A Few Of My Favourite Things - Ann Miller's Hair

No not raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens! This monthly random post is about some of my favourite things. Some I'm passionate about others just tickle my fancy and make me laugh.

Ann Miller was a minor MGM movie Star mostly famous for tap dancing and singing her way through the kind of musicals that the major stars turned down. Her crowning achievement was probably Kiss me Kate but whilst her mark in the annals of Hollywood history may be small her hair was huge! Lacquered within an inch of its life it practically had a career of its own and was certainly deserving of separate, if not star billing!

Like Ann herself her hair achieved its own kind of immortality, in the stage show Forbidden Broadway, one of the performers does an impression of Ann set to the music of That’s entertainment it contains the classic lines:

I guess I really showed them
When I killed L. B. Mayer
By hitting him with my hair

A Dominick Dunne’s mini series also once listed an un-named baddie in the credits as “Man with the Ann Miller hair!”

It isn’t just the size of the hair that fascinates me it’s the helmet like immobility; it has to be set with super glue, as it simply never moves.

A dear departed friend of mine once told me a story relayed to him by a TV stylist who once did Ann’s hair for a TV show. Apparently the hapless guy suggested Ann being “more mature” might want to try something a little softer. After giving him a look that could stop a Sherman tank in its tracks Miss Miller replied.

“Listen buster! I wanna be able to go out there and tap for two hours in a tornado and the hair doesn’t move! Got it? Now get the damn lacquer honey!”

Long after Ann has been forgotten her hair will live on as a true Hollywood legend.

Ann Miller’s hair we salute you!

See Ann's hair in action below in a clip from The Loveboat



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