Ann Miller, the long-legged actress and tap dancer whose exuberant personality and flashy hoofing found a home when she appeared in several musicals for MGM, most notably the classics On the Town and Kiss Me Kate, died of lung cancer on January 22nd in Los Angeles. She was 80.

Born Johnnie Lucille Collier on April 12, 1923 in Chireno, Texas, Miller was enrolled by her parents for tap-dancing lessons when she was still a pre-schooler to strengthen her legs after she suffered from a case of rickets. Her parents divorced when she was 10, and she moved with her mother to California, where Mrs. Collier worked as a nightclub dancer for financial support. It wasn't long before Johnnie Lucille began dancing professionally, and by the time she was 12 she found work as a chorus girl who performed under the stage name of Ann Miller.

Lucille Ball and comedian Benny Rubin saw Miller performing at the Bal Tabarin - a popular club in San Francisco - in 1937 and introduced the young performer to RKO executives. To secure a contract with the studio, the 14-year-old Miller lied about her age, saying she was 18. This started a lasting confusion about her real age. Although some reference sources gave her birth year as 1919, in later years Miller claimed that she added four years to her age to qualify for work. Given that Miller was extremely tall for her age (she was already 5'7"), and the leniency of child labor laws at the time, few people seriously scrutinized her claim to work as an adult.

RKO started her off strongly when they gave her the role of Annie, Ginger Rogers' dance partner in the classic backstage drama Stage Door (1937), which also starred Katharine Hepburn and Lucille Ball. She had two solid movies the next year, playing Jean Arthur's younger sister in Frank Capra's Best Picture Oscar winner You Can't Take It With You; and the fun (if not classic) Marx Brothers romp, Room Service (both 1938). She interrupted her screen career to star in the Broadway smash George White Scandals (1939-40) and returned to RKO for her final picture with that studio, Too Many Girls (1940), a peppy musical co-starring her friend Lucille Ball and a very young Dezi Arnaz.

She made the move to Republic pictures, and for most of the '40s, Miller would star in a slew of forgettable, low-budget musical comedies. The titles say it all: Time Out for Rhythm (1941), Priorities on Parade (1942), What's Buzzin' Cousin? (1943), and Jam Session (1944). Empty-headed as they were, Miller - ever the professional - transformed these musical revues into something worth watching.

Her big break came when MGM asked her to replace an injured Cyd Charisse for Easter Parade (1948). Critics took note of the accomplished dancer with the effervescent persona, and MGM promptly gave her a seven-year contract. It would be her tenure at MGM on which Miller's legend rests. Granted, she might not have had the grace of Charisse, or the gymnastic dexterity of Vera Ellen (they were the studio's two leading dancers at the time), but Miller had something else - a dynamic sex appeal that enriched her best MGM musicals: her unrestrained joyousness in the "Prehistoric Joe" routine from the gloriously innovative musical On the Town (1949); her high kicks in Busby Berkeley's dazzling, surrealistic, "dismembered orchestra" dance sequence in Small Town Girl (1952); and of course, her throbbingly insouciant "Too Darn Hot" number from Kiss Me Kate (1953). Miller made these dance productions all her own, and they demand repeated viewings for both her tap dancing prowess and sultry personality.

Miller remained with MGM until the mid-'50s, appearing in some pleasant, minor musicals: Hit the Decks (1955), The Opposite Sex (an ill-fated attempt to musicalize The Women), and The Great American Pastime (both 1956). Unfortunately, when the popularity of musicals began to wane, Miller's movie career faded, and she turned to the dinner theater circuit for the next few years to carve out a living.

She returned to the spotlight in 1969 when she took over the starring role of Angela Lansbury in the Broadway musical Mame. She was a hit, and the following year, she achieved renewed popularity when satirist Stan Freeberg cast in a campy, hugely popular television commercial in 1970, for Heinz' Great American Soups. Choreographed like a Busby Berkeley number, the advertisement showed Miller tap-dancing frantically on an eight-foot can of soup, surrounded by a stream of chorus girls and an orchestra accompanying her taps.

The '70s saw Miller making occasional television appearances on such programs as The Love American Style and The Love Boat, but by the decade's end she found herself with a new success on her hands when she co-starred with Mickey Rooney in the engaging Broadway review Sugar Babies (1979-82). This popular musical, which highlighted the best of burlesque in the vaudevillian days, earned Miller a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a musical. After its Broadway run, Miller continued to star in the show for the national tour, and in 1989, she took the production to London's West End, and earned an Olivier Award nomination (the West End's equivalent to the Tony Award) and rave reviews from the theater critics.

Modern movie going audiences will no doubt remember her sly deftly comic performance as Coco Lenoix, the eccentric landlady of a shady Hollywood apartment complex in David Lynch's acclaimed mystery Mudholland Drive (2001). In later years, she wrote three memoirs, Miller's Highlife (1974), Tops in Taps (1981), Tapping the Force (which touched upon her fascination with the occult, 1990). Miller was not survived by any immediate family members.

Michael T. Toole