Ann Miller: Man Is A Brother To a Mule

[@maya8443]

Lady Miller was the best!

[@iraqilemonade]

legendary

[@xavierbu]

That was easter parade. They filmed all the non dance sequences first, and then her dance sequences after the accident. She had to dance all her dance sequences in a back brace.

[@larsbonner]

Yep - Jack Cole makes her sizzle in another B movie at Columbia. Being restrained by Cole she is much more seductive than in her usual high energy mile-a-minute-tap pieces. Of course, she had to do some of that or movie audiences of the day would want their money back! The entire 25 cents.

[@mitchellivers]

Is she wearing that "Little Egyptian" makeup Max Factor invented for Lena Horne?

[@esmeephillips5888]

She is certainly channeling Lena's 'sultry' singing style. Ann's dark looks often put her into 'exotic' impersonations. She had some Cherokee ancestry IIRC.

[@Stevo-t8c]

Interesting lyrics … 🤔

[@esmeephillips5888]

Why were the studios so slow to 'get' Ann Miller? By the mid-Forties two-fifths of their output was musicals and they were crying out for star dancers. Ginger and Rita wanted to be Actresses-capital-A, Betty Grable was lazy, Lana, Judy was limited on her feet. Veronica and Hedy could not dance a step, Betty Hutton was too monotonously ebullient, Vera-Ellen and Cyd were not yet really around. There was a shortage of terp talent. Ann had been turning in splendid performances for nearly a decade, but only now (1946) did she stop being shuttled around lesser studios: This sequence is from one of her last for Columbia before finally bagging an MGM deal; and they kept limiting her to below-title parts as a bonus attraction, even though the posters often featured her. She could sing and act, yet often had to defer to ladies who were not much good at either... and whose professionalism was inferior. I cannot believe spurning Mayer was the only reason why she remained, as she put it, the near-click of show business. It was a scandalous waste So glad she had some kind of revenge later when she became the living link with the Golden Age on TV.