Marilyn Miller (born Mary Ellen Reynolds; September 1, 1898 – April 7, 1936) was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s.

Marilyn Miller was born in 1898 in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a telephone lineman, and his first wife, the former Ada Lynn Thompson.

[1][2] The tiny, delicately featured blonde was only four years old when she debuted in the role of Mademoiselle Sugarlump at Lakeside Park in Dayton, Ohio, performing as a member of her family's vaudeville act, named The Columbian Trio.

That act, which included her stepfather Oscar Caro Miller and her older sisters Ruth and Claire, was renamed the Five Columbians after she and her mother joined the routine.

From their home base in Findlay, Ohio, the five toured the Midwest and Europe for ten years and managed to skirt the child labor authorities until Lee Shubert discovered Miller at the Lotus Club in London in 1914.

Sharing billing with Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers and W. C. Fields, she brought the house down with her impersonation of Billie Burke, Ziegfeld's wife, in a number titled "Mine Was a Marriage of Convenience."

...[3][4]After a rift with Ziegfeld, Miller signed with rival producer Charles Dillingham and starred as Peter Pan in a 1924 Broadway revival, then as a circus queen in Sunny (1925), with music by Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein.

Her last Broadway show, marking a major comeback, was the innovative 1933-1934 Irving Berlin/Moss Hart musical As Thousands Cheer, in which she appeared in the production number "Easter Parade".

In 1936, she quit the show after her boyfriend and future husband Chester O'Brien – a chorus dancer who served as the production's second assistant stage manager – was fired for allowing the Woolworth department store heir Jimmy Donahue to sneak onstage during a scene in which Miller was impersonating his cousin, the heiress Barbara Hutton.

[5] After her death, this incident gave Irving Berlin the inspiration for a film musical On the Avenue, for which he received a script credit in addition to writing the songs.

[15] Miller's funeral was held at Saint Bartholomew Church on Park Avenue, which drew 2,500-3,000 people, including former mayor Jimmy Walker, Beatrice Lillie, and Billie Burke.