August 23 - Vera Miles

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On this day, in 1929, Vera June Ralston was born in Boise City, Oklahoma. As the youngest of four children, Vera did most of her growing up in the small town of Pratt, Kansas. When the Ralstons later moved to Wichita, she helped support the family as a Western Union operator in the evenings (telegrams were still a thing in those days). She graduated from Wichita High in 1947 already something of a hit on the beauty queen circuit having earned the titles of Miss Chamber of Commerce and Miss Wichita. The following year, Vera would be crowned Miss Kansas (she was third runner up for Miss America) and married the first of her four husbands, Bob, becoming the name she would be known as forever more: Vera Miles.

In 1950, Bob and Vera moved out to Hollywood. Bob began a career as a stuntman while Vera started picking up small roles on television and the movies. At one time or another, she was under some sort of contract to most of the major players in Tinseltown, but they never seemed to pan out. She once quipped that she’d been dropped by all the best studios in town. Her first credited role was in 1952 in a fairly forgettable romantic comedy, The Rose Bowl Story, in which she plays (surprise!) the Rose Bowl Queen. It wasn’t until three years later that Vera’s career started to pick up steam. Starting in 1955, she starred alongside Gordon Scott (who would become husband number two) in Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle, then was cast in the John Wayne classic The Searchers, followed by the thriller 23 Paces to Baker Street with Van Johnson. Around the same time, she began a professional relationship with the man who would give her one of the best known roles of her life.

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Alfred Hitchcock, who had already been directing films for nearly three decades by the time he got into television, cast Vera in the pilot episode of his anthology series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in 1955. Two years later, he paired her with Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man. Looking for a replacement for his perennial leading lady Grace Kelly (who had just quit show business to become an actual princess), Alfred signed Vera to a five year contract. She was slated to star in his next project, Vertigo, with Jimmy Stewart but the production was plagued with delays. By the time cameras were ready to roll, Vera was pregnant and unable to do the picture. Kim Novak stepped into the role but didn’t get along with Hitchcock and Vertigo ended up being a disappointment. He continued to champion Vera, though, and cast her as Lila Crane in his 1960 horror classic, Psycho. Even though Janet Leigh usually gets all the accolades for Psycho (particularly the shower scene), she’s only in it for a relatively few minutes (part of Hitchcock’s insistence that no one be admitted after the film started was because he didn’t want people to show up late and totally miss all of Janet’s screen time). It’s really a combination of Vera and Anthony Perkins who carry the movie. Vera’s performance in Psycho might have helped drive the picture’s success, but it would turn out to be the second and last film role that she would deliver for Hitchcock. She would star in two more episodes of his television series, but, once again, while her contract meant she got paid, it didn’t pan out into much actual work.

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Vera reunited with John Wayne (and finally got the chance to work with Jimmy Stewart) for 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. She also appeared in a wide variety of television series including The Twilight Zone, Riverboat (with Burt Reynolds), The Outer Limits, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, My Three Sons and the pilot episodes of both The Fugitive and I Spy.

Vera joined the Disney family in 1964 starring opposite Brian Keith in A Tiger Walks. She followed Tiger up by reuniting with Brian for Those Calloways in 1965. The next year, she appeared in the last live action film that Walt himself produced, Follow Me, Boys! with Fred MacMurray and Kurt Russell (in his first of many Disney appearances). She returned in 1973 to star in One Little Indian with James Garner and Jodie Foster (in her second Disney film) and made her final Disney movie, The Castaway Cowboy, the next year, again teaming up with James.

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Throughout the Seventies and Eighties, Vera continued to act, appearing in a handful of films and a wide variety of television shows. She was part of yet another pilot episode, this time for a William Conrad vehicle called Cannon, as well as episodes of The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hotel, Columbo and Hawaii Five-O. On the big screen, she threw her lot in with John Wayne two more times, once for Hellfire and again for The Green Berets (although her part was cut from the latter one in the final print). She also reprised her role of Lila in Psycho 2, made twenty-three years after the original. Vera and Anthony Perkins were the only two cast members making return engagements in a movie that was deemed less than the Hitchcock classic but still a modest hit. Vera's final television appearance came in 1991 on Murder, She Wrote and her final film role was in the 1995 thriller Separate Lives with James Belushi.

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Since her retirement from entertainment, Vera has become something of a recluse in Palm Desert, California. She famously refuses to grant any interviews or make any public appearances but is willing to answer fan mail. She even declined to meet with Jessica Biel, the actress who portrayed her in the 2012 biopic Hitchcock, sending one of her grandsons along to answer any of Jessica's questions. So if you're looking to have tea and ask Vera what John Wayne was like or if Fred MacMurray was still goofy after the cameras stopped rolling, you are out of luck. You'll just have to content yourself with sending her a birthday card for her 90th turn around the sun. Or you could celebrate by turning out all the lights and cheering her on as she tries to find out what really happened to her sister in that creepy hotel.