Merle Miller - Plain Speaking

Plain Speaking

His postwar career as a television script writer and novelist was interrupted by the advent of Senator Joseph McCarthy and Miller's inclusion on the "Blacklist." He did not re-enter TV until the late 50s and early 60s, during which time he was hired by Robert Alan Aurthur, a screenwriter, director and TV producer, to write the script for a proposed series on ex-President Harry Truman. In 1962, he spent hundreds of hours with Truman both at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, but all three of the major networks weren't interested in the series and turned it down. Miller felt that perhaps the time wasn't right; that many people were not aware of the greatness of the man; that it was possible the country wasn't ready to look back at the Truman years. He also felt one of the reasons it was never shown on television, even as late as 1962, was because he had been a blacklisted writer.

Robert Alan Aurthur, who was present during the filming and interviewing of Truman later said, "...an image I can easily evoke...in that brief time when we knew and worked with Harry Truman, is any moment when Merle Miller walked into a room or office where Harry Truman was waiting...if Truman did not ignore the rest of us completely...for Merle, always a smile, always an inside greeting that had to do with a couple of fellas from Missouri and Iowa...both were from the Midwest; both had strong mothers, weak eyes...a boyhood and lifelong devotion to books and music, total dedication to the truth, and a sense of history which encompasses an uncanny ability to relate past events, great and small, not with 20-20 hindsight or fashionable revisionism, but purely in their own terms as they happened."

Miller didn't know quite what to do with the interviews, some on tape and some taking up four full-sized file cabinets. He wanted to write a book about Truman, but he didn't want it to be a biography. But then Truman died and he was asked to appear on National Television and tell some Truman stories, some of which he had been entertaining friends with over the years. Someone at the station suggested he should write a book making use of some of the stories. He still had the tapes and the mountains of notes he had made after each conversation, and so he went home and put together a thirty page proposal. It was turned down by at least eight publishers before it was picked up by G.P.Putnam Sons.

In 1974, when the book was finally published it was titled Plain Speaking, which is exactly what the book is about. It is a book of conversations between Miller and the 33rd President of the United States as well as others who knew Truman over the years. Aurthur said, "No one will ever study or write about the time of Truman again without a bow of gratitude to Merle Miller. Never has a President of the United States, or any head of state for that matter, been so totally revealed, so completely documented...."

In October of 1974, on a stop in Independence promoting the book, Miller was presented the key to the city by Mayor Richard King, who stated: "You captured the spirit of Harry S. Truman and President Truman respresents the spirit of Independence." While there Miller was interviewed by the editor of a local newspaper and asked if he had had any scathing criticism of his treatment of the Truman tapes. "Only minor criticism," Miller replied. "One of the controversial points was Mr. Truman's interpretation of the meeting with MacArthur at Wake Island. I'm satisfied that the account Mr. Truman gave me is correct."

With regard to any criticism of the book, Miller had this to say in the Preface to Plain Speaking. "Truman told it the way he remembered it. So as I think Mr. Truman would have said, the hell with the purists. There are already hundreds of books and there will be hundreds more to clear up those small details that Mr. Truman and his friends may have misremembered...."

The book received generally positive reviews, although one critic--Dr. Robert Ferrell of Indiana University--has questioned the authenticity and accuracy of some of the statements that Miller attributed to Truman.

Within a short time of publication, Plain Speaking was listed as number one on the New York Times best-selling list where it remained for over a year. It stayed in print, either in hard or soft cover for many years and, as late as 2004, was published as a "Classic Bestseller" by Black Dog and Leventhal.

With the publication of Plain Speaking a new vein in Miller's talent was discovered and in succession he wrote two best-selling biographies, Lyndon, a Biography of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Ike the Soldier, a biography of General Dwight David Eisenhower. He had conducted scores of interviews with political figures, cabinet members, relatives and friends of the late President Eisenhower,as well as completed all the research with the intention of writing a second volume to be titled Ike the President, but died just after finishing the first volume Ike the Soldier.

Miller died on June 10, 1986, in Danbury Hospital in Connecticut, from peritonitis following surgery to remove a ruptured appendix.

Merle Miller Special Collections containing all of his taped interviews, research material, notes and correspondence are housed at three presidential libraries in Missouri, Texas and Kansas, as well as the University of Iowa and Boston University. They are all open and available to the public.