PATSY RUTH MILLER The Most Engaged Woman in Hollywood
Channel: FemmeCentric
Date: 2022-02-05

Patsy Ruth Miller was called The Most Engaged Woman in Hollywood. She was always in the company of good-looking men. She was very social. Alla Nazimova discovered her at a Hollywood party. That friendship landed Patsy Ruth Miller in a small role in Nazimova’s 1921 movie Camille, starring Rudolph Valentino.

With her foot in the door, she suddenly found herself in a mind-blowing 14 films from 1922 through 1923, culminating in the role of Esmeralda in the Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney. The film was a smash hit, and her performance was critically acclaimed. It is the film that she is most known for to this day. The public loved her and clamored for more.

But there was the encore problem. Nothing she did after that could match it. But she persevered with a lifetime achievement of 79 films to her name. She retired in 1932 with only two screen appearances, one in 1951 and the other in 1978.

She was an outstanding actor, and her many films show how diverse she was. From comedy to drama, she could do it all and did. She even played a jungle queen in ‘Lorraine of the Lions’ in 1925. Interestingly, this film predates King Kong by eight years, with some remarkable similarities. Both films end with a gorilla carrying a woman to the top of a tall building and falling to his death on the city street. Both have the theme of “beauty killed the beast.”

She later achieved recognition as a writer. She won three O. Henry Awards for her short stories, authored a novel, radio scripts, and plays. She also performed for a brief time on Broadway. She was a woman of many talents. And a woman of many men. She married three times, underscoring her reputation as the most engaged woman in Hollywood.
Patricia Ruth Miller was born on January 17, 1904, in St. Louis, Missouri. She passed away in 1995 at the age of 91.

It has been rumored that her retirement from Hollywood was because she did not transition very well into the talkie-era. But that isn’t true. She transitioned like a duck to water. As proof, we leave you with this brief film clip of her from ‘Loney Wives” from 1931, a year before she retired.

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