Europe for a decade before Lee Shubert discovered Miller at the Lotus Club in London in 1914. Her stage surname came from her stepfather Oscar Caro Miller, while her first name was formed by combining her birth name Mary with her mother's middle name Lynn. She initially spelled it Marilynn before dropping one n at Florenz Ziegfeld's suggestion.

Her New York stage debut came with the Shuberts in the 1914 and 1915 editions of The Passing Show at the Winter Garden Theatre, followed by The Show of Wonders in 1916 and Fancy Free in 1918. Ziegfeld then cast her in his Follies of 1918 at the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street, where she shared billing with Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, and W. C. Fields. Her impersonation of Billie Burke, Ziegfeld's wife, in the number "Mine Was a Marriage of Convenience," with music by Irving Berlin, drew particular notice. She returned as a headliner in the Follies of 1919, dancing to Berlin's "Mandy."

Miller achieved her greatest stage fame in the Ziegfeld production Sally in 1920, a musical with music by Jerome Kern about a dishwasher who joins the Follies and marries a millionaire. Her performance of Kern's "Look for the Silver Lining" became closely identified with her, and the show ran 570 performances at the New Amsterdam. After a dispute with Ziegfeld, she moved to producer Charles Dillingham, starring in a 1924 Broadway revival of Peter Pan and then in Sunny in 1925, a circus-themed musical with music by Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein that featured the song "Who?" and made her the highest-paid star on Broadway. Reuniting with Ziegfeld in 1928, she starred in Rosalie, a musical with music by George Gershwin, and then in Smiles in 1930 alongside Fred Astaire, which proved to be a rare box-office failure for Ziegfeld.

Her final Broadway production was the Irving Berlin and Moss Hart musical As Thousands Cheer, which ran from 1933 into 1934. In it she appeared in the production number "Easter Parade." She left the show after her boyfriend and future husband Chester O'Brien, a chorus dancer serving as the production's second assistant stage manager, was fired for allowing the Woolworth heir Jimmy Donahue to sneak onstage during a scene in which Miller was impersonating his cousin, the heiress Barbara Hutton. Berlin later cited this incident as inspiration for the film musical On the Avenue, for which he received a script credit in addition to writing the songs.

Miller's film career consisted of three pictures: adaptations of Sally in 1929, Sunny in 1930, and Her Majesty, Love in 1931, the last of which also featured W. C. Fields. Her stage name carried an indirect legacy into later decades when Norma Jeane Baker, at the suggestion of casting director Ben Lyon — who had played Miller's love interest in Her Majesty, Love — adopted the name Marilyn Monroe, partly in tribute to Miller. Monroe's married name became Marilyn Miller when she wed playwright Arthur Miller in 1956.

Miller's personal life included four marriages. She married actor and acrobatic dancer Frank Carter on May 24, 1919, at the Church of the Ascension in New York City; he was killed in a car accident in Cumberland, Maryland, on May 9, 1920. Her second husband was actor Jack Pickford, brother of Mary Pickford; they married in 1922, separated in 1926, and divorced in Versailles, France, in November 1927, after Miller's earlier attempt to end the marriage in the Paris courts was rejected by the Paris Tribunal. She subsequently married dancer Jack Donohue, who later became a director and choreographer in theater, film, and television. Her fourth husband was Chester O'Brien, whom she married on October 4, 1934, in Harrison, New York; O'Brien later worked as a stage manager for Broadway productions including Brigadoon and Finian's Rainbow, and also served as stage manager and played Mr. Macintosh on Sesame Street from the show's premiere in 1969 through 1992. Miller had also been briefly engaged to Michael Farmer in 1930 and announced plans to marry Don Alvarado in 1932, though neither relationship led to marriage.

Her health deteriorated in her final years due to chronic sinus infections and increasing dependence on alcohol. In mid-March 1936 she entered Doctors Hospital in New York following a nervous breakdown and a sinus condition, developed a toxic condition in late March that required three blood transfusions, and died on April 7, 1936. Her funeral at Saint Bartholomew Church on Park Avenue drew between 2,500 and 3,000 attendees, among them former mayor Jimmy Walker, Beatrice Lillie, and Billie Burke, while an additional 5,000 people lined the streets outside. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. A statue of Miller in the title role of Sunny, sculpted by Alexander Stirling Calder between 1927 and 1929, remains on the facade of the former I. Miller Shoe Company Building at 1552 Broadway in Times Square.