TMS Muse of the Week: Vera Miles

(Earl Leaf)

When evoking the essential ‘Hitchcock blonde,’ the usual qualities come to mind. Tall, glamorous, sophisticated, stunning, fashionable. Basically everything about Grace Kelly, Hitch’s favorite blonde. The two other famous blonde stars for the Master of Suspense are of course Ingrid Bergman and Tippi Hedren. But there’s another who was just as inspirational and consistent in her work with Alfred Hitchcock: Vera Miles. More girl-next-door and modest in both appearance and performance, Vera has an interesting legacy. She was a muse to arguably the two most influential film directors of the golden age—Hitchcock and John Ford—yet she’s mainly remembered for a couple of classics, and the average viewer probably doesn’t recognize her name. With Hitchcock, she co-starred in his courtroom drama The Wrong Man (1956) and his iconic horror-mystery Psycho (1960). For Ford, she was the love interests in his legendary westerns The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Not bad for someone who was always more of a working actress than a movie star.

Initially a Midwesterner born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas, Vera worked as an operator and typist for Western Union after graduating high school in 1947, and was crowned Miss Kansas only a year later before even making it to the top three for Miss America. With her beauty pageant experience, it’s no surprise she found her way to Hollywood, opted to use her married name at the time over her own ‘Ralston,’ and was quickly hired for bit parts in musicals and comedies. Maybe more surprising is how she was already familiar with the western genre through her appearances in Robert Wise’s So Big (1953) and Jacques Tourneur’s Wichita (1955) before being cast in The Searchers; and even played Jimmy Stewart’s wife in Mervyn LeRoy’s crime drama The FBI Story (1959) three years before the two were paired again in Liberty Valance. Following her roles in The Wrong Man and the 1955 pilot episode, ‘Revenge,’ of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” the auteur envisioned the starlet as the blonde bombshell for his next project, the psychological thriller Vertigo (1958). Despite going through the early stages of readings and fittings, as well as the press already profiling her as the next big Hitchcock star; Vera learned she was pregnant with her third child, Michael [b. 1957], and chose to take a break from films instead. Hitchcock was naturally very disappointed, especially since he lost his previous muse, Grace, only two years earlier to European royalty. In typical Hitch fashion, he took out his frustration on his two leads, Jimmy and Kim Novak, and blamed them for Vertigo’s lack of commercial success during the original release.

(Warner Bros)

Hitchcock didn’t seem to hold much ill will toward the original actress herself though and reunited with Vera a couple years later on Psycho. The two then collaborated two more times with the episodes ‘Don’t Look Behind You’ (1962) and ‘Death Scene’ (1965) of the re-branded “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.” Though John Ford has just as polarizing of a set reputation as Hitchcock, Vera either liked or respected him enough to work together again on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. While she has gone into detail about her history with Hitch over the years, she hasn’t said as much about Ford, interestingly enough. Later in her career, the blonde popped up in a string of Walt Disney produced family movies, including Norman Tokar’s Those Calloways (1965) and Tokar’s Follow Me, Boys! (1966); reunited with Liberty Valance co-star John Wayne on Andrew McLaglen’s Hellfighters (1968); was unceremoniously killed off in Richard Franklin’s Psycho II (1983); and made numerous guest appearances on TV shows, such as “Rawhide” (1959), “The Twilight Zone” (1960), “My Three Sons” (1965) and “Gunsmoke” (1970) on CBS, “The Fugitive” (1963) and “Fantasy Island” (1978) on ABC, and NBC’s “Columbo” (1973).

Hindsight is 20/20, and obviously after 66 years we’re all used to Kim Novak’s portrayal of the double role in Vertigo. But the more I consider it, the more I can kind of see Vera in the film. If she hadn’t dropped out, I could easily picture her as the more average Judy in the second half of the film, while it might have taken a while to get used to her cast as stylish Madeleine in the first hour. Whereas I instantly bought Kim as a high-class lady and struggled to see her play an ordinary girl [though her performance has grown on me over time]. Interestingly, Vera actually co-starred with Vertigo supporting actress Barbara Bel Geddes in Martin Ritt’s Five Branded Women (1960) the same year as Psycho. With The Searchers, some movie fans find Vera’s character Laurie a little too high strung as she’s utilized in multiple scenes of comic relief. But I think she pulls off a tricky role of having to be a romantic interest to one of the male leads, played by Jeffrey Hunter, and also execute John Ford’s goofy sense of humor. She certainly wasn’t above acting comedic when it was called for. When her on-screen sister Marion Crane [Janet Leigh] suddenly leaves Psycho following the iconic shower sequence, Vera’s Lila has to pick up where she left off, and the audience has no problem switching sisters to follow Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates. With her natural, everyday good looks and poise, it’s easy to believe Liberty Valance stars Jimmy and ‘The Duke’ would recurringly try to win over Vera’s character throughout the movie as well.

Vera is still with us at age 95 even after retiring from the screen in 1995 and outliving all three of her ex-husbands. These days she spends her time in Palm Desert, CA and Salt Lake City, UT, with four children, daughters Debra [b. 1950] and Kelley [b. 1952], Michael, another son, Eric [b. 1962], and various grandchildren. Amusingly, Vera is reportedly a longtime, practicing Mormon despite multiple divorces and children through each marriage. A figure in timeless westerns and suspense films, Vera Miles most likely will not be forgotten anytime soon.