Photo: Ann Miller sings a showstopping "I'm Still Here" in the Paper Mill Playhouse revival of Sondheim's Follies. A few days before she passed away. The world loved her, and the world will miss her...

Miller gave birth shortly thereafter and her only child died three hours later. After the marriage to Milner, Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM and King of Hollywood, who dated Miller briefly, lent her money to buy a house on Arden Drive in Beverly Hills. Spacious, although not large, it had the Hollywood faux grandness that lent itself to the illusion of stardom, complete with a faux grand staircase for entrances (and exits). Although she built a house in Sedona, Arizona in the 1980s, the house on Arden remained her base for the rest of her life. Away from the camera and her work, she was friendly with other dancers from the chorus boys and girls to the stars like Rita Hayworth. In the Hollywood community in those days, as it still is on Broadway and the ballet, most of the dancers loved being with other dancers. “All dancers are children,” Pan used to explain. “They have to be in order to move around like that without feeling self-conscious.” Miller was, first and last, a dancer. A consummate pro her life revolved around the “job.” There was glamour in their lifestyle but a lot of that was with an eye on publicity. Late in her career, she became to her own thinking, a star, on the stage in “Sugar Babies” which she co-starred on Broadway and then all over the United States, with Mickey Rooney. She was well into her fifties and out there rap-tap-tapping on wood eight times a week. It was tough work but she loved it. She always loved it; and we loved her.
* The house was later occupied by Louis B. Mayer’s daughter Edie and her husband, producer William Goetz for the next forty years. Today it is the home of Northwest Airlines executive Gary Thornhill-Wilson and his wife, Barbera.

 

The grave of Ann Miller...Goodbye Ann...