F. E. Miller
| Flournoy Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Flournoy Eakin Miller April 14, 1885 Columbia, Tennessee, United States |
| Died | June 6, 1971 (aged 86) Hollywood, California, US |
| Nationality | U.S. |
| Other names | F. E. Miller |
| Occupation | Vaudeville entertainer, actor, playwright, theatre producer |
Flournoy Eakin Miller (14 April 1885 – 6 June 1971), sometimes credited as F. E. Miller, was an African American entertainer, actor, lyricist, producer and playwright. Between about 1905 and 1932 he formed a popular comic duo, Miller and Lyles, with Aubrey Lyles. Described as "an innovator who advanced black comedy and entertainment significantly," and as "one of the seminal figures in the development of African American musical theater on Broadway", he wrote many successful vaudeville and Broadway shows, including the influential Shuffle Along (1921), as well as working on several all-black movies between the 1930s and 1950s.
He was born in Columbia, Tennessee, the second son of the editor of a black newspaper; his older brother Irvin C. Miller also became a noted vaudeville performer and theatre producer. He studied at Fisk University in Nashville, where he began performing as one half of a comedy duo, Miller and Lyles, with his childhood friend Aubrey Lyles. From 1905, Miller and Lyles were hired by Robert Mott to be resident playwrights with the Pekin Theater Stock Company in Chicago. They performed with the company in blackface, and in the show The Colored Aristocrats introduced the characters Steve Jenkins (Miller) and Sam Peck (Lyles), with which they would be associated for many years.
With Marion A. Brooks, Miller founded the Bijou Stock Company in Montgomery, Alabama in 1908. One of the first black theatre companies in the South, it folded soon afterwards and Miller returned to Chicago. In 1909, Miller and Lyles traveled to New York City, where they started to perform on the vaudeville circuit, uniquely relying on comic performances rather than incorporating song and dance. They developed comedy devices later copied by others, such as a prizefighting routine which contrasted Miller's height and Lyles' short stature; completing each other's sentences; and "mutilatin'" the language in their phraseology. In 1915, they appeared in André Charlot's production Charlot's Revue in England, and upon their return to the U.S. appeared with Abbie Mitchell in Darkydom, a musical with score by James Reese Europe that was the first major black musical comedy.
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