Miller, Marilyn

Miller, Marilyn [née Marilynn Reynolds] (1898–1936), actress, singer, and dancer. The unquestioned queen of Broadway musical comedy in the 1920s, the tiny, delicate‐featured blonde beauty was only five years old when she became a member of her family's vaudeville act. She toured the world in variety for ten years before Lee Shubert discovered her in London in 1913. Miller appeared for the Shuberts in the 1914 and 1915 editions of The Passing Show 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. Except for a brief, unsuccessful attempt at Peter Pan (1924), under the aegis of Charles Dillingham, she spent the entire decade of the 1920s starring in Ziegfeld or Dillingham musicals: Sally (1920), Sunny (1925), Rosalie (1928), and Smiles (1930). Miller also starred in the revue As Thousands Cheer (1933) before her premature death. A competent actress and singer, she was most admired for her Dresden china beauty and for her airy, traditional dancing. Her biographer disputes the generally accepted idea that her real name was Mary Ellen and insists that her given name, with its spelling modified, was the first use of a name which has since become common. Biography: The Other Marilyn, Warren G. Harris, 1985.