HARRY M. MILLER – JANUARY 1934 – JULY 2018
Sadly, New Zealand
born entertainment entrepreneur Harry M. Miller, passed away this last
week. The following is a small extract
from my eBook “Australia’s Best Prison
Stories” about his life and the time he served within the New South Wales
Prisons.
His company brought international acts to the southern
hemisphere including artists such as Judy Garland, Louie Armstrong, Sammy Davis
Jnr, Ella Fitzgerald, Chubby Checker, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones and bands
including Herman’s Hermits, the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones. I went to the first Rolling Stones concert
when they performed in Australia which was held at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney.
During our courtship before we were married, I also took my wife Margaret to
the Beach Boys concert which was also held at the Hordern Pavilion in
Sydney. Both concerts were sensational
and were major milestones leading to a hugely successful career for Harry M
Miller.
He strengthened his prominence by collaborating many
concerts and theatrical promotions, possibly the most successful being the
Australian stage productions of Hair, that ran from 1969 to 1972, during which
he was acclaimed for having discovered the 16 year old American singer Marcia
Hines, a show I saw twice, also Jesus Christ Superstar from 1972 to 1976 and
The Rocky Horror Show from 1974.To this day Miller accredits Hair and Jesus
Christ Superstar as his greatest accomplishments. His long list of rock stars
included the very famous Joe Cocker and Dusty Springfield, and he acted as an
agent and manager for news worthy celebrities of which Lindy Chamberlain was
possibly the most prominent, however his client base has included Judy Moran,
the wife of the slain Melbourne underworld figure Lewis Moran, Gai Waterhouse,
Maggie Tabberer, Deborah Hutton, Alan Jones and Stuart Diver, the only survivor
of the 1997 Thredbo landslide.
In 1971 Miller established himself as the largest breeder
of Simmental cattle in the Southern Hemisphere, a project that he loved and
held his attention up until 1989. At
one stage he became a director of the Australian icon airline Qantas. Harry M
Miller received the highest accolade when he was appointed the organiser of the
Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations for Australia in 1977.
My father once told me, “It’s only those people that
don’t do anything that don’t make mistakes”. Harry M Miller was most certainly
a “doer”. He was a highly innovative man who became part of Australian
entertainment history, having been described as audacious, self-confident, a
broker and not afraid to go past the accepted boundaries.
On 28th August 1979 he created Computicket,
the first ever computerized ticket service for main events in Australia however
just six months after its inception, due to the lack of cash flow, the company
went into receivership on 12th February 1997. It was the collapse of Computicket that set
law enforcement into a frenzy. Some call
it the “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. Harry M
Miller was a dynamo of entertainment, promotion and management and an example
of innovative, entrepreneurial distinction within this country, yet for some
reason we must do all we can to seize the tall poppy and cut it down.
To read more about
Harry M. Miller’s life, his time spent within the New South Wales Prisons, and
to read the hand written note he sent my brother Phillip following his release
from Cessnock Corrective Centre, read my eBook “Australia’s Best Prison Stories”, available through this website
or Amazon.
Peter T. Egge
