A Thrilling Vera Miles Sighting! And a Link to One of Her (Too-Rare) Comedies
I’ve never been so excited to see someone taking out the garbage in my life. (At least I think what she’s doing here.)
This is Vera Miles, 95, absolutely killing it in Palm Springs in a lovely cotton ensemble and kicky hat to protect her from the sun, probably one reason she still looks great.
She’s always seemed like a private person, one who performed her scenes brilliantly on set and didn’t generate scenes elsewhere. And while she seems completely unruffled, I’m guessing whoever snapped this photo wasn’t invited to pop by and watch her perform mundane chores. So I feel guilty even reprinting it and loving it so much. But I have to admit I cried happy tears when I saw it. (Maybe you did too?)
Being a classic movie lover is the ultimate in unrequited love. Many of the stars we cherish were gone before we even saw their work and fell in love with them. And over the decades, watching them slip away has been one knife in the heart after another. I can honestly say I’ve cried longer and harder over many of them than I have over some <cough> family members.
And when I see a movie where someone is still with us, it’s such a warm, happy thrill, and an ever-rarer one. I wonder if they’re at home watching a movie too, or maybe just sunning (with a hat please!) in the garden or relaxing in the kitchen with a cuppa.
Or looking fabulous taking out the garbage.
I’ve always loved Vera Miles, and feel she never got her due as an actress. Being so absolutely natural was probably her biggest “flaw” as far as those dishing out the plaudits were concerned. As the saying goes, you get an Oscar not for the best acting but for the most acting.
She was the beating heart of The Searchers, and the quiet soul of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
She was absolutely devastating in The Wrong Man, especially wrenching because it was based on a true story. (Hitchcock also cast her in Vertigo, but she had to drop out when she became pregnant. I’ve often wondered how she would have approached that dual role.) And she was riveting as the desperately searching sister in Psycho, whose scream upon discovering the rocking chair in the fruit cellar will live through the ages. (I loved her cheeky nod to the film in her Columbo episode, when, wide-eyed, she coos to the detective, “I wouldn’t hurt a fly!”)
I could go on and on. (Have we met? Then you already know that.) But I’d like to share this little gem with you, one of her too-few opportunities at light comedy, A Touch of Larceny.
Directed by Guy Hamilton of James Bond fame (though he learned his craft at the elbow of Carol Reed, and even doubled for Orson Welles in several shots of The Third Man), it’s a deft, delightful little lark where our Miss Miles, in a series of Edith Head gowns, waltzes between two ardent and adorable suitors, George Sanders and James Mason. Oh my God if I were in her place, I would have kept flubbing my lines so the shoot would go on forever.
The whole movie is below; I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. And Brava, Vera Miles!
I
Sister Celluloid 
Recent Comments