Marilyn Miller (September 1, 1898 – April 7, 1936) was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, but it was the combination of these talents that endeared her to audiences. On stage she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. Miller's enormous popularity and famed image were in distinct contrast to her personal life, which was marred by disappointment, tragedy, frequent illness, and ultimately her sudden death due to complications of nasal surgery at age 37.

Biography

Engagements and marriages

Miller was married to:


Frank Carter, an actor and acrobatic dancer, whom she married on 24 May 1919 at the Church of the Ascension in New York City. He was killed in a car accident in Cumberland, Maryland, on 9 May 1920. Carter was portrayed by Gordon MacRae in the Marilyn Miller biopic Look for the Silver Lining.
Jack Pickford, an actor and the brother of film star Mary Pickford; previously married to the popular movie actress Olive Thomas, he was a drug and alcohol abuser. They were married in 1922, separated in 1926, and divorced in Versailles, France, in November 1927. Miller had attempted to secure a divorce in the Paris courts in the spring of 1927, but her published comments about how easy it would be to end her marriage in France "stirred the ire of the Paris Tribunal with the result that the court would take no action on Miss Miller's petition". The actress filed for divorce the following July in the nearby city of Versailles, whose tribunal eventually ended the marriage.
Chester Lee O'Brien, a chorus dancer, whom she married on 4 October 1934, in Harrison, New York. Several years older than her groom, Miller reportedly spent more than $56,000 on O'Brien during their brief time together. O'Brien, who later was known professionally as Chet O'Brien, went on to become a stage manager for such Broadway productions as Brigadoon and Finian's Rainbow. He also was the stage manager and an actor on Sesame Street from the premier of the show in 1969 until 1992.
In 1930, Miller was briefly engaged to the actor Michael Farmer, who later became a husband of Gloria Swanson. In 1932, she announced her intention to marry the movie actor Don Alvarado, but the wedding did not take place.


Illnesses, alcoholism, and death

Miller had a long history of sinus infections, and her health was compromised by an increasing dependency on alcohol. According to reports shortly before her death, she entered a New York hospital in early March 1936 in order to recover from a nervous breakdown. Three weeks after she entered the hospital, however, she developed a toxic condition and died from complications following surgery on her nasal passages. She was 37. She died in New York City on the morning of April 7, 1936 and was given a funeral at Saint Bartholomew Church on Park Avenue which drew 2,500 people, including former mayor Jimmy Walker, Beatrice Lillie, and Billie Burke.

The procession led to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where Miller was buried alongside her first husband, Frank Carter, in a mausoleum she had constructed to house his remains.


Name
Miller's last name was taken from her step-father, Oscar Caro Miller, while her first name was a combination/adaptation of her birth name, Mary, and her mother's middle name, Lynn. Initially calling herself Marilynn, she would drop one of the n's, at the urging of Florenz Ziegfeld.

Census records reveal perhaps a half a dozen "Marilyns" in the United States in 1900; by the 1930s, following Miller's stardom, it was the 16th most common first name among American females.

In the late 1940s, Norma Jeane Baker (née Mortenson) changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, at the urging of Ben Lyon, a one-time actor turned casting director at 20th Century Fox, who said she reminded him of Marilyn Miller. (Lyon had played Miller's love interest in "Her Majesty Love.")

Marilyn Monroe would 'become' Marilyn Miller herself when she married the playwright Arthur Miller in 1956.

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