The Full Life

It was a busy week for Ben Miller. On Monday, he punched the bag, skipped rope and shadowboxed through the day in a Times Square gymnasium. Tuesday, he tried out for parts in two movies. That night he climbed into the ring at Newark's Laurel Gardens for a heavyweight fight with a boxer named Willie Huff. Televiewers saw Miller knocked down twice, were spared seeing him knocked out only because of a transmission failure by station WATV.

The outcome did not seem to faze busy Ben Miller. On Wednesday, he had recovered sufficiently to join some 500 other TV actors at Broadway's Maxine Elliott Theater, where he won the audition for a role in this week's CBS show Danger. Thursday, dressed as a cowboy, he posed for a photograph scheduled to appear in Look magazine. Friday, he turned artisan and spent the day soldering together metal frames for hoop skirts that will be worn by the Rockettes of Radio City's Music Hall in their Christmas show.

Actor Miller, 28 and a towering 6 ft. 6 in. tall, is typical of Manhattan's 4,000-odd TV performers who get just enough parts to keep their hopes up, but not enough for a reliable livelihood. As a result, many of them take time out from haunting producers' offices to do part-time work as peanut vendors, sightseeing guides, sales clerks, doormen and soda jerks. Miller differs from the rest mainly in the choice of his principal sideline, which puts him on TV screens nearly as much as his acting in such shows as Stop the Music and Lux Video Theater.

Miller's background includes musical comedies (Bonanza Bound!, Barefoot Boy with Cheek), a U.S. tour with Mae West in Diamond Lil ("she likes to have tall men around her"), a movie bit part in You're in the Navy Now, with Gary Cooper, and an Armed Forces training film where he played an "enemy" patrol leader. But this year boxing and acting together have brought him less than $1,500, or barely enough to cover the $20 a week he pays for room & board.

Like many actors, Miller does a good deal of brooding about Fate and is fond of quoting Job to the effect that "Providence guides all the events of the world." He hasn't yet decided what last week's knockout (his first) portends. "Maybe it means I should give up boxing," he says.

He has no intention, however, of giving up acting. Providence might see fit any day now to change his income from $1,500 a year to $1,500 a week, a phenomenon by no means unusual in television. Until then, Miller says cheerfully, "I like the way I live, so I'll just keep doing it."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.