Audio
Transcript
Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Int, Author JP M Days of Wine and Roses.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-int-author-jp-m-days-of-wine-and-roses.mp3 Duration: 00:02:04
============================================================
is responsible for a piece of writing which has very likely brought more people to AA than any other single piece. J.P. Miller, and I try to run those letters together the way he likes to have them without any periods between, was born in San Antonio, Texas. His father was a construction engineer and his mother had been a road company actress. He studied to be a sculptor, but he said that when he found himself yelling at the stone, Come out of there!
he decided to look elsewhere for a career. He had studied drama at Yale and had written verse, so after a number of years as variously a ranch hand, shrimp fisherman, grave digger, prize fighter, says he won eight and then lost one, the last one, refrigeration engineer, newspaper reporter, Spanish instructor, and four years in the Navy as a gunnery officer and deep sea diver. He tried his hand at a TV script, Hide and Seek, and it was produced, the first one, by Philco.
This started him on a career which saw him contribute many other scripts to Philco and other TV anthologies including Playhouse 90. It was the latter which produced his famed Days of Wine and Roses, later made into an Academy Award nominee film starring Jack Lemmon. J.P. Miller also wrote the screenplay for The Movie Virgin. Among his better known television dramas are The Rabbit Trap, also made into a film, Old Tasselfoot, and Pardon Me Boy.
There's a great deal more I could tell you about J.P. Miller, but I can't wait to hear him.