JP Miller
Encyclopedia
James Pinckney Miller known to friends and associates by the nickname Pappy, wrote under the name JP Miller. He was a leading playwright during the Golden Age of Television, receiving three Emmy nominations. A novelist and screenwriter, he was best known for Days of Wine and Roses
, directed by John Frankenheimer
for Playhouse 90
(1958) and later a motion picture (1962) directed by Blake Edwards
.
Miller was the son of construction engineer Rolland James Miller and touring actress Rose Jetta Smith Miller. At the age of 17, living in Palacios, Texas
, he sold his first story to Wild West Weekly. That same year, he boxed professionally in Beaumont, Texas
and other Texas rings under the name Tex Frontier, usually earning $10 a fight.
While attending Rice University in the late 1930s, he became a part-time reporter for the Houston Post
. After graduating from Rice in 1941, he traveled to Mexico as a special feature writer but failed to send back any copy because he became interested in art and was studying sculpture at La Escuela de Artes Plasticas in Mexico City
. Sick with jaundice, he returned to Texas, where he received a draft notice. He served in the Navy in the South Pacific, primarily as a gunnery officer, seeing combat first aboard the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Chester—torpedoed early in the war by a Japanese submarine. Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Cabot
, he learned deep sea diving and adopted the name JP Miller (minus periods after the initials) after receiving orders in that format by U.S. Navy addressing machines. The Cabot returned to the United States with 13 battle stars, and a Presidential Unit Citation. Miller came back with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After WWII, he studied writing and acting at the Yale Drama School and then went to Houston where he sold real estate and Coleman Furnaces. Moving to New York, he sold York refrigerators and air conditioners while spending off hours at theaters, television studios and American Theater Wing classes.
Miller's first script for television was The Polecat Shakedown, a 30-minute drama for Man Against Crime about a man who blackmailed restaurants by injecting a foul-smelling substance into eggs. When an egg was cracked, customers fled, and the villain demanded cash to prevent future incidents. When this drama was televised, Miller immediately quit his job as a salesman to write full time. In 1954 he had five plays produced on live television.
Scripting during the early years of live television, his first notable success came February 13, 1955 with The Rabbit Trap on Goodyear Television Playhouse
about a man who works in Long Island City at a construction firm where he is bullied by his boss. He takes his family to Vermont for a two-week vacation. TV Guide synopsized the drama: "While on vacation, a father and son set a rabbit trap. They are to return the next day to free the rabbit, a prospective pet for the boy. But the family is forced to return to the city after a rush call from the father's demanding boss." Back home, the boy points out that the rabbit will die in the trap. As Miller put it, "The guy finally realizes that the rabbit in the trap is him, and he takes his family and goes back to Vermont."
Miller's teleplays were staged on Kraft Television Theatre
and The Philco Television Playhouse
, followed by Producers' Showcase (1955), Playwrights '56 (1956) and Playhouse 90
(1958-59). He did his LSD drama, The People Next Door, for CBS Television Playhouse (1968).
However, Miller received the most acclaim for Days of Wine and Roses, which was prompted by his notion to dramatize Alcoholics Anonymous meetings (which were something of a mystery in the early 1950s). The drama was telecast October 2, 1958 on Playhouse 90. It became a movie four years later, but Miller preferred the earlier teleplay, commenting, "Of course, the television version was closer to my heart, because it was closer to my original image."
Presented live with tape inserts on CBS
, the television production, starring Cliff Robertson
, Piper Laurie
, Charles Bickford
and Malcolm Atterbury, was a powerful slice of life
probe into the nature of alcoholism. In The New York Times
, the day after Days of Wine and Roses was telecast, Jack Gould wrote a rave review with much praise for the writer, director and cast:
Miller's Days of Wine and Roses received favorable critical attention and was nominated for an Emmy in the category "Best Writing of a Single Dramatic Program - One Hour or Longer." Playhouse 90 producer Martin Manulis decided the material would be ideal as a motion picture, but some critics observed that the film, directed by Blake Edwards
, lacked the impact of the original television production. In an article written for DVD Journal, critic D.K. Holm noted alterations from the original:
(1961, with Edward Anhalt
), Days of Wine and Roses
(1962) and Behold a Pale Horse (1964). In 1970, Dell published The People Next Door when the movie adaptation was released that year. His TV movies include Helter Skelter (CBS, 1976), for which he won an Edgar Award
. He was a member of the Writers Guild of America, West.
on a book cover, the Skook was sketched by Miller and then sculpted by Eidetic Images, Inc., an American Bank Note subsidiary. Warner Books paid $6000 for the hologram elements, part of a $50,000 publicity campaign.
In 1965, Miller moved to Stockton, New Jersey
where he lived for the next 36 years. He developed a routine of writing seven days a week for four hours in the morning, playing tennis in the afternoons, relaxing with his tennis pals at the Swan Hotel in Lambertville, New Jersey
, and doing research in the evenings. "One thing that characterized him was that he never stopped working," said film producer Ingo Preminger
, who was one of Miller's agents.
After his first marriage to Ayers Elizabeth Fite, Miller married Juanita Marie Currie. On November 24, 1965, he married Liane Nicolaus. His children are poet Jace Miller
(from his first marriage); John R. and Montgomery A. (second marriage); and journalist Lia Marie, Anthony Milo and Sophie Jetta (third marriage). At the age of 81, Miller died of pneumonia at the Hunterdon Medical Center
in Flemington, New Jersey, having completed a first draft of his WWII memoirs, A Ship Without a Shore.
In 2003, Rachel Wood directed the New York stage premiere of Days of Wine and Roses, an off-Broadway production by the Boomerang Theatre Company. In 2005, the Northern Irish writer Owen McCafferty
relocated Days of Wine and Roses to London in the 1960s, reworking it to focus on a young couple just arrived from Belfast. That stage version had a West End premiere at the Donmar Warehouse in a Sam Mendes
production directed by Peter Gill
, who had previously staged McCafferty's National Theatre hit, Scenes from the Big Picture.
Days of Wine and Roses (1958 TV drama)
Days of Wine and Roses was an acclaimed 1958 teleplay by JP Miller which dramatized the problems of alcoholism. John Frankenheimer directed the cast headed by Cliff Robertson, Piper Laurie and Charles Bickford....
, directed by John Frankenheimer
John Frankenheimer
John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films...
for Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...
(1958) and later a motion picture (1962) directed by Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...
.
Miller was the son of construction engineer Rolland James Miller and touring actress Rose Jetta Smith Miller. At the age of 17, living in Palacios, Texas
Palacios, Texas
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 5,153 people, 1,661 households, and 1,244 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,021.4 people per square mile . There were 1,976 housing units at an average density of 391.7 per square mile...
, he sold his first story to Wild West Weekly. That same year, he boxed professionally in Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont is a city in and county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 118,296 at the 2010 census. With Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the...
and other Texas rings under the name Tex Frontier, usually earning $10 a fight.
While attending Rice University in the late 1930s, he became a part-time reporter for the Houston Post
Houston Post
The Houston Post was a newspaper that had its headquarters in Houston, Texas, United States. In 1995, the newspaper was absorbed into the Houston Chronicle.-History:The newspaper was established on February 19, 1880, by Gail Borden Johnson...
. After graduating from Rice in 1941, he traveled to Mexico as a special feature writer but failed to send back any copy because he became interested in art and was studying sculpture at La Escuela de Artes Plasticas in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
. Sick with jaundice, he returned to Texas, where he received a draft notice. He served in the Navy in the South Pacific, primarily as a gunnery officer, seeing combat first aboard the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Chester—torpedoed early in the war by a Japanese submarine. Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Cabot
USS Cabot (CVL-28)
USS Cabot was an in the United States Navy, the second ship to carry the name. Cabot was commissioned in 1943 and served until 1947. She was recommissioned as a training carrier from 1948 to 1955. From 1967 to 1989, she served in Spain as '...
, he learned deep sea diving and adopted the name JP Miller (minus periods after the initials) after receiving orders in that format by U.S. Navy addressing machines. The Cabot returned to the United States with 13 battle stars, and a Presidential Unit Citation. Miller came back with a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After WWII, he studied writing and acting at the Yale Drama School and then went to Houston where he sold real estate and Coleman Furnaces. Moving to New York, he sold York refrigerators and air conditioners while spending off hours at theaters, television studios and American Theater Wing classes.
Television
Scripting during the early years of live television, his first notable success came February 13, 1955 with The Rabbit Trap on Goodyear Television Playhouse
Goodyear Television Playhouse
The Goodyear Television Playhouse produced live television dramas from 1951 to 1957 during the "Golden Age of Television".Sponsored by Goodyear, the hour-long anthology series was telecast Sundays at 9pm on NBC...
about a man who works in Long Island City at a construction firm where he is bullied by his boss. He takes his family to Vermont for a two-week vacation. TV Guide synopsized the drama: "While on vacation, a father and son set a rabbit trap. They are to return the next day to free the rabbit, a prospective pet for the boy. But the family is forced to return to the city after a rush call from the father's demanding boss." Back home, the boy points out that the rabbit will die in the trap. As Miller put it, "The guy finally realizes that the rabbit in the trap is him, and he takes his family and goes back to Vermont."
Miller's teleplays were staged on Kraft Television Theatre
Kraft Television Theatre
Kraft Television Theatre is an American drama/anthology television series that began May 7, 1947 on NBC, airing at 7:30pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. In January 1948, it moved to 9pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that timeslot until 1958. Initially produced by the J...
and The Philco Television Playhouse
The Philco Television Playhouse
The Philco Television Playhouse, a live television anthology series sponsored by Philco, was telecast from 1948 to 1955. Produced by Fred Coe, the NBC series was seen on Sundays from 9:00pm to 10:00pm...
, followed by Producers' Showcase (1955), Playwrights '56 (1956) and Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...
(1958-59). He did his LSD drama, The People Next Door, for CBS Television Playhouse (1968).
However, Miller received the most acclaim for Days of Wine and Roses, which was prompted by his notion to dramatize Alcoholics Anonymous meetings (which were something of a mystery in the early 1950s). The drama was telecast October 2, 1958 on Playhouse 90. It became a movie four years later, but Miller preferred the earlier teleplay, commenting, "Of course, the television version was closer to my heart, because it was closer to my original image."
Presented live with tape inserts on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, the television production, starring Cliff Robertson
Cliff Robertson
Clifford Parker "Cliff" Robertson III was an American actor with a film and television career that spanned half of a century. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the movie Charly...
, Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie is an American actress of stage and screen known for her roles in the television series Twin Peaks and the films The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God, all of which brought her Academy Award nominations...
, Charles Bickford
Charles Bickford
Charles Bickford was an American actor best known for his supporting roles. He was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for The Song of Bernadette , The Farmer's Daughter , and Johnny Belinda...
and Malcolm Atterbury, was a powerful slice of life
Slice of life
Slice of life is a phrase describing the use of mundane realism depicting everyday experiences in art and entertainment.-Theater:The theatrical term refers to a naturalistic representation of real life, sometimes used as an adjective, as in "a play with 'slice of life' dialogue." The term...
probe into the nature of alcoholism. In The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, the day after Days of Wine and Roses was telecast, Jack Gould wrote a rave review with much praise for the writer, director and cast:
- It was a brilliant and compelling work... Mr. Miller's dialogue was especially fine, natural, vivid and understated. Miss Laurie's performance was enough to make the flesh crawl, yet it also always elicited deep sympathy. Her interpretation of the young wife just a shade this side of delirium tremens—the flighty dancing around the room, her weakness of character and moments of anxiety and her charm when she was sober—was a superlative accomplishment. Miss Laurie is moving into the forefront of our most gifted young actresses. Mr. Robertson achieved first-rate contrast between the sober man fighting to hold on and the hopeless drunk whose only courage came from the bottle. His scene in the greenhouse, where he tried to find the bottle that he had hidden in the flower pot, was particularly good... John Frankenheimer's direction was magnificent. His every touch implemented the emotional suspense but he never let the proceedings get out of hand or merely become sensational.
Miller's Days of Wine and Roses received favorable critical attention and was nominated for an Emmy in the category "Best Writing of a Single Dramatic Program - One Hour or Longer." Playhouse 90 producer Martin Manulis decided the material would be ideal as a motion picture, but some critics observed that the film, directed by Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...
, lacked the impact of the original television production. In an article written for DVD Journal, critic D.K. Holm noted alterations from the original:
- When the opportunity arose to make a film version of J. P. Miller's powerful TV drama Days of Wine and Roses, actor Jack LemmonJack LemmonJohn Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...
suggested that the studio hire Blake Edwards (according to Edwards, that is) rather than the Playhouse 90 production's original director, John Frankenheimer. On the big screen, Roses began as a Fox project, but ended up at Warner Bros. when the Fox studio started going down the Nile with Cleopatra. With the advent of Lemmon's participation, little remained of the founding teleplay, except for actor Charles Bickford reprising his role. Edwards had started out in television, too, first as a writer then after that mostly noted for the series Peter Gunn, and when he moved into features he was associated with comedies. Lemmon, too, had been in a long string of comedies, and it's easy to assume that both filmmakers were using the opportunity to "stretch". Unfortunately, Edwards, who is kind of a combination of George Stevens (comedy director turned prestige filmmaker) and Vincente Minnelli (excitable content with no distinctive visual style), tilted the original material towards schmaltz, from the comically lush theme-song by Henry Mancini to the exaggerated binge scenes. According to one Lemmon biography, the actor felt a little bad about the fact that his friend Cliff Robertson, who had appeared in the TV production, wasn't invited to be in the movie, but the studio insisted on a certified star for the film... What's missing is the calm plausibility of the original TV broadcast, revived briefly on cable TV in the 1990s.
Films
Miller's theatrical films include The Rabbit Trap (1959), The Young SavagesThe Young Savages
The Young Savages is a 1961 crime drama film directed by John Frankenheimer, starring Burt Lancaster, and written by Edward Anhalt from a novel by Evan Hunter....
(1961, with Edward Anhalt
Edward Anhalt
Edward Anhalt was a noted screenwriter, producer, and documentary film-maker. After working as a journalist and documentary filmmaker for Pathé and CBS-TV he teamed with his wife Edna Anhalt, née Richards, during World War II to write pulp fiction...
), Days of Wine and Roses
Days of Wine and Roses (film)
Days of Wine and Roses is a film directed by Blake Edwards with a screenplay by JP Miller adapted from his own 1958 Playhouse 90 teleplay of the same name....
(1962) and Behold a Pale Horse (1964). In 1970, Dell published The People Next Door when the movie adaptation was released that year. His TV movies include Helter Skelter (CBS, 1976), for which he won an Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
. He was a member of the Writers Guild of America, West.
Novels
In addition to poetry and short stories, Miller wrote four novels. The Race for Home (Dial, 1968) has a South Texas setting. Surviving Joy (Donald I. Fine, 1995) concerns a young boy named Dub Johnson in Depression-era Houston. His other novels are Liv (Dial,1973) and The Skook (Warner Books, 1984), about a spelunker confronting a cave creature who may or may not be from his own imagination. In what was the first use of a hologramHolography
Holography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that when an imaging system is placed in the reconstructed beam, an image of the object will be seen even when the object is no longer present...
on a book cover, the Skook was sketched by Miller and then sculpted by Eidetic Images, Inc., an American Bank Note subsidiary. Warner Books paid $6000 for the hologram elements, part of a $50,000 publicity campaign.
In 1965, Miller moved to Stockton, New Jersey
Stockton, New Jersey
Stockton is a Borough in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, United States. The borough sits on the Delaware River at the western end of Amwell Valley...
where he lived for the next 36 years. He developed a routine of writing seven days a week for four hours in the morning, playing tennis in the afternoons, relaxing with his tennis pals at the Swan Hotel in Lambertville, New Jersey
Lambertville, New Jersey
Lambertville is a city in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 3,906.Lambertville was originally incorporated as a town by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 1, 1849, from portions of West Amwell Township...
, and doing research in the evenings. "One thing that characterized him was that he never stopped working," said film producer Ingo Preminger
Ingo Preminger
Ingwald "Ingo" Preminger was a film producer. He was also the literary agent for several writers, including Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner Jr., both of whom were blacklisted in the McCarthy era...
, who was one of Miller's agents.
After his first marriage to Ayers Elizabeth Fite, Miller married Juanita Marie Currie. On November 24, 1965, he married Liane Nicolaus. His children are poet Jace Miller
Jace Miller
Jace Miller is a poet based in San Diego, California. The son of acclaimed television writer JP Miller , he was born James Pinckney Miller, Jr. in Houston, Texas but grew up in and around New York City...
(from his first marriage); John R. and Montgomery A. (second marriage); and journalist Lia Marie, Anthony Milo and Sophie Jetta (third marriage). At the age of 81, Miller died of pneumonia at the Hunterdon Medical Center
Hunterdon Medical Center
Hunterdon Medical Center is a 176-bed non-profit community hospital located in Raritan Township, New Jersey near Flemington.Hunterdon Medical Center was founded in 1946 and opened in 1953, a culmination of efforts by the Hunterdon County Board of Agriculture to provide rural medical care to the...
in Flemington, New Jersey, having completed a first draft of his WWII memoirs, A Ship Without a Shore.
Revivals
Owen McCafferty
Owen McCafferty is a playwright from Northern Ireland.Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, McCafferty held several jobs, including tiling and working in an abattoir, before becoming a full-time writer...
relocated Days of Wine and Roses to London in the 1960s, reworking it to focus on a young couple just arrived from Belfast. That stage version had a West End premiere at the Donmar Warehouse in a Sam Mendes
Sam Mendes
Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret , Oliver! , Company and Gypsy . He's currently working on the 23rd James Bond...
production directed by Peter Gill
Peter Gill (playwright)
Peter Gill, theatre director, playwright and former actor, was born in Cardiff, Wales, on 7 September 1939, son of George John Gill and his wife Margaret Mary .He was educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff.-Career:...
, who had previously staged McCafferty's National Theatre hit, Scenes from the Big Picture.