By Dan Balkin
A young ski patroller at Vail, Co, sidled up next to Warren Miller on a cat track and said, “My dad hates you.” Why? We’ll get back to that. Legendary ski filmmaker Warren Miller made 750 films between 1950 – 1988. Like a rock band on an endless tour, in his prime he appeared annually in 130 cities, personally narrating his humorous and thrilling ski films before packed auditoriums. One of his 130 appearances each year was at Buffalo’s beautiful Kleinhans Music Hall. If you are from WNY and a bit wrinkled like me, you might have been there too. Warren – fittingly – was a native of Hollywood, CA. In another stroke of magic, Walt Disney was on his paper route as a kid. He picked up on Disney’s bravado, realizing that a trailblazer takes chances. He made a transaction as a teenager that famous investor Warren Buffet would applaud: In 1937 he traded $2 and a pair of roller skates for a pair of pine skis. He graduated from high school shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, enrolled at USC, and joined the Naval Officers Training Program. During WWII, he served as a naval officer in the Pacific – but the pine skis and love of skiing did not set his life on a conventional path, but on a ski trail where he followed his winter bliss. He was, at heart, a ski bum. He bought his first movie camera in 1949 with a $100 bonus he received upon his post WWII naval discharge.
After WWII, Warren began his ski bum life at Sun Valley, Idaho. He lived in a camper in the parking lot; often literally hunted for his dinner; worked as a ski instructor; and dabbled in his first forays at filmmaking. Once Warren was in the prime of his career, he would perennially bring his latest movie and rib-tickling narration to Detroit’s Ford Auditorium. In Detroit, his show was always the night before Thanksgiving, and a dad who presided over a 60-year-old family business making radiators for the local auto industry, would bring his young son to watch. The dad smiled as he saw his son join in with the laughter, the cheering, and the ooohs and aaahs as the crowd was entertained by Warren Miller’s immense talent for filmmaking and humorous storytelling. In one of Miller’s earlier films, he touted the splendor of a new resort called Vail, CO (Vail was founded, with only a few lifts, in 1962). He told his audience “Go there before everyone else discovers it.” The family immediately booked a trip there for Christmas week and would often go there on vacation. The boy, when he was14, befriended ski patrollers at Vail and studied to get a First Aid Certificate back home in Detroit. On future family vacations, the patrollers allowed him to accompany them as a volunteer. The boy became a young man, was bright and hard-working, and earned an engineering degree in three years. He was working in the family radiator business and was now making solo trips to Vail. After a particularly beautiful Christmas vacation in Vail that was filled with, in his own words, “Powder snow, moonlit nights, skiing with great friends and dinner parties,” the young man returned to his job at the family radiator plant. He sat down with his father and said “Pop, I can’t do it. I’m going to join the ski patrol in Vail and find some other work in CO during the off season.” The Dad: “If I only hadn’t taken you to so many Warren Miller films.” Returning to our articles first sentence, Warren Miller asked, “Why does your dad hate me?” The young patroller then invited Warren to take a chair lift ride together and told Warren his story about ditching his dad’s radiator works for Colorado sunshine and powder snow. As they got off the lift, the young man asked Warren, “D’ya mind if I ski down behind you?” Warren Miller nodded yes. As they pushed off, the young patroller grinned broadly and said, “By the way Warren, thanks a lot for messing up my life.”