ANN MILLER
Ann
Miller made her first credited film dance
debut at 13 in RKO's "New Faces of
1937."
She
claimed to be 18.
For
years, the only person on the RKO lot who
knew (and kept) that secret was Ginger
Rogers.
To
see Ann's dance debut -- as well as another
four numbers from a career that spanned the
next 60 years -- cool your heels for a
moment and take a gander at what we're
spotlighting from our website today:
So here she is -- that "Tops in Taps" dancer
Ann Miller in "New Faces of 1937" -- at the
ripe old age of 13!!!!
11
years later, now under contract at M-G-M,
Ann -- along with Cyd Charisse and an
impossibly-sexy Ricardo Montalban -- does
the "Dance of Fury" in an impossibly-bad
movie, "The Kissing Bandit."
One
of the most dazzling of Ann's solos in the
movies is her exhilarating Charleston from
1954's "Deep in My Heart."
If
the costumes on the chorines look familiar,
that's because you've seen them before -- in
the "Beautiful Girls" fashion show number in
the movie "Singin' in the Rain."
By 1970, Ann's brand of movie musicals were
way in the past, but she made a
widely-publicized splash in this Great
American Soups TV commercial for Heinz:
Ann
spent the 1980's doing the stage hit "Sugar
Barbies" with Mickey Rooney on Broadway and
on tour.
Eventually,
as with almost all dancers, the "pins"
couldn't do what they used to do, but she
could still stand center stage and belt out
the anthem of all the aging actresses who
have endured. Here she is in the
musical "Follies" in 1998, singing "I'm
Still Here."
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