Bill Miller --- "Mr Ocean Liner" --- is a rock star in the world of ocean liners! He is not only a dynamic and engaging lecturer packed with passion, but is the author of over 75 sensational books on ships and maritime history & travel. Audiences come back again and again to attend Bill's talks, over 30 in number, beginning with The Floating Palaces to contemporary cruise ships. His vivid narration and unique style draws folks in and then transports them back to a bygone era of shipboard elegance and style.
MR OCEAN LINER is a biographical salute that tells the story of Bill Miller's life, often in his own words, from early childhood days on the Hoboken waterfront, mostly watching the great liners sail along the Hudson River. We also hear of his early writings, his first books and then his success as a prolific author and lecturer. We also take an intimate look at his dual career as a school teacher, a career that spanned over 30 years. Personal as well as touching, MR OCEAN LINER is set against a backdrop of classic ocean liner photos and memorabilia, all from Bill's personal collection. There is also vintage film contributed by Mark B. Perry and which includes footage of the likes of the Queen Mary, Independence, United States, America, Nieuw Amsterdam and Andrea Doria --- to name a few.
Sail under the Verrazano Bridge and into New York harbor with a bird's eye Queen Victoria Bridge view and narration from Bill Miller.
Guest appearances include Cunard Line Commodore Bernard Warner, Entertainment Director Ray Rouse, Entertainment staff such as Amanda Reid and Thomas Quinones, Broadway producer Steven Rivellino and ocean liner collector Richard Faber --- and many others. Filmed onboard the Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria as well at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, in Hoboken, New Jersey and in the United Kingdom, there is also a personal view of Bill's amazing ocean liner paintings and ship model gallery in his New Jersey home.
Bonus features include Director's Commentary with Bill Miller, images from the Premiere onboard Queen Mary 2, plus outtakes and additional interviews.
ABOUT BILL MILLER (“Mr. Ocean Liner”)
Bill Miller is considered an international authority on the subject of ocean liners & cruise ships. This includes those great ships of the past, those “floating palaces,” as well as the current generation of cruise ships, the “floating resorts”. Called “Mr. Ocean Liner,” he has written over 65 books on the subject: from early steamers, immigrant ships and liners at war to other titles on their fabulous interiors, in post card form and about the highly collectible artifacts from them. He has done specific histories of such celebrated passenger ships as the United States, Queen Mary, Rotterdam, France, Queen Elizabeth 2, Costa Victoria, Super Star Leo and Crystal Serenity.
In all, he has also written over 1,000 articles for newspapers, magazines and nautical journals & newsletters. He even has his very own ocean liner quarterly, the Millergram. He has made nearly 300 voyages to date: Atlantic crossings, tropical cruises, coastal runs and even trips on container cargo ships and exotic banana boats. He has appeared in some three dozen video & television series, both in the USA, Britain, Europe and Australia, including Castles of the Sea, The Floating Palaces, The Superliners, Inside the World of a Cruise Ship, Disasters at Sea and Deco: Age of Glamor. He has also appeared on The Today Show, CBS Evening News, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America and many other news broadcasts. He has been guest lecturer aboard over 50 different liners, sailing with the likes of Crystal Cruises, Cunard, Carnival, Holland America, Princess, Radisson-Seven Seas, Saga Cruises and others. Miller was a public school teacher, in middle school and for social studies, for 32 years. He was named “Teacher of the Year” in 2002.
A native of Hoboken, New Jersey, the once busy port just across the Hudson River from New York City, Miller was named Outstanding American Maritime Scholar in 1994, received the United States Maritime Preservation Award and also the Ocean Liner Council's Silver Riband Award, both in 2004. Also, he has been chairman of the Port of New York Branch of the World Ship Society, serves on the selection committee for the American Maritime Hall of Fame, created the passenger ship database for the Ellis Island Museum and currently serves as Adjunct Curator of Ocean Liner Studies at Manhattan's South Street Seaport Museum. He has also organized a 14-week college course on liners, helped to create & then served as historian at the US Merchant Marine Museum and has written commissioning books for three brand new cruise ships. His private collection includes 4,000 books on ships, over 15,000 photos and some 900 miniature ship models, most of them being passenger ships. In early 2006, Miller had four new books, all of them about liners, in the works and has been guest lecturer aboard the brand new Queen Mary 2, the largest liner yet built, on no less than 15 voyages.
ABOUT ROBERT NEAL MARSHALL (Producer/Director)
Robert Neal Marshall is proud to be working with Maritime Historian and Author Bill Miller as Co-Curator of “Cinematic Passages: The Ocean Liner on Screen" for Lincoln Center Film Society, under the guidance of Program Director Richard Peña and Director of Development Tom Michel.
When not working as producer/director/actor, Robert is a casting associate with Emmy Award winning casting director Pat Moran, C.S.A in Baltimore, Maryland. Recent projects include regional casting for GAME CHANGE starring Julianne Moore, Directed by Jay Roach and VEEP starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, directed by Armando Iannucci, both for HBO. Other productions include multiple films for Jack Lieb Productions in Chicago and Regina Ziegler Productions in Berlin, Germany. Stage productions & tour management include FRIED CHICKEN & LATKES starring Rain Pryor and AFTER ALL starring Tony Award nominated actress Anita Gillette.
As a member of SAG, AFTRA and Actors’ Equity, Robert has worked both in front and behind the camera as well as on stage. Lead roles include FDNY Captain Jay Jonas in the Emmy Nominated COUNTDOWN TO GROUND ZERO for the History Channel, Captain Richard Phillips in SOMALI PIRATE TAKEDOWN for Discovery Channel, and as Principal Snelgrove in AWESOME 80’S PROM Off-Broadway for Ken Davenport.
After graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Film Department, Robert worked in London’s West End as Assistant to late producer Richard Armitage on several hit shows, including ME AND MY GIRL with Robert Lindsay & Emma Thompson and HIGH SOCIETY with Natasha Richardson. While in London, Robert produced and directed the successful West End debut of “IS THERE LIFE AFTER HIGH SCHOOL?” at the Donmar Warehouse.
His musical RUMPELSTILTSKIN’S DAUGHTER (originally inspired when Robert was a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors’ Lab) has received excellent reviews from the Assembly Rooms at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to Theatre IV, the State Children’s Theatre of Virginia. A recent mounting as part of the Earl’s Court Festival in London is bringing new attention to his joyful adaptation of Diane Stanley’s award winning illustrated book.
For the past three years Robert has enjoyed much time at sea as a Guest Lecturer on board Queen Mary 2 with the Cunard Line's award-winning Insights® Enrichment Programme. His topics on film and theatre include a retrospective of the Newsreels with rare color footage of the D-Day invasion in Normandy and the Liberation of Paris captured by his Grandfather as a newsreel cameraman during WWII. Robert’s documentary DVD THREE QUEENS-AN INTERNATIONAL RENDEZVOUS, released in 2008 to coincide with the final journey of the QE2, is available from various distributors as well as on board the Cunard liners. His recent documentary “MR. OCEAN LINER” about the life and times of maritime historian and author Bill Miller proudly joins these ranks and makes its Lincoln Center and New York City premiere as part of “Cinematic Passages: The Ocean Liner on Screen" at the new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
Background Photos Courtesy Bill Miller Collection
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