Marilyn Miller — Her Strange Handicap (1930) 🇺🇸

She sings — but she can't read a note. She dances — but she has never taken a dancing lesson, except from her mother when she was a little girl.

by Romney Scott

These facts about Marilyn Miller came from her own lips as this Broadway favorite, who made her film debut in Sally, talked about herself and Hollywood. She expressed pleasure over the fact that she was about to board the Century for a second trip to the film capital.

"I always loved to dance," Marilyn confided. "I began loving it almost as soon as I learned to walk. When I was five years old my mother made me a little ballet dress. I've been dancing ever since."

Then she told of her childhood days in Memphis, Tennessee, and of an old colored man who worked about the place. The old fellow's recreation was dancing a combination of the plantation shuffle and the tap dance of to-day. The little girl watched him and imitated his movements.

She learned to dance by dancing, just as she learned to sing by singing. Her parents were theatrical people, a fact which assured her an opportunity to put her best foot forward when the time came. They were father, mother, and three daughters, of whom Marilyn was the youngest. They were known on the stage as the Five Columbians, and Marilyn was billed as Miss Sugarplum.

Last summer they held a reunion in Hollywood. where Marilyn was filming Sally. And a second reunion is taking place this summer. The elder Millers have lived for several years in Hollywood. and the two sisters, who have both married and retired from the stage, went to the Coast from Chicago in order that the Five Columbians could be together once more.

Sally was the first of the musical comedies in which Marilyn was starred when she was only nineteen years old. It went on playing for two years without a break. Then came a year and a half on the road, after which Marilyn played the title role in a revival of Peter Pan. And then came Sunny for over a year, and Rosalie for another season.

"I was glad when they gave me Sally to film," she said.

"It was like old times to go over the script again and sing the half-forgotten songs.

"But my second picture, 'Sweethearts,'" she said smilingly, "looks as though my role will be something really dramatic. It's a dual role, my first on the stage or screen, and I'm — well, I'm intrigued with the idea! It's going to be an original screen play."

"How do you like Hollywood?" the interviewer asked.

Miss Miller laughed. "I love it. I'm not a stranger there at all. I was married there, you know."

Then the interviewer recalled that once upon a time, sure enough, Marilyn Miller did marry Jack Pickford in Hollywood, and that most of her wedded life was spent there. But she never would make a picture for the silent screen.

"I felt that it wasn't my line," she explained. "Now, of course, with sound it's different. Technicolor makes a big difference, too.

"I was nervous — terribly nervous sometimes — even though I enjoyed it all. I missed the audience, and at first I had an awfully hard time keeping within camera range while I was dancing. You see, I never dance twice the same on the stage; I introduce little variations as the mood strikes me. That's part of the fun of being on the stage. But making the picture was fun, too, and I'm looking forward to my second one."

Knowing both Hollywood and Broadway as she does, Marilyn found herself in a group of friends when the cast of Sally was assembled. Alexander Gray, Joe E. Brown, Pert Kelton, T. Roy Barnes, Ford Sterling — she knew them all, and more besides. "Alec" Gray was her leading man in the original Sally on the road, and Miss Kelton was with her in Sunny"

Although she was born in Evansville, Indiana, Miss Miller's people are Southerners, and she spent most of her childhood in Memphis. There isn't much Southern accent left in her speech now, but it still lingers.

"I had to say, 'Yes, sir,' when I was acting as a waitress in the restaurant scene, and I said 'Yes, suh.' Mr. Dillon, the director, made me do it over three times, before I stopped saying it like a Tennessean. He nearly had hysterics over that 'suh.'"

When Marilyn Miller is learning a song she has it played over and over to her, until she has memorized the tune, because notes and scales mean absolutely nothing to her. It's all a matter of sound.

And so, strangely enough, is her dancing. In Rosalie, when she and Jack Donahue did an elaborate tap dance together, she learned the steps by shutting her eyes and listening to Mr. Donahue as he danced them. And in Rosalie she learned in two days to beat a snare drum — just by listening to two expert drummers with whom she appeared in the West Point scene. The scene was added to the show at the last moment before the premiere in New York. She simply had to become a drummer in short order — and she did!

She declined to express a preference between stage and screen, but admitted that she was looking forward to her second engagement in Hollywood.

"You must have a great time out there," said the interviewer, preparing to depart.

"Yes, suh!"

And the laughter of Sally followed the departing interviewer down the hallway.

Miss Miller used to be billed as Miss Sugarplum when her parents were vaudevillians.

Marilyn Miller was recalled to Hollywood for a second picture.

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1930