She has no secret for looking so young, except that she is a nonsmoker, drinks nothing stronger than wine, watches her diet, and avoids anything strenuous in the daytime, to save her energy for the show.
With her jet-black hair, pearl-white teeth, and exaggerated makeup, Ann looks more than a little exotic. This may help to explain her belief in reincarnation. "I really do have memories of Egypt. They're not in a form that I can describe. You sometimes just know things. You're born with knowing. I have been to Egypt three times, and I'm planning to go back again and again, I want to go mainly to Luxor. I'm very entranced with it. I like all the antiquities of Egypt. The present-day Egypt I have no interest in to speak of."
Ann says she doesn't like the name of her current show. "People think it's candy, because there is Sugar Babies candy," she explains, "but in the old days, babies meant beautiful show girls. The girls had sugar daddies, so they were called sugar babies."
A Texas native who began dancing professionally in New York at the age of 11, Ann says yes, she feels good about her career, but that "it's been a long struggle. The sad part is, I have wanted so much to be happy, but I have never found happiness."
Her father, who was a lawyer, left her mother when Ann was 10. Since Mrs. Miller was almost totally deaf, Ann supported them by tap dancing at Rotary Club luncheons. She retains a fear of poverty to this day. "I save all my clothes because some day I might be poor again," she says. "I have a room with nothing in it but racks of clothes. I cover them nicely, and once a year I air them out, in case they come back in style."
********
WESTSIDER SHERRILL MILNES
Opera superstar
2-24-79
"In a career of my size," says baritone Sherrill Milnes, "there is no off season. I try to hold myself to 60 performances a year — not including recordings or dress rehearsals or private studies. … In fact, I think I'm the most-recorded American opera singer ever, in any voice category."
We're talking in his spacious Westside apartment facing the Hudson River. I cannot help observing that Milnes, a handsome man who stands 6 foot 2 and weighs 220 pounds, with his dark hair combed straight back and wearing a blue flowered shirt, looks very much like a country and western singer. It is his chest that gives him away — a massive, powerful chest that hints at the huge voice it supports. To deliver notes that are clearly audible throughout the largest opera houses in the world, over the sound of a full orchestra, and without amplification, is one of the most physically demanding tasks in all the performing arts. And one of the best paying. Only a handful of singers take home, like Milnes, approximately $7,000 for each night's work.