Queens to Scranton

Jason Miller was born John Anthony Miller Jr. on April 22, 1939, in Long Island City, Queens, to John Anthony Miller Sr., an electrician, and Mary Claire Collins, a special education teacher. He was an only child with primarily Irish Catholic and some German heritage. The family left New York in 1941 and settled in Scranton, where Miller would spend his formative years in the city’s parochial school system.

At St. Patrick’s High School, a nun named Sister Celine of the Immaculate Heart of Mary taught him public speaking, debating, and rhetoric. Miller later described his early school years more bluntly, saying he had “specialized in athletics and delinquency.” He graduated from the University of Scranton in 1961 on an athletic scholarship, winning first place in the Jesuit Play Contest for a one-act called The Winners.

Catholic University and New York

Miller entered Catholic University of America in 1962 for graduate work in drama, where he met and married Linda Gleason, daughter of Jackie Gleason, in 1963. He earned a master’s degree and taught drama and English at Archbishop Carroll High School during his studies, though he later claimed the university dismissed him for “never attending classes, never taking tests and never getting the girls back to their dormitory by 10 o’clock.” They had three children together, Jennifer, Jason Patric, and Jordan, before divorcing in 1973.

The years after graduate school were lean. Miller took odd jobs as a messenger, truck loader, truck driver, and welfare investigator while pursuing acting in New York. He sold blood on the Bowery and collected unemployment between Off-Off-Broadway roles and soap opera parts. One early credit took him back to Scranton, where he played Queen Victoria’s private secretary in Victoria Regina at Marywood College.

Off-Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway

Three one-act plays by Miller were produced Off-Off-Broadway in 1967, and he published a collection of poetry called Stone Step in 1968. His New York acting debut came in 1969 with Pequod, an off-Broadway production. The following year, Nobody Hears a Broken Drum, a play about the Molly Maguires, was produced Off-Broadway. Pennsylvania later selected it as the state’s “millennium play” and awarded it a Gold Medal.

In 1971, Miller met producer Joseph Papp and director A.J. Antoon at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater. He had started writing his next play the year before, during a dinner theater stint in Fort Texas, drawing on his 1950s basketball years at St. Patrick’s High School in Scranton. Papp produced it.

That Championship Season

The play, only Miller’s second full-length work, centers on a reunion of a championship high school basketball team. Produced by Joseph Papp and directed by A.J. Antoon, it premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theater on May 2, 1972, and ran for 144 performances. Clive Barnes of the New York Times praised Miller’s “perfect ear and instinct for the rough and tumble profanity of locker-room humor.”

The production moved to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, opening September 14, 1972, with a cast that included Charles Durning, Richard Dysart, Paul Sorvino, and Michael McGuire. It ran for 700 performances. The awards came quickly: the 1972 New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright, then in 1973 both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Miller said the play was “born out of my own sense of personal failure.”

The Exorcist and Film Work

The same year he won the Pulitzer, Miller played Father Damien Karras in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He turned down the lead in Taxi Driver in 1976 for The Nickel Ride instead. Miller continued acting in film through the next two decades, reprising his Exorcist role in The Exorcist III in 1990 and playing Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian in Rudy in 1993.

In 1982, Miller directed and wrote the screen version of That Championship Season, filming it in Scranton with Robert Mitchum, Paul Sorvino, Martin Sheen, Stacy Keach, and Bruce Dern. The film was not commercially successful. A 1999 television version, directed by Paul Sorvino, cast Vincent D’Onofrio, Terry Kinney, Tony Shalhoub, and Gary Sinise.

Return to Scranton

Miller had come back to Scranton in the mid-1980s to bring That Championship Season to film, and by the late 1980s he had taken up permanent residence. He became artistic director of the Scranton Public Theatre, where he directed productions of Blithe Spirit, Harvey, California Suite, Crimes of the Heart, and The Lion in Winter. In 1986, he co-founded the Pennsylvania Summer Theatre Festival with Bob Shlesinger.

His own performing continued. In 1992, he starred as Henry Drummond in a revival of Inherit the Wind, staged in courthouses and Philadelphia City Hall with Malachy McCourt. He created a one-man show called Barrymore’s Ghost in 1997 and toured it from Pittsburgh to Seattle before bringing it off-Broadway and to Philadelphia in 2000.

Miller had a fourth child, Joshua John Miller, with actress Susan Bernard, and both Joshua and Jason Patric became actors. At the time of his death, Miller was developing a film script about Jackie Gleason’s life for Showtime and collaborating with Joshua on a play called Me and My Old Man.

Death at Farley’s

On May 13, 2001, Miller collapsed at Farley’s Eatery and Pub in Scranton while rehearsing for the role of Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple for the Pennsylvania Summer Theatre Festival. He was rushed to Mercy Hospital, where he was pronounced dead of a heart attack at 62. He was survived by his sons Jason Patric, Joshua, and Jordan, and his daughter Jennifer. His girlfriend, Scranton lawyer Dana Oxley, was with him at the time.

Courthouse Square

Paul Sorvino, Miller’s friend and original Championship Season cast member, spent years sculpting a bronze bust of Miller. It was unveiled in late 2008 at the Piazza dell’Arte, 525 Biden Street at Courthouse Square in Scranton. Miller’s remains were never buried, and some of his ashes were sealed inside the sculpture’s head. At the 2011 Broadway revival of That Championship Season, his son Jason Patric performed in the cast, and Miller’s ashes were placed on stage.