Lorraine Miller: The Woman Who Was NOT “Samuel Goldwyn’s Most Cuddlesome Blonde”

Before we plunge into the impressive life and career of actress/singer/dancer Lorraine Miller (1922-1978) we’d like to pause and remind you of some of the numerous and estimable personages we have written about in the past who share her birthday of January 5: they include vaudevillians like Jack Norworth, Georgie Price, and Eddie Tamblyn (father of Russ Tamblyn); Sissieretta Jones (better known as Black Patti of Black Patti’s Troubadours); J. Stuart Blackton, founder of Vitagraph; comedy director Eddie Sutherland; Fred “Snowflake” Toones; Jazz Age journalist Herbert Bayard Swope; the original TV Superman George Reeves; original Saturday Night Live head writer Michael O’Donoghue; Pamela Sue Martin; Diane Keaton; et al.

There are some bigger stars I could add to the Travisian galaxy today, but Miller seemed to answer our needs nicely, with plenty of points of intersection with previous subjects. She gets pretty close to vaudeville on multiple counts, for example. Originally from Flint, Michigan, she won a contest sponsored by an auto worker’s union to be the “Perfect Body Girl”, the prize of which was a trip to Hollywood. Having had some amateur experience as a singer and actress in high school and college, she initially danced in Earl Carroll’s nightclub before getting cast in films. Most of Miller’s three dozen screen credits in major films are in walk-ons, or chorus girl and nightclub singer parts, as in All-American Girl (1941), Ball of Fire(1941), She’s in the Army (1942),Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Happy Go Lucky (1943), The Crystal Ball (1943), Hi Diddle Diddle (1943), Up in Arms (1944), Music for Millions (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Ziegfeld Follies (1945), Mexicana (1945), and The Big Sleep (1946).

She had better luck in B movies at the smaller studios where she generally was cast in decent supporting roles. Her biggest was the female lead in the grade z jungle thriller The White Gorilla (1945). Her first speaking role was in a “Glove Slingers” comedy short for Columbia called Mitt Me Tonight (1941). The rest were mostly westerns, fare like Riders of the Rio Grande (1943) and The Ambush Trail (1946) with Bob Steele, Three in the Saddle (1945) and Frontier Fugitives with Tex Ritter, Border Badmen (1945) with Buster Crabbe and Al St. John, and several others.

Unfortunately her progress in Hollywood may have been impeded by an incident involving Sam Goldwyn. Miller had been a Goldwyn Girl on occasion. Circa 1944 a postcard began circulating featuring Miller in black lingerie, lounging provocatively on a white fur rug. The caption: “Samuel Goldwyn’s Most Cuddlesome Blonde”. So she sued Goldwyn, the photographer, and others, for the indignity, which was compounded by the fact that they misidentified her as “Diana Mumby”. I mean, if you’re gonna tart me up and least get my name right!

Hollywood tends to get cranky about trouble-makers, and so for a time, she was obliged to seek employment elsewhere. She danced for a time at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe nightclub, and then appeared in two Broadway shows, Happy Birthday (1946-48) with Helen Hayes, and Magdalena (1948). She then did an Italian picture called Rapture (1949), directed by Goffredo Alessandri, then still married to Anna Magnani.

In 1949 Miller married Hollywood director Eddie Buzzell, a former vaudevillian, and the man behind the camera on two of the lesser Marx Brothers pictures. (Buzzell was riding relatively high that year though. ’49 was when he made one of his better pictures, Neptune’s Daughter, with Red Skelton and Esther Williams). Meanwhile, Miller landed one of her biggest screen parts, though it wasn’t one destined to launch her career into the stratosphere. In William Castle’sIt’s a Small World (1950) she was leading lady to Little Person Paul Dale in a seedy story owing much to the outre oeuvre of Tod Browning. Interestingly, Buzzell had also worked with a Little Person, Jerry Maren, on At the Circus (1939). Did they compare notes over a bird and a bottle at the end of the work day?

It’s a Small World was Miller’s last theatrical film, although she did a little television after this. She guest starred on episodes of I Led Three Lives, The Californians, and The Donna Reed Show. Reed had been Miller’s roommate when she first arrived in Hollywood two decades earlier — surely not a coincidence. Her last credit was an episode of a show called Target: The Corrupters, in 1961.

Internet sources give Miller’s age at the time of her death as 56. One wonders if she was possibly older, though. IMDB lists two credits prior to her ostensible arrival in Hollywood, roles in the films Colleen (1936) and All Women Have Secrets (1939). She would have been a teenager when these films were made, which is hardly unprecedented. It’s also possible her birth date was earlier than 1922. I think it more likely that IMDB is in error, though.

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.