The Biography

Colleen Joy Miller is an American former actress. She starred in several films, such as the Westerns Gunfight at Comanche Creek (1963) and Four Guns to the Border (1954). The daughter of Elias and Lillian Miller, she was born in Yakima, Washington, and raised in Portland, Oregon. Miller attended Lincoln High School in Portland and graduated at age fifteen. In 1949, she was chosen "Miss Portland". Her mother named her after actress Colleen Moore. As a child, Miller studied ballet, but when she was older she changed to popular dancing. After graduating, she worked as a professional dancer in a San Francisco ballet company, and relocated to Las Vegas after three seasons to work at the Flamingo. While dancing in Las Vegas, Miller was spotted by a talent agent who signed her to a contract with Howard Hughes for his RKO Pictures company. She was 19 when she made her first film appearance in The Las Vegas Story, starring Jane Russell.