Eyewitness To A Premiere

A Future Historian Who Was There

What film historian names would we place in a 60/70’s honor roll? I mean those who pioneered writing and research for a digital generation that would have it far easier thanks to quick-reference sites like LANTERN and newspaper archives that proliferate. One that contributed much was Don Miller, whose two books, B Movies and Hollywood Corral, are still all you need to fully grasp those topics. Little is known of Miller outside the work, but he'd be prolific also for Focus On Film, the UK based journal that remains a best in its class (back issues, 37 total, turn up on E-Bay, all worth a buy if gotten for right enough price). I’ve wondered --- what was average circulation for serious film journals between the 60’s and 80’s? That seems to have been their peak period, but how many of each issue sold, to subscribers if not stores? Someone told me around 400. That seems small, so maybe I’m misinformed. There were scholars who simply quit and did something else (Kalton Lahue comes to mind). It isn’t as though film research bought groceries. Name one student of old movies who traded his/her knowledge for a Jaguar or swimming pool. Pause … yes, I thought not.

I Googled to learn more of Don Miller. Crickets … except for another Donald Miller, a “Christian iconoclast” whose book is titled Blue Like Jazz. I don’t know for sure when our Don Miller died, but it was at least thirty years ago. How many pats on the head did film journal articles yield? They’d come, if at all, from letters to the editor, most with stingers in their tail (“Stranger On The Third Floor came out in April of 1940, not June,” or my favorite, “The author neglected to mention …”). You’d not persuade a best friend to read handiwork, unless they were movie nuts, and then they’d point up errors. Laboring for love. I’d like knowing what Focus On Film paid Don Miller for his articles, being assured it wasn’t a fraction of enough. His B Movies book grew out of a FoF piece. Leonard Maltin enabled publication, also of Hollwood Corral, a real service to film history. Maltin would reprint B Movies several times afterward. It remains in print today. Miller did his research the hardest way, leafing through Film Daily Yearbooks, dogged peer at trades, most of resource a number of subways from home. Such was determined route of ones who broke trail for later inquiries. We have it so good today. No, make that, we are spoiled rotten.

I lately re-read Don Miller’s coverage on “Private Eyes: From Sam Spade to J.J. Gittes” for Focus On Film #22 (over twenty pages, so much detail). It is a splendid job, but here’s what grabbed me: Don Miller was at New York’s RKO Palace “first-day, first performance” for Murder, My Sweet in February 1945, and shared his impressions from thirty-year-ago memory. Who of us can go back that far, let alone tell it so eloquent? “A wintry day,” said Miller, on which Dick Powell made a personal appearance with Murder, My Sweet, “his old, smiling, emcee self, all charm and teeth and wavy hair, wowing the ladies in the audience and joining in repartee with co-player Mike Mazurki for easy laughs.” I wish I could tell anecdotes so riveting as this, let alone write as nimbly. “He (Powell) topped it off with a rendition of “Don’t Fence Me In.” Miller captures too the surprise of “all charm and teeth” Powell’s segue to hard-bitten alter ego that was Murder, My Sweet. “On the screen, it wasn’t Powell, but a new actor, playing the Marlowe part perhaps a shade too emphatically in trying to prove to the boys he could hack it, but at times really digging deep, and in a few moments doing it better than anyone had a right to expect …”

As was customary, Miller had insights that would not have occurred to me. “He (Powell) knew how to use that trained voice too. Chandler had Marlowe fairly well educated, and Powell let it seep through the beefsteak. When Bogart played Marlowe, he had to tell the audience he went to college, and there’s a big difference. Maybe that’s why Chandler stamped his approval on the film.” I checked Variety to see if any of their reviewers were at the Murder, My Sweet opening. The trade would often cover presentation houses and evaluate stage and screen fare, but not this time, making Don Miller’s the only eyeball account of what came off on that historic night. Imagine Dick Powell doing live-act gags with Mike Mazurki, then yanked around by him minutes later in played-straight Murder, My Sweet. The mind reels. I wish Miller had left a diary account of all his moviegoing. He applies much personal touch to B Movies and Hollywood Corral. As mentioned, the first remains in print, the second, updated and expanded by Packy Smith’s Riverwood Press in 1993. Corral can be had used from Amazon for, at the moment, $19.95 and up. It is one of the crowning film books, not only for Don Miller’s original text, but essays done by latter-day experts Richard Bann, Karl Thiede, Sam Sherman, many others. Like all of Don Miller’s writing, it is well worth seeking out.