Dee Miller, who cast hundreds on ‘Miami Vice’ and Andy Garcia’s first feature film
Would there have been a “Miami Vice” without its casting director Dee Miller? Maybe.
But the pop culture landmark NBC crime drama in the 1980s that went on to change the look of television and the city in which it was filmed would certainly have been different.
And the world may never have seen star Don Johnson’s character wearing a tie in one episode were it not for Miller’s detective work.
Miller, who died March 3 at 80 in Miami of natural causes, according to her son Tommy Barone, was one of Miami’s earliest — and most successful — casting directors.
Directors get most of the credit, and attention at the Oscars, but they work in tandem with the casting directors who select the actors you see in film and TV productions.
A casting director’s job is to study the script, understand the characteristics of any character’s part — from voice, look and mannerisms — and, in consultation with the main director and producers, ensure everyone you see on camera is the ideal representation of the part they are supposed to portray.
MILLER’S ROLE IN CASTING
“We don’t represent the talent. We coordinate it,” Miller explained in a Miami Herald profile in 1985, the peak year of fame for “Miami
Vice.”
At a time when few productions were set in South Florida Miller proved instrumental in helping boost the career of Oscar-nominated actor Andy Garcia. “The Godfather Part III” actor called Miller a “pillar of this industry in South Florida” and thanked her for “championing me as a young actor” when Miller was honored with the 2011 Film Florida Legends Award.
Miller did location casting for “Blue Skies Again” in 1983, Garcia’s feature film debut.
In the video tribute to Miller for her award, Garcia said, “everybody passed through her doors. She was warmhearted and available to me as an actor. Those early moments an actor gets are always precious.”
The seven central character roles of “Miami
Vice,” such as Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas and Saundra Santiago, were already cast when Miller came on board for the pilot episode that aired in September 1984. Over the first three of the show’s eventual five seasons Miller was responsible for casting 61 episodes of “Miami Vice.” In the first season alone she got 230 people parts in 23 episodes, the Herald reported.
She also helped cast the remake of “The Champ” with Jon Voight locally in 1979. That weeper was co-star Ricky Schroder’s first film.
“The Dogs of War” with Christopher Walken in 1980 is among Miller’s credits. So are the first two “Porky’s” comedies, novelist Peter Benchley’s “The Island,” with Michael
Caine in 1980, as well as “Police Academy V: Assignment Miami Beach,” and “Whoops Apocalypse.”
“Dee was certainly the first, and the most active, of the original casting directors,” former casting director Peggi McKinley said of Miller in the Film Florida Legends video.
DON JOHNSON WORE A TIE?
Miller’s eye for detail was legendary, fellow location manager Colette Hailey said of Miller in the video.
For instance, there was that time in the second season of “Miami Vice” when the show’s producer John Nicolella put out a call for “an unusual-looking Latin priest” to play a baptism scene in the fifth episode, “Buddies,” the Miami Herald reported in 1985.
Nicolella told Miller he had seen someone who looked exactly like he wanted at a church “somewhere on the Beach.” Miller’s assignment: basically play a real-life Crockett and Tubbs and track down that exact priest.
Miller found the Rev. Raul Angulo sitting in the rectory at St. Patrick’s
Catholic Church in Miami Beach “after a process of elimination and no-frills detective work,” the Herald reported. The Archdiocese of Miami listened to Miller’s pitch and cleared the way for Angulo to pretend he was baptizing a baby for the “Vice” cameras. The scene was shot inside The Cathedral of St. Mary’s on Northwest Second Avenue.
Angulo made one suggestion on the set to episode director Harry Mastrogeorge. Don Johnson’s Sonny Crockett character ought to be seen wearing a tie during the staged baptism.
Johnson, all trademark stubble and pastels in his part, complied, but winked at Angulo and nodded to the ground. Johnson still wasn’t wearing socks.
FROM MAI-KAI TO SET
Miller was born in Chicago on June 13, 1941, and first came to Miami in 1959 for Spring Break where she met the owners of the historic Mai-Kai Polynesian restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. The owners offered her a job.
After returning home to Chicago and mulling the offer over through the spring and summer, Miller packed up her ‘56 Oldsmobile and took the job, her son Tommy Barone recalls.
By the early 1960s, Miller was a Mai-Kai calendar girl and cocktail waitress. After a few years, she went from modeling to working as a script supervisor on producer Ivan Tors’ 1970 TV movie, “The Aquarians,” which starred Ricardo Montalban, José Ferrer and Leslie Nielsen.
Barone jokes his mom “went to the school of hard knocks.” So while higher education was out, career building was in.
“I started working as a model and an actress when I was 13,” Miller told the Herald in 1985.
THE CASTING DIRECTORS
Miller ultimately decided she wanted her own business on the other side of the camera. She cobbled together $1,500 — “I put myself in hock for $6,000 for video equipment” — and started her own business circa 1976.
That business, The Casting Directors, based in North Miami, thrived for decades. Miller’s last credit on the IMDb database was casting for the 2008 Hindilanguage Bollywood film “Dostana.”
BEST ROLE: MOM
Her lasting legacy on her son, who worked as an assistant director and in other roles in the local film industry and is now in real estate, may outlast even the memories of “Miami Vice.”
“She instilled upon me the way to be a good human being. She was a single mom, raising a kid the best way she could. And growing up in the film industry, as crazy as it was, she still was able to guide me in the right directions. Her vision and her discipline instilled upon me a way of getting things done right. That’s really what she passed off to me,” Barone said.
“She was a very strong woman,” he said. “Took no BS from anybody. But I also saw generosity from her. That was just amazing. She was a complete giver and brought the best out in people. She gave everyone a chance and those that listened appreciated it the best.”
SURVIVORS
In addition to her son and his wife Kathy Leon Barone, Miller’s survivors include her sister Lenore Dacey and niece Ericka Dacey. A virtual celebration of life on April 2 will be private.
Howard Cohen: 305-376-3619, @HowardCohen