Vera Miles

Born August 23, 1929, in Bolse City, Oklahoma, Vera May Ralston was a typist in her teens, later graduating from Wichita’s North High School. She stood out so much for her physique that her family recommended that she enter beauty pageants. She was finally elected Miss Kansas in 1948, a title that encouraged her to try to make a career in show business.

After marrying Bob Miles in 1948, she decided to use his married name for her artistic career. She moved to Los Angeles where she started at the bottom, as an extra in movies likeThe monster of remote times . She soon after she became the female lead ofTarzan in the Hidden Jungle , during which she fell in love with the protagonist, Gordon Scott , to whom she was united after divorcing her husband. Later she also had as a couple the actor and director Keith Larsen and Bob Jones.

Vera Miles did not miss the great opportunity of her career, which came to her from the hand of John Ford . The teacher hired the actress to play Laurie, a young woman in love with a half-Indian boy, adopted by the brother of John Wayne ‘s character , inDesert Centaurs .

Alfred Hitchcock fell in love with her beauty when he discovered her on the Pepsi-Cola Playhouse television show. Because of her delicate features, he decided that he could make her the new Grace Kelly . The master of suspense touted her as his new favorite actress, first casting her as a worried girlfriend in “Revenge,” one of the series’ best installments.Alfred Hitchcock Presents . Satisfied with her work, the British made her the wife of Henry Fonda , infalse culprit And while he was enthusiastic about his talent, Hitchcock was very concerned about his real-life image, which he considered sloppy. So he asked Edith Head to design an entire costume for him to wear in the movie and also in his personal life. He didn’t want her to go around “like an Oklahoma housewife.”

She was also going to be the protagonist ofFrom among the dead (Vertigo) , but although he did the makeup and wardrobe test, the director finally decided to do without his job. “She showed up pregnant moments before the play that was going to make her a star,” explained the director, who after learning that Vera Miles was pregnant, replaced her with Kim Novak , with whom he was not happy.

Soon after, Hitchcock called her back to play the sister of Janet Leigh , inPsycho , where he investigated her whereabouts after her disappearance, unaware that she had been murdered in the famous scene in the shower… Although her role was supposed to be secondary, the reality is that she spent more time on screen than Janet Leigh.

After the success ofBack Street , a drama about adultery with Susan Hayward and John Gavin , an old acquaintance, John Ford, turned to her again. And the truth is that she once again brought luck to the director, because The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance ended up being one of his great westerns, where Vera Miles was Hallie Stoddard, whose love John Wayne and James Stewart disputed . And although she ended up with Stewart at that time, much later she played the wife of John Wayne inFighters from Hell , by Andrew V. McLaglen , where the marriage suffered a crisis because of his risky profession, which was a firefighter in oil wells.

In the mid-’60s, Vera Miles became a regular presence on Disney’s live-action films, asA tiger runs awayThose Calloways andTwenty dozen children . At the end of her career, she filmed numerous episodes of television series, such asA crime has been written andHotel , and in 1983 he appeared briefly inPsycho II , where he brought back his previous character, who was strongly protesting that Norman Bates (again Anthony Perkins ) was going to be released on parole. Unfortunately, the film didn’t even come close to holding up to comparisons with the original. She said goodbye to the cinema playing a doctor inSeparate Lives , opposite James Belushi and Linda Hamilton .