Film & TV / Theatre & dance / Music
Michael Dunn
1934–1973 · actor, singer
Oscar-nominated actor and singer with dwarfism, raised in Dearborn and schooled in Detroit, best remembered as Dr. Loveless in The Wild Wild West.
- Born
Shattuck, Oklahoma- Died
London, England
aged 38- Birth name
- Gary Neil Miller
- Detroit years
- 1938–1960
- Field
- Film & TV, Theatre & dance, Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Michael Dunn was born Gary Neil Miller in Oklahoma and moved with his family to Dearborn when he was four. A precocious child who read at three and played the piano well, he won the 1947 Detroit News Spelling Bee for Wallaceville School in Wayne County. He attended Redford High School in Detroit from 1947 to 1951 and then entered the University of Michigan just before turning 17. After leaving college in 1956 he came back to Michigan, took summer classes at the University of Detroit in 1957, and was working as a professional singer in Ann Arbor when he entered Detroit's St. Bonaventure Monastery in February 1958, a stay that proved brief. He then pursued the stage in New York, earning a Tony nomination for The Ballad of the Sad Café and an Academy Award nomination for Ship of Fools (1965). Television made him famous as the villain Dr. Miguelito Loveless in The Wild Wild West. He died in London in 1973, at 38.
Highlights
- Won the 1947 Detroit News Spelling Bee
- Attended Detroit's Redford High School, 1947–1951
- Tony nomination for The Ballad of the Sad Café
- Oscar nomination for Ship of Fools (1965)
- Recurring villain Dr. Loveless in The Wild Wild West
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1947–1951
Redford High School (site)
Demolished · 1921–2007
Detroit public high school on Grand River Avenue that he attended; it closed in 2007 and was demolished in 2012, with the land sold to Meijer.
Studied here · 1957
University of Detroit Mercy (McNichols Campus)
Jesuit university, then the University of Detroit, where he took summer classes in 1957.
Related place · 1958
St. Bonaventure Monastery
Capuchin friary on the east side (home of the Solanus Casey Center and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen), which he entered briefly in February 1958.