When Dody was still
wearing bobby socks and saddle shoes to Albert Sidney Johnson
Junior High in Houston, she got on the Riverside Terrace bus (the
line that went through our neighborhood) and saw a girl in the
class behind hers that she knew by name, Lucille Collier. Lucille
was arguing with her mother over a little sack of candy Mrs. Collier
had firmly in her grasp. Lucille wanted another piece and her
mother wouldn’t let her have it.
A few years later Mrs.
Collier up and left her husband and took Lucille out to Hollywood.
It was only a few years later that Lucille came back to Houston
on the train with a touring musical she was dancing in. I forget
the name of the musical. The star was a famous comedian and I
forget his name, too. Ben Blue, maybe. Anyhow, when he got off
the train and saw the enthusiastic crowd waiting he got this big
grin on his face (I know because I was there covering the event
for the Houston Post). But they were strangely silent. When Lucille
stepped down from the train they yelled and called out her name.
But the name they were
calling out wasn’t Lucille Collier.
The name they were
calling out was Ann Miller.
That was the name her
agent picked out for her when she got in the movies. Ann Miller
was born Johnnie Lucille Collier in Houston, same city as Dody
and me, in 1921 or 1923, depending upon whether you look her up
on the web or your source is the Los Angeles Times, which in a
recent interview said she was 78.
The "Johnnie" was for
her father, a name she dropped about the time her mother dropped
her father, reportedly for his playing around with other women,
and hauled her to California. When she was nine, according to
a biography I read, although Dody believes she must have been
a few years older, she studied tap and started supporting herself
and her mother at a tender age. Her mother was hard of hearing
and couldn’t work much. So apparently Lucille got over being mad
at her mother for withholding candy on the Riverside Terrace bus.
Incidentally, there
was no river on the bus route, although Brays Bayou was only a
few miles away. I lived in Riverside Terrace when I was boy and
skinny-dipped in it (it wasn’t called skinny- dipping then, it
was called swimming without no clothes on). It was against my
mother’s rules. Not about skinny-dipping. About swimming in the
bayou.
While continuing her
education being home-schooled, Lucille worked nights dancing in
Hollywood nightclubs until 1937, when she was barely 14, she was
offered a contract at RKO. There was one catch. She had to be
18 to sign a contract. So she got a fake birth certificate showing
she was that old. (Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother, Rose Hovick, jumped
the age of Gypsy’s sister, June Havoc—Ellen Evangeline Hovick—,
a few notches by substituting a fake birth certificate for her
real one in Vancouver, Canada, where Baby June was born. The vaudeville
act Rose had out touring got a date in Canada, where you had to
be 12 to perform and June was only nine.)
Lucille’s first picture
at RKO was Stage Door, in 1937. After more movies, she
was a hit on the Broadway stage in 1939 in George White’s Scandals.
RKO let her out of her contract in 1941 but without missing a
beat she signed with Columbia, where she did a couple of World
War II movies. She got married, got divorced, signed with MGM
and did On The Town in 1949 and Kiss Me Kate in
1953. She married and divorced again, then again. Three times
in all, but you couldn’t stop her from dancing. In clubs and on
stage, including Mame in 1969 (she was the last actress
to play the Broadway role). In 1972 her autobiography, "Miller’s
High Life, was published and in 1979 she starred, with Mickey
Rooney, in her biggest hit of all, Sugar Babies. It ran
nine years. She finally slowed down a little but in 1998 sang
I’m Still Here in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.
And at 78 she’s still
going. She’s currently appearing in the movie, Mulholland Drive.
If her mother had known how famous and how durable Lucille was
going to be maybe she would have let her have another piece of
candy on the Riverside Terrace bus.
David Westheimer lives
with his wife of 57 years, Dody, in the same Los Angeles apartment
they moved into from Houston, Texas 40 years ago. Their son, Fred,
is a Senior Vice-President at the William Morris Agency and his
younger brother, Eric, is a veterinarian. Succeeding generations
include five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. As a journalist,
David worked for Oveta Culp Hobby. At 83, David Westheimer continues
to write, and not just for Senior Women. His latest effort, "The
Great Wounded Bird", his recollections of World War II, winner
of the Texas Review 1999 poetry prize, was published this year
by Texas Review Press and may be ordered from Amazon Books, where
it is 1,458,159th on their sales list, from Barnes & Noble and
Borders Books. He is a novelist and a retired Air Force Officer.
He can be reached for a repertoire of feigned curmudgeonly remarks
at: DWestheime@aol.com.
