Profile of Merle Miller on Famous Like Me

Merle Miller (May 17, 1919-June 10, 1986) was an American novelist best known for his biographies of Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Three years before his best-selling book Plain Speaking, An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974), he wrote a personal account "What It Means to Be a Homosexual" published in The New York Times Magazine January 17, 1971.

Born in Montour, Iowa, he grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa and attended the University of Iowa and the London School of Economics. During World War II, Miller served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as an editor of Yank. After the war he worked Time and Harper's magazines (1945-1949). His first novel was That Winter ( 1948). His other books are The Sure Thing (1949); Only You, Dick Daring! (1964); On Being Different (1971); and Lyndon: An Oral Biography (1980). In Only You, Dick Daring!, his scathing account of trying to make a show with CBS for the 1963-1964 television season, Merle Miller talks of how James T. Aubrey, Jr., the president of the CBS Television Network, would simply walk out of meetings without offering any substantive comments, good or bad. Miller was assured by other CBS executives that meant things were fine, but Miller learned later of efforts to force him out. A pilot for the show, Calhoun, to star Jackie Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, was shot and put on the fall schedule, but never aired.

Miller ied in Danbury, Connecticut of complications of abdominal surgery.

links

• Des Moines Register Famous Iowans

• Harry S. Truman Library Merle Miller Papers

• University of Iowa Library Manuscript Register: Papers of Merle Miller

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