Early Life
She was born in Bukovina, Austria-Hungary (of Romanian Gypsy origin as mentioned in Sexus) as either Juliet Smerth or Juliet Smerdt, the daughter of Wilhelm and Frances Budd Smerth. She emigrated with her family to the United States and arrived there on July 10, 1907, aged five.
She would reside in New York City for much of the rest of her life, excepting a tour of Europe and stints in Paris.
She attended public school in New York. In Sexus, Henry Miller writes that June claimed she graduated from Wellesley College, but in Nexus, he writes that she never finished high school. Kenneth Dick, after interviewing June, quotes her as saying "My formal education amounted to about three and a half years of High School. I was working on a scholarship to Hunter College." Somewhere around 1917–1919, she went to work as a taxi dancer at Wilson's Dancing Academy (later, in 1931, renamed the Orpheum Dance Palace) in Times Square.
Read more about this topic: June Miller
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be the major institution through which children pass en route to adulthood.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)