Obituary: Ann Miller

Ann Miller's real name was Johnnie Lucille Collier

Ann Miller, the long-legged, raven-haired actress and dancer, whose 500 taps per minute routines brought her stardom during the golden age of Hollywood musicals, has died at the age of 81.

According to her friend and former publicist, Esme Chandlee, she died from lung cancer at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Ann Miller appeared in some of the great Hollywood musicals of the post- war years - Easter Parade, On the Town and Kiss Me, Kate among them.

She was born Johnnie Lucille Collier in Texas, her first name dictated by her father who had wanted a boy.

After her parents divorced, she became known as Annie. She suffered from rickets, and took dancing lessons to straighten her legs. Her mother, who was deaf, took her to Hollywood, and her vivacity and dancing talent earned her jobs in vaudeville and night clubs.

She starred with Mickey Rooney in Sugar Babies in 1979

She was spotted by Lucille Ball, and, after a performance at the popular Bal Tabarin in San Francisco, won a contract with RKO, where her adopted name Anne was shortened to Ann.

At 17, she made her first major film - New Faces of 1937. In Stage Door, she appeared with Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball.

Most of her RKO movies were low-budget musicals and comedies. A contract with Columbia Pictures, a year later, started impressively with the role of the would-be ballerina in Frank Capra's Oscar-winning You Can't Take It With You.

But Ann Miller's greatest successes came when she joined MGM in the late 1940s. It was a fortuitous start.

Cyd Charisse broke a leg before starting Easter Parade, with Fred Astaire. Miller replaced her, and was subsequently offered a contract.

Renaissance

She was dating Louis B Mayer, the all-powerful head of MGM. Miller's success continued, and she was teamed with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in On the Town, Red Skelton in Watch the Birdie and Bob Fosse in Kiss Me Kate.

The star was part of the golden age of Hollywood musicals

Other MGM films included Texas Carnival, Lovely To Look At, Small Town Girl, Deep in My Heart, Hit the Deck, and The Opposite Sex.

After the popularity of musical films declined in the 1950s, Ann Miller turned to television and theatre. She returned to Broadway triumphantly in 1969 in the title role in Mame.

Ten years later, she starred with Mickey Rooney in Sugar Babies, a razzmatazz tribute to the era of burlesque. It enjoyed a long run in New York and other cities and came to London in 1989.

"At MGM, I always played the second feminine lead, I was never the star in films", she once recalled. "Sugar Babies gave me the stardom that my soul kind of yearned for."

It also made her financially independent.

In the 1970s, she was also in Hello Dolly and Anything Goes.

Ann Miller was married and divorced three times.