Denny Miller, a noted UCLA basketball player in the 1950s who dropped the sport to play the title role in the 1959 movie “Tarzan the Ape Man” and went on to appear in “Wagon Train” and numerous other TV shows, died Tuesday at home in Las Vegas. He was 80.
The cause was ALS, said his wife, Nancy.
Miller, whose self-effacing humor made him a hit at Tarzan and Western film festivals, knew his Tarzan movie was not a cinematic milestone. “In a book called ‘Tarzan of the Movies’ ” he noted in a 1997 Newsday interview, “it was under the heading, ‘Tarzan the Worst.’ “
And he was well aware that he got the part because of brawn instead of acting experience, of which he had none at the time. Miller was spotted by a talent agent while moving furniture for a job he had with Bekins Storage. The agent arranged for a screen test at MGM and Miller got a seven-year MGM contract.
“I was going to be a basketball coach,” he said in a 2012 interview with the Charleston Gazette. “It was hard to explain my change in career plans – and my new contract with a major studio – to theater arts majors in my fraternity house.”