For an explanation of the inclusion of this story, SEE BELOW ...

Marvin Miller was born Marvin Mueller on July 18, 1913, in St. Louis, Missouri. Blessed with a deep, baritone voice, he used it to forge a successful radio career in St. Louis, Missouri, before moving to Los Angeles, in hopes of becoming a Hollywood actor.
In addition to his rich, baritone voice, Miller could adapt and manipulate that voice to fit any character imaginable.

He claims to have been a performer from his days in grammar school, but had first thought to become a writer. While attending Washington University in St. Louis, he began working in local radio and the die was cast. From the very beginning, Miller used his ability to manipulate his rich baritone voice to create a wide variety of characters. He began with a weekly 15 minute, one-man show on radio station KWK where he wrote the show and then performed all of the characters. In 1939, he married Elizabeth Dawson, he left KWK St. Louis, and the new couple moved to Chicago where Marvin appeared on as many as 45 different radio shows a week. He is reported to have portrayed more than twenty different roles on the soap opera, "One Man's Family", sometimes, several in the same broadcast. In another classic radio soap, "The Romance of Helen Trent", he starred as 'Gil Whitney', the gentleman whom Helen romanced, but could never get to the alter.

His voice-over talent, combined with that deep, powerful voice, enabled him to forge a successful career in LA radio, as well as in movies, on television, on stage, and as a recording artist. If you remember the age when radio was king, his voice is a familiar one. He appeared regularly as an announcer or actor on hundreds of programs. In the early 1950s, he narrated a daily 15-minute radio show for Mutual Radio, "The Story Behind the Story," which offered historical vignettes. It has often been said to be the forerunner to Paul Harvey's radio segment, "The Rest of the Story."

Arriving in Los Angeles at the end of World War II, Marvin began to pursue an acting career in motion pictures, appearing in a variety of divergent character roles in a dozen films through 1950. His first movie role was as a Japanese officer, "Yamada" in "Blood on the Sun" in which he appeared with James Cagney. In 1947, he received industry recognition playing the role of " Krause", alongside Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott in Columbia Picture's "Dead Reckoning". Miller also starred as Dr. Yat Fu in "Mysteries of Chinatown" (1949-50), one of the first television shows broadcast live from Hollywood. He would later work in films with some of Hollywood's finest stars, including: Bob Hope, George Raft, Ronald Reagan, Joseph Cotton, Tony Curtis,  Rhonda Fleming, Susan Hayworth, and Claire Trevor.

Though Miller was beginning to gain some industry recognition by the end of the forties, his big break would come from a most unlikely film project. Stephen Bosustow, a frustrated, former animator, began producing short subject cartoons, known for their higher quality animation style. He had assembled an ensemble of talented writers, directors, and animators, and established "United Productions of America" (UPA), whose "animated shorts" were distributed by Columbia Pictures. The UPA release, "Ragtime Bear", had introduced a new cartoon character to movie fans, "the near-sighted Mr. Magoo" (voiced by uncredited, struggling actor, Jim Backus). The company was just completing "Rooty Toot Toot", a short which would be nominated for an Academy Award the following year. When producer, Bosustow, first approached Marvin for the voice-over narration of his new cartoon, Miller experienced mixed emotions. Aspiring for recognition as a true actor (he continued to do stage productions throughout his career), he nonetheless was not in a position to refuse work. The fact that the proposed "short subject" was the story of a boy who could only speak in sound effects, certainly didn't make his decision any easier. Little did he realize that his acceptance in the role of " Narrator (voice)", would alter his professional career forever.
With writing credits by Dr. Seuss, the "short subject", "Gerald McBoing-Boing" was released on January 25, 1951. Not only did it successfully introduce another popular new cartoon character, it also introduced another bold, and hugely successful, narration voice to the movie and TV public. "Gerald McBoing-Boing" won the Academy Award in 1951 for "Best Short Subject Cartoon". Even more impressive, the little film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1995. 

Miller worked for the "McBoing Boing" production team on many other animation projects. One of the more popular was in 1953's animated short feature "Christopher Crumpet". This time, the renowned production team had to settle for an Academy Award nomination for the "Best Short Subject Cartoon". Like "McBoing", "Crumpet" spawned numerous sequels for many years. Not only did Marvin Miller provide the Narration for them all, he voiced more and more character parts for each. Among the hundreds of his voices, many appeared in "Rocky and Bullwinkle", "Mr. Magoo" and Pink Panther cartoons. His talents were recognized when he won Grammy Awards in 1965 and 1966 for his recordings of Dr. Seuss stories (Dr. Seuss Presents – "If I Ran the Zoo" & "Sleep Book", and Dr. Seuss Presents "Fox in Sox" and "Green Eggs and Ham").

Marvin Miller was enjoying success in radio, films, and voice-over work, when he found himself at the creative center of a new entertainment medium, Television. When television was in its infancy, much of the new medium's programming was based on popular radio shows of the era. One of TV's earliest was "Space Patrol", a science fiction adventure, aimed at juvenile audiences of the early 1950s via television, radio, and comic books. The television show ran for 210 network episodes from September 1950 to February 1955. The series was patterned unabashedly after Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and its TV rival, Captain Video. A local weekday 15-minute version of the program also aired live in Los Angeles and was seen via kinescope in a few other cities. "Space Patrol" had been slowly gaining in popularity when producers offered Miller the role of a new series villain, "Mr. Proteus" for 13 episodes, in 1952-1954. It was his villainous portrayal in this low-budget series which led to his best known TV role.

In 1954, while staying quite busy with his narration and voice-over work, Miller was offered another television role as an actor, the role which catapulted his career forever. Celebrity came to Marvin Miller in the part of "Michael Anthony", the man who delivered the $1,000,000 cashier's checks on the hit TV series, "The Millionaire", (Jan. 19, 1955 - Sept. 28, 1960). An interesting anomaly concerns the structure and casting of this classic series. The title character of "The Millionaire", John Beresford Tipton, was never seen on camera. This unique situation would be emulated in two later hit TV series, "Charlie's Angels" (ABC - {1976-1981} Charlie - voiced by John Forsythe), and "Magnum PI" (CBS - {1980-1988} Robin Masters - voiced by Orson Welles). On "The Millionaire", it was Paul Frees voicing the always-seen-from-behind, and seemingly fixated, millionaire, John Beresford Tipton, to Miller's Michael Anthony. The storyline indicated that the well-traveled Michael Anthony was much younger than the reclusive, perhaps paralyzed, John Beresford Tipton. The irony in the casting is that Marvin Miller was achieving fame as a voice-over talent, and Paul Frees was known throughout Hollywood as the "Man of a Thousand Voices".

The legendary television drama anthology series explored the ways unexpected wealth changed life for better or for worse. The show became a five-season hit thanks in large part to a twist that also made it a bit of a cult classic in the years that followed (the so-called "Golden Era" of U.S. television). The show centered around the stories of unknown people who were given, seemingly out of nowhere, one million dollars from a benefactor who insisted they never know him. He was John Beresford Tipton, a semi-retired industrialist who was always shown obscured by one of his high-backed leather chairs, viewers seeing only his right arm as he reached for a cashier's check for one million dollars. Each week, he would hand it to his executive secretary, a mild-mannered, good-humored, but no-nonsense man, Michael Anthony. It was Anthony's job to travel and deliver the check to its intended recipient, staying only long enough to present the gift and then, customarily, leaving the recipient's life forever.

"The Millionaire" used the flashback premise as its very fulcrum, telling the story of John Beresford Tipton's beneficiaries as if from the case files of Michael Anthony. Each episode began with the camera training directly upon Miller as Anthony, behind his desk, looking directly at the viewer and speaking one or another variation on this theme:

"My name is Michael Anthony. And until his death just a few years ago, I was the executive secretary to the late John Beresford Tipton. John Beresford Tipton, a fabulously wealthy and fascinating man, whose many hobbies included his habit of giving away one million dollars, tax free, each week …to a total stranger."
 Or : "one million dollars…tax free…to a person who had never met him; indeed, had never even heard of him".

       "THE MILLIONAIRE"
Season 1, Episode 1: The Amy Moore Story
Original Air Date: January 19, 1955
Another 206 episodes...
Season 6, Episode 36: Millionaire Patricia Collins
Original Air Date: June 7, 1960

"Perry Mason" .... F. J. Weatherby
- The Case of the Lover's Leap (1963)

After the Millionaire's successful run, Miller was able to pick and choose character roles on a variety of television's biggest dramas.

While "The Millionaire" was the highlight of Marvin Miller's career in television, he was also quite famous as the voice of "Robbie the Robot", the legendary co-star of the science-fiction classics, "Forbidden Planet", and "The Invisible Boy". 
He was also known as the voice of Aquaman in "The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure" in the 1960s, which later spun off into a solo "Aquaman" series.

Miller achieved even more industry success as his deep baritone became the standard for narration. His movie credits as narrator range from  "The Agony and the Ecstasy", to "Sleeping Beauty". He also was featured as the narrator for another long running TV series  (9 seasons - 117 episodes), "The F.B.I." (1965- 74). 

Marvin Miller remained active in all genres of entertainment well into his 70's.

One of Marvin Miller's final film appearances was in 1984, playing "Rollo", a secondary role in Jonathan Demme's  popular film "Swing Shift". The  movie featured Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn heading an all-star cast, with Holly Hunter, Ed Harris, Christine Lahti, Fred Ward, Alana Stewart (ex-Rod Stewart & George Hamilton), Belinda Carlisle (Go-Go's), and even a small cameo appearance by Roger Corman, himself.

As a testament to Marvin Miller's myriad talents, he was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with the designation - "Television". The star is located at 6101 Hollywood Blvd., in the heart of the town where he found stardom.  Miller died of a heart attack on Feb. 28, 1985 in Santa Monica, CA. He was the father of two children, Anthony and Melissa. The New York Times obituary adds this final note to his multifaceted career: "Of all the work he did, his wife said he was proudest of having recorded the entire King James version of the Bible for Audio Books."

MY MARVIN MILLER LINK ...

Hollywood Center Theater   Non equity?   Hollywood's STAN'S Drive-In

Directed by Jed Duane   Starring Frank McHugh as my father, the Reverend  ---. Method Actor.

One of award-winning playwright,  Moss Hart's, lesser known works, the off beat drama, "The Climate of Eden".

Sammy Davis Jr. starring in "The Desperate Hours".

Directed by Buddy Bregman

DATES -