Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Past chats with our guests.
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ChiO
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by ChiO »

Welcome, Mr. Miller,

As one Hoosier to another, I am compelled to ask:

(1) What was it like to perform for the great Hoosier director, John Wooden?

(2) While playing for him at UCLA, did you have any inkling that you were being coached by someone who would become, arguably, the most revered figure in basketball?

(3) As a follow-up to one of JackFavell's questions, did Wooden emphasize team work, suppression of ego, playing to one's strength or other aspects of basketball practice that you found useful in acting or, generally, in your life?

(4) Did Wooden always just sit on the bench, seemingly impassive, during games? (I vaguely recall a quote attributed to him along the lines of: "If they haven't learned it in practice, there's nothing I can do about it during the game.")

Thanks for any basketball memories.
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I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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mrsl
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by mrsl »

.

Let me welcome you to SSO like everyone else.

It's terrible to not ask about you personally, but I followed you for a long while until I moved out West when I started working at nights and saw less T.V. In any case, my question is about Terry Wilson (Bill Hawks, of course). He was so steady in his part every week, I wondered if his own personality was similar. Was he the easy going Bill Hawks type who only got riled when someone went too far, or was he more stodgy, or, on the other hand, playful? I know we lost him about 10 or 11 years ago, and you are the first chance I've had to ask.

Did you ever work with Bob Horton as well as Coop? If so, which was easier to work with as far as following the scripts went? Did either of them like to ad-lib at all?

Good luck to you in anything else you try to do. I'll be watchin ya!
Anne


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* * * * * * * * What is past is prologue. * * * * * * * *

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RedRiver
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by RedRiver »

Mr. Miller,

Thanks so much for participating. When I was about ten, I created a secret agent character for storytelling. Kind of a cross between Bond and Captain America. I "cast" you in the role! Even my older brother liked it, and he said everything I did was stupid!

WAGON TRAIN was my favorite TV western, and Duke Shannon an admirable successor to Flint McCullough. It's an honor to cross paths with you.
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

Jack Favell, Glad you enjoyed '"THE PARTY" Sure was fun to make and work with the comic genius Peter Sellers. Ward Bond -He was one of my favorite actors. He had a great career. My first time working on Wagon Train I was up-tight. So much so, I heard a month later, that they were going to let me go and get another scout to replace Robert Horton. Ward ,I was told, said,"Give the kid another chance." 107 episode I was still on the Train. I have to thank Ward for that. We had just met so we weren't buddies. I've thought about it many times since. I never got to thank him because of his early passing. I think it was because he liked the fact that I had been an athlete on the collegiate level.

He and John Wayne had been athletes. Don't know for sure that was the reason he recommended that they let me hang around but for whatever reason I will alwys be grateful that he did.

Frank McGrath was one of the best stunt men ever and so was his buddy Terry Wilson. They both saved my life when they caught up with me on my horse. We were working along the Freeway where the Universal Tours are now. My horse spooked, and we were headed for a 10 foot chain-link fence. They turned my horse and saved my butt. I had stripped the skin off several fingers trying to turn my horse. From that day I usually wore gloves when riding.

Terry Wilson and I fought each other in one episode. The head of the studio said it was the best stage fight he's ever seen. Terry directed it. He was one of the John Ford players and had done lots of fights.

John McIntire was my father figure. He and his wife , Jeanette Nolan, were one of the 3 most successful married couples in film history. They had a magical home made from the used brick from the Long Beach earth quake. They wrote a Wagon Train story for the whole family-John, Janette, Tim and their daughter. In the many stunt fights I did, I only hit one person.Yep, it was Tim. right in front of his Mom and Dad. Not a good day. Jeanette was in the Orson Welles Group of actors. She could play anything from Lady MacBeth to Dirty Mary- and did. ------ I miss ALL these fine people!
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

Jack Favell - Continued--George Burns:Every Monday for 25 weeks we were to rehearse that weeks' episode and shoot it Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Instead we listened to George Burns' songs and routines and laughed. He was the producer of "Meet Mona McCluskey" and didn't seem to worry too much about anything, so we rehearsed Tuesdays. He told me once,"You've got it made when you get to be 100 because not many people die after 100." Gracie had passed by the time "Meet Mona" came about.

An English pen pal told me Gracie was the biggest recording star in England before she met George.

The guy that wrote, produced, and directed "Mona" was Don McGuire. He wrote the script for BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK and the first script for TOOTSIE. He also wrote a book titled, THE DAY TELEVISION DIED. The book is out of print but you might be able to GOOGLE it. If you like to laugh out loud - read this book!!!!!

The acting bug ? I must have caught something. I've been acting for 54 years. I think we ALL act. We ALL play many roles during our day. The role of father or mother, child, brother, sister, BOSS, teacher, student.

We ALL wear many hats during our lifetime. ONLY A FEW ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET PAID JUST FOR ACTING! To quote my favorite actress Katharine Hepburn,"Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to make a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at four."

William Bendix will be next.
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Sue Sue Applegate
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

Thanks so much for these wonderful memories you are sharing with us.

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan. It's obvious that you do miss all these fine folks because you describe them so fondly. We miss them, too! :lol:

It is so endearing that Ward Bond helped secure your Wagon Train future. And I never knew that Frank McGrath had been such a professional stunt man. I enjoyed both his and Terry Wilson's appearances every week.

I was also reminded about today being National Day of the Cowboy by our regular member, pvitari, who posted about today's significance on a thread here at the SSO devoted to Ben Johnson that was initially started by Jack Favell: http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis3/vie ... =22&t=3945

Pvitari has a blog totally devoted to Ben Johnson here: http://benjohnsonscreencaps.shutterfly.com/

Another wonderful website created by a regular member of the SSO, Miss Goddess, is solely devoted to John Ford:
http://www.directedbyjohnford.com/about.html

We are so glad you are here to help us celebrate National Day of the Cowboy! :lol:
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JackFavell
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by JackFavell »

Thanks so much for your marvelous answers! You are a great storyteller. I can't wait to hear more!

I believe I read at your website that you have a new book coming out? Or did I imagine that?
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

Jack, My first job was on the Life of Riley. The character was a football player sitting in a swing in Riley's back yard with Riley's daughter. We were having an ice cream cone. My thought was--they pay you for this?! This is much more fun than being pushed around on a basketball court. His daughter was one of the first people to have that operation to tie your stomach in half or shorten your small intestine to lose weight. She lost over 100 pounds, but sadly, it came back. Her doctor had an unbelievable name---Dr. Pain.

Bill and I became friends and played golf with a writer named Norman Jolley. Norman wrote the Wagon Train script that introduced my character on Wagon Train named "Duke Shannon." Small World!
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

Hi, again! Richard Boone--Always liked his acting. On Have Gun Will Travel, we did a big fight scene and a guy who was to hit me with a breakaway chair picked the wrong chair and knocked me out. I ended up head first out a window with my feet way back in the saloon.

Richard was a good host. The TV shows usually took on the personality of the star, and so it was with Have Gun Will Travel. Since doing that show many years ago, my wife and I have become friends with Johnny Western and his wife. He wrote the theme song for Have Gun Will Travel, and plays and sings it at all the Western Film Festivals we've attended over the years. We'll see him in September in Texas.

Being fit has made it possible to do most of the parts I've done. I have made many stars look pretty good when they have pounded me into the ground. I enjoyed doing stage fights. I learned to do them well. It's like a dance. If done right, no one gets hurt. They are rehearsed like a slow dance. The sound effects are added later. Thrown punches are thrown to miss by at least a half a foot. The actor or stunt man reacts as if he has been hit by twisting his head as the punch goes by. It looks realistic.

John Wayne and Yakima Canutt are given credit for creating the method. Up until then a fight scene was comical. Patty-cake, Patty-cake or rolling around on the ground. Not very exciting. Now the stunt people are even better at it. When bottles are broken over heads, when the players go through windows or glass doors, that is not really glass. The glass is made out of candy so as not to cut the fighters. I used to give talks about violence to school dhilcren and during the talk I would have someone break a bottle over my head. It looks and sounds so realistic that I'd usually have to go bring back someone, including a teacher that had headed for the door. As an actor playing a violent part, I could justify playing a violent party by making the violence so ugly, so frightening, so horrible, that no one watching would ever want to go near it.
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CineMaven
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by CineMaven »

Hi there Mr. Miller,

Your visit is almost over, but I'd like to extend my welcome to you as well for joining us. My "sisters ( and brothers ) under the mink" asked you some great questions. And I've enjoyed reading the recollections of your career. My question to you is this:

"What do you make of today's Hollywood and one's pursuit of Acting as a career in this day and age?

You sort of stumbled into your career at its very early stages. You worked with the creme de la creme early. Today's actors don't get a chance to become seasoned. They make one or two movies a year, whereas you worked consistently. What are your thoughts of movies and Hollywood today?

I want to send out a thank you to Christy too, for getting you as a guest here at the Oasis. Christeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
"You build my gallows high, baby."

http://www.megramsey.com
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

Animals - My horse stepped on my foot and broke my small toe. For weeks I worked with one Indian moccasin and one cowboy boot. During the Tarzan shoot, the lion cub (the size of a St.Bernard) clawed my back bad enough to send me to the hospital.

The chimp bit me on the hand. The chimp's trainer told me before we started filming,"If he bites you, hit him becasue he'll take part of you with him. I punched him on the nose, and he climbed up in the rafters. It took half an hour to get him back down. Bananas did the trick.

My friend, Mike Henry, when starring as Tarzan in Brazil, was carrying the chimp in his arms, and the chimp bit Mike's chin. 72 stitches later they replaced Mike's chin, and Mike went home. Chimps get mean when they get older.

My horse has nudged me out of my close-up on many occassions. When that happens, we just shoot the scene again. Here's a tip. When riding an elephant, always wear long pants. The hair on an elephant's back is like steel wool, or sandpaper at best. When an elephant stops walking, they keep rocking back and forth. Not good to sit on for very long.

I remember a shot we filmed with Jane, the white hunter, and me, plus the chimp. We all rode the elephant about 20 yards straight toward the camera. The elephant was so tall, we had to use a ladder to get on it's back. Me first, then the actress playing Jane(Joanna Barnes), then the actor playing the white hunter(Cesare Danova). Then they had to take the chimp around the back of the elephant and hand him to me. This elephant wasn't in favor of having a chimp on it's back! Finally, we were on and ready. Action! The elephant trainer prodded the elephant to go forward, and he got out of the shot. Off we went. Then I hear Jane curse. The chimp was in my arms, and he was reaching under my armpit and squeezing Jane's breast. There was no dialogue in the scene, so I had to keep my mouth shut, but Jane could hide from the camera behind me. And she was letting me know that she wasn't happy!

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. If I broke up, we would have to go back and start all over again. We made it in one take. Jane was a little rumpled, but we made it. We used a cement stream on the back lot of MGM that had been used years before in Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan films. All those years a mechanical alligator had been baking in the sun on the shore of that stream. The motor didn't work anymore but the alligator looked pretty healthy. So they tied a thin wire under the gator's chin and pulled it across the stream toward the cameras. It looked very realistic.
RedRiver
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by RedRiver »

Charlie Wooster a stunt man? Never would have guessed that!
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

Gator, continued - The director told me to swim fast enough to meet the gator as they dragged it through the water. We were to meet in the middle of the stream, and the stream was about chest deep. The director yells "Action!" I swam, and they pulled and just before we met, I dove to the bottom and pushed off the bottom and came streaking out of the water with the knife in my hand. I gave it my all. I stabbed and rolled, and when I was out of breath, I stood up and looked to shore. Nobody was operating the camera. The camera operator was on his hands and knees laughing. So was the director. The whole crew was laughing. I walked to the shore and asked,"What's so funny?"

Someone finally caught enough breath to tell me. When you pounced on the gator's head, it's tail came up out of the water and, it sank like a submarine. So much for the mechanical gator.

They used quite a bit of stock footage in the film. In that same stream, the day before the gator fiasco, Jane and I had a scene where we were drifting along with flowers floating by us. That's as romantic as it gets in a Tarzan film.

Jane had a long monologue, and I just had to look at her as if I understood her and smile. Tough job. They forgot to heat the stream. Half way through her speech, her teeth were chattering so loud the sound man told the director he couldn't understand a word she said. We got out of the water, and they threw blankets over both of us and sat us in the sun. Then we tried again. Same chatter.

Someone suggested Brandy. They gave some to Jane. And a little more, and a little more. Into the water we went. No chatter this time. New Problem. She couldn't remember her lines. Some cups of coffee later, it still took a long time to film that scene. I was the designated driver. I don't drink.
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

The Fugitive - The story took place mainly in and around a real carnival. The character I played was that of a man with the mind of a 7-year- old. Type Casting!

We started almost at dawn with a chilly mist on the ground. The carnival workers were just waking up. In make-up, the word was passed along that everyone should keep the noise down because Mr. Jansen had lost $70,000. the night before in Vegas and was unhappy with himself and the world. David and I, had a 9-page scene to do. Lots of dialogue. We faced each other to start rehearsal. David asksfor the script. The director told him what page the scene started on. While David thumbed through the pages, he ordered a cup of coffee, asked about the Dodgers' baseball score, said "Hi" to a friend, pointed out to himself that he would screw up at a speech he had about half way through the scene, and then nodded to me to start.

I had spent hours working on the scene at home. He had it down in the time it took him to thumb through the pages. Of the hundreds of actors I've worked with over the years, Mr. Jansen was by far the quickest study. We did the master shot in 2 takes. I've asked other actors that had worked with him if he was fooling with me or playing a joke or was he really that fast, and they all, without exception, said, " NO." That was really how fast a learner he was. He was amazing!!!!!!!!

I did a coffee commercial in Paris and London. But no Westerns. I would have jumped at the chance but never got an offer. I can't complain. I was lucky for 54 years to get a variety of roles to play. For years I would be cast as a good guy and then would have several bad guy roles. If I had had my druthers, I would have chosen comedic roles, and I did do a few like the one in THE PARTY, 2 episodes of Gilligans' Island, and the sit-com with Juliet Prowse. To help an audiance laugh is much more rewarding for me than make them sad or frightened. But I'm very thankful for the career I've had. To last 10 years in Hollywood is unusual. To work on and off for over half a century is outrageous. Luck had a great deal to do with that. Any actor who's done it and says luck wasn't involved is in denial!
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Denny Miller
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Re: Welcome to Denny Miller, Our Guest Star for July 27-29!

Post by Denny Miller »

I remember doing a comedic fight scene in HOUSE CALLS. Sorry I can't recall the name of my character. My wife and I have had to get in touch with the folks at IMDB and correct them on a few things. They've given me credit in shows I wasn't in and haven't given me credit where it was due. Take a look at my web-site, denny-miller.com. The hyphen is necessary because another Denny Miller already had taken that website. He's a lobbyist and a very successful one.


Favorite role? One on Hawaii 5-0 comes to mind. Wyoming Bill Kelso in THE PARTY . The part of LIJAH ( in an episode of Gunsmoke of the same name) worked with a child actress named Erin Moran who later was the gal on HAPPY DAYS. Lijah was a deaf mountain man that befriends Erin ( I called her Grasshopper in the story). Grasshopper falls in an abandoned well. I see her fall and go to save her. Lijah being deaf can't hear the Rattle Snakes down in the well. They've got real, live rattlesnakes. They built a chimney-like well on the sound stage. Sections of the well could be removed in which to place the camera.There were nitches built in the inside of the well walls to place live rattle snakes, and they built a staircase next the well so I could climb to the top. For the first shot they placed the camera on the floor pointing up to film me climbing down to Erin from the top of the well some 30 feet above. Erin didn't have to be in the first shot. The snake wranglers placed the snakes in the nitches in the well walls. I put my feet on the inside of the well wall with my back against the opposite wall.

The director yells "Action!" Before I had lowered myself 2 feet, I heard 2 plops and all Hell broke loose below me. The snakes had fallen out of their niches, the camera operator, director - everyone was scattering. The snakes had their mouths sutured, but you couldn't blame the guys for scattering. The snakes were too big for the nitches. So they'd get smaller rattlesnakes and shoot the scene the next day. Next day the snakes fit in the nitches. Action! I lowered myself down past the snakes reacting as if one of them strikes me on the arm. CUT! The camera operator and director whisper with each other. That means something went wrong. The director says,"Do you think you can do it again?" OK, I said. He said,"Your eyes were so bugged out no one would believe you couldn't hear the Rattle snakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
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