Background
Gilbert Heron Miller was born on July 3, 1884, in New York City, and was the son of Henry Miller, an actor-manager, and Helene Stoepel, an actress whose stage name was Bijou Heron.
Gilbert Heron Miller was born on July 3, 1884, in New York City, and was the son of Henry Miller, an actor-manager, and Helene Stoepel, an actress whose stage name was Bijou Heron.
Miller attended De La Salle Institute in New York City until he was twelve when his mother took him to Europe. There he attended Catholic schools in France, Germany, and England. He became fluent in Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Hungarian.
In 1904, Miller joined the United States Marines and was stationed for two years in Haiti. In 1906, Miller began his stage career in Julie Bon-Bon in London but lacking his father's enthusiasm for acting he quickly turned his attention to theatrical managing. In 1907, he was appointed a manager of his father's touring company of The Great Divide, and between 1910 and 1915, he was the manager for all Henry Miller productions. He made his debut as a producer in London in 1916 with Daddy Long-Legs, beginning a career that included perhaps 200 productions in New York and London. In his early years, his biggest hit was his only musical, Monsieur Beaucaire, which he brought to New York in 1919 as his first Broadway show. During World War I, Miller served as a lieutenant in United States Army Intelligence. In 1922, he became producing director of the movie production company Famous Players-Lasky, which had a subsidiary that imported plays. He continued as an officer in that corporation until 1932. During the 1927-1928 theatrical season, Miller produced four Broadway hits, The Captive, The Play's the Thing, The Constant Wife, and Her Cardboard Lover. In 1929, Miller announced that he was leaving New York for London because he could no longer deal with the numerous demands placed on producers by unions representing stagehands and musicians. But he had a change of heart and soon was again busy in New York, despite financial setbacks in the stock market. He found considerable success with the antiwar play Journey's End (1929). In 1936, after a string of plays that did not fare well, he produced and directed Victoria Regina on Broadway. This portrait of Queen Victoria, with Helen Hayes in the title role, later toured forty-three cities and broke box office records. During World War II, Miller returned to military service. In 1944-1945, he served as a civilian aviation technician aboard the aircraft carrier Shangri-La. In 1950, he brought T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party to Broadway, and the next year he discovered Audrey Hepburn and starred her in Gigi. In 1951, he also arranged with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh to bring to New York their productions of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. During the latter part of the decade, he brought to the stage Witness for the Prosecution (1954), The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1956), and The Rope Dancers (1957), among other plays. His last Broadway play was Diamond Orchid in 1965, which was a failure. He died in New York City.
Physically Miller was a large man. A lover of good food, he was constantly fighting his weight. He had a famous temper, and his quick rages were widely known. In his later years, he spent a good deal of time in England, where he owned a home in London and a seventeenth-century country house in Sussex. He also owned the Henry Miller Theater (named for his father) in New York and the St. James and Lyric theaters in London.
Miller recognized the value of stars and claimed that he never haggled over the fee for an actor. As a result, his career was studded with successes featuring Broadway's leading players. He introduced Charles Laughton, Alec Guinness, Leslie Howard, and Robert Morley to New York audiences. Helen Hayes, Ruth Gordon, Katharine Cornell, Gertrude Lawrence, Ethel Barrymore, and Herbert Marshall were others representative of the quality of the actors and actresses who graced his productions. Even though he usually avoided plays with heavy social significance, his productions showed him to be a man of unusual courage. He introduced American audiences to numerous French plays noted for their elegance. Ten years after World War I, he brought Journey's End to both New York and London. Despite the grim images of war depicted and the absence of women from the cast, critics and audiences supported the play.
Miller's interests were wide-ranging. He was a linguist, a raconteur, a gourmet, an art collector, a crack shot, an estate owner, and part owner of an airline. In his younger days, he piloted his own plane and was known as an expert hunter. He was an enthusiastic art collector; his New York home had paintings by Renoir, Dufy, Rowlandson, and Goya.
Having been married to, and divorced from, Jessie Glendenning, with whom he had one child, and Margaret Allen (the dates of these marriages are missing from all published sources), on July 16, 1927, Miller married Kathryn Bache, the daughter of art collector and banker Jules S. Bache.