A Book Review by Thomas M. Puhr.
Author Christopher McKittrick makes a persuasive case for celebrating the consummate professional Miles became rather than mourning the icon she never was….”
It says a lot about the fickleness of celebrity that an actress who has worked with some of the industry’s biggest names and who was among the earliest recipients of a star on the Walk of Fame would now largely be relegated to the sidelines of Hollywood history, her many “accomplishments … treated as footnotes to the story of other actresses” (x). Such is the case with Vera Miles, the onetime Miss America finalist who rose from humble beginnings in Boise City to become a frequent collaborator with the likes of John Ford, Walt Disney, and Alfred Hitchcock. And while Miles may not have become as famous as she could (or should) have, Christopher McKittrick’s Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away (University Press of Kentucky, 2025) persuasively argues that the Psycho star nevertheless “deserved the spotlight as much as Kelly, Hedren, or any other of her contemporary actresses” (xix). Most importantly, this thoughtful biography makes it clear that Miles did not fail to achieve Grace Kelly–level popularity as much as she avoided it.
Divided into fifteen chapters, the book takes a straightforward, chronological approach to Miles’s life and career. The opening chapters trace both her first Hollywood contract in the late 1940s (with RKO, then under Howard Hughes’s strict, mostly disastrous tutelage) and first marriage (with stuntman and personal driver Bob Miles, whom Hughes would promptly fire for running off with Vera), each of which proved to be the first of many for Miles. After some minor stints in television and film—including a role in The Charge of Feather River, which is best known “for featuring and giving the name to one of the most famous sound effects in film history, the Wilhelm Scream” (26)—Miles had her breakthrough role as Laurie Jorgensen in John Ford’s The Searchers. Her performance in the 1956 Western, which became “the reason so many critics thought that she would be one of the industry’s top stars by the end of the decade” (54), also impressed the famously cantankerous Ford; she would later costar in another of his masterpieces, 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
The book’s midsection largely concerns Miles’s working relationship with another auteur, Alfred Hitchcock. Although the master of suspense planned for her to be his next megastar—he signed her “to a five-year, fifteen-film personal contract” (67)—the pair ultimately made just two features together. McKittrick offers a number of explanations for the duo’s comparatively underwhelming partnership: Miles’s apparent bristling at the endless comparisons in the press between her and Hitchcock’s previous muse, Grace Kelly; the tepid response to their first big-screen collaboration, 1956’s The Wrong Man (see top image; “It did little to present her as the industry’s next big star” [82–83]); and, most infamously, Miles missing the opportunity to star in Vertigo when she became pregnant (a grainy photograph of Miles from an early costume test—enticingly included in this book—shows her wearing what would become Kim Novak’s iconic grey suit). Hitchcock may have had some characteristically harsh words for Miles—“‘We’d have spent a heap of dollars on it [Vertigo], and she has the bad taste to get pregnant’” (107), he told a journalist—but this seeming bitterness did not stop him from casting her in what would become her most recognizable role: that of Lila Crane in Psycho.
Persuasively argues that the Psycho star nevertheless ‘deserved the spotlight as much as Kelly, Hedren, or any other of her contemporary actresses….’”
To his credit, McKittrick doesn’t dwell too much on the roles Miles almost had, instead focusing—in the book’s final third—on her television work (name any famous program from the ’50s or ’60s, and she has probably appeared in it), theater performances, and years-long stint as a “Disney mom.” The latter phase in Miles’s career is especially interesting. Even though she appeared in six live-action Disney features—beginning with 1964’s A Tiger Walks and ending with 1974’s The Castaway Cowboy—and was praised by none other than Walt as “his ‘favorite actress’” (183), her “significant contribution to the studio’s films has largely gone unrecognized” (223). Her professional life post-Disney didn’t fare much better; barring a few noteworthy exceptions—including a major role in the cult classic Psycho II—most of Miles’s work in the ’70s and ’80s consisted of guest spots on television (her final small screen performance would be for Murder, She Wrote) and roles in various “dinner theater” productions. Much like Miles herself, however, McKittrick is not bitter about his subject’s legacy and emphasizes her career-long decision to prioritize family—especially her four children—over all else: “‘I’ve managed my life the way I’ve wanted,’” she said in a 1989 interview. “‘If a few great roles were lost along the way, it was because there was something higher on the priority list’” (247).
Chief among this book’s strengths is the depth of McKittrick’s research; its fifteen pages of source notes is a testament to the author’s attention to detail. Throughout, he compellingly juxtaposes the press’s oft-objectifying—and sometimes downright sexist—remarks on Miles (she was called “‘one of the most whistled-at actresses since [Marilyn] Monroe’” [25], and “‘much too beautiful to be so fine an actress’” [188]) with her surprisingly candid comments on women’s limited place in Hollywood. Take her observation, from a 1964 interview, that “‘there’s such a preponderance of good male stars. Where do you find a good woman’s story? If someone does write one they call it a soap opera’” (186). Or her assertion that “‘women have no real identity in Hollywood outside the bedroom and kitchen’” (210). And while she never accused Hitchcock of misconduct, and praised his talent as an artist, she didn’t mince words when it came to his “‘making me into something I wasn’t, a Grace Kelly type. Altogether I wouldn’t call it an ideal producer-actress relationship’” (152). Such statements—meticulously gathered by McKittrick from decades of articles—speak to an artist who was unafraid to call out the hypocrisies and double standards that fueled the industry, especially during the early and mid-twentieth century.
Still, McKittrick can get lost in the weeds a little bit. In a seeming effort to name-check as many of Miles’s one-episode appearances in long-forgotten television shows as possible, he skates over opportunities to really dig into some of her meatier, if lesser-seen, performances. For example, “The Return of Lila Crane”—his chapter on Psycho II—doesn’t really address her titular return until its last three pages, and even then it gets buried beneath a number of fun-fact tangents about the sequel’s production. He briefly mentions the screenplay’s clever inversion of making Norman “the timid hero” and Lila “the calculating villain” (240), but—curiously—he doesn’t explicate a specific scene or even moment from the film that supports his bold claim that “Miles’s role in Psycho II is far more complex than any Hitchcock himself would have likely cast her in” (239). Especially for something like Psycho II—which has undergone quite the critical reassessment in recent years, receiving heaps of praise from fans like Quentin Tarantino—a little more film analysis on McKittrick’s part could have gone a long way toward proving his point that Miles’s body of work deserves more of our attention.
This is a minor complaint, however. McKittrick’s book is a biography first and foremost, not a film studies text, and those hoping to learn more about one of Hollywood’s unsung character actors will find much to enjoy within its densely researched pages. Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away makes a persuasive case for celebrating the consummate professional Miles became rather than mourning the icon she never was, and—by all accounts—never really wanted to be.
Thomas M. Puhr lives in Chicago, where he teaches English and language arts. A regular contributor to Bright Lights Film Journal, he has published Fate in Film: A Deterministic Approach to Cinema with Wallflower Press.