He then moved to Paramount Studios to become vp development, where he oversaw comedy and drama series programming and original television movies. Miller’s career in television began as assistant to William Self at 20th Century Fox, where they co-created the ABC comedy Nanny and the Professor. The two remained friends up to Wilder’s death in 2002. Miller said he learned a great deal from Wilder, and the Oscar-winning director continued to be a huge creative influence on him for the rest of his career. The filmmaker hired Miller as a dialogue coach, and their four years together included work on the classic films Irma la Douce (1963) and The Fortune Cookie (1966). 31, 1940, Miller attended Nicolet High School in Glendale, Wisconsin, before graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a liberal arts degree in 1962.Ī lifelong fan of film and television, he moved to Los Angeles to work in the entertainment industry and got his start in Hollywood working for his idol, Billy Wilder. Howard called him “kind, smart and witty” and a believer in his ability to one day make movies, while Winkler wrote that the executive “gave me, along with his partners, my Hollywood life.”īorn on Aug. On Twitter, Happy Days stars Ron Howard and Henry Winkler paid tribute to Miller. The fact that those don’t win awards means nothing to me if we continue to please that many people.” And if you’re doing an 8 o’clock show, that means you also try to make them intelligent, you have them tell a story that has not a preachy moral necessarily, but something there so that it’s not a bad thing if you watch it. “Our award is that 30 million people are watching,” he said. His series typically did not win Emmys, but that didn’t bother Miller, he said in a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

My hollywood life