Dorthy Parker Martini

MC 2000

Geoff Miller

Los Angeles Magazine , started in 1960, extolled the virtues of a city which, for all its Hollywood glamour, has always felt inferior to intellectual New York. Miller, a child of the city, showed Angelenos what they could be proud of, promoting its property, its art market, its stunning geography and its staggering philanthropy.

He knew Los Angeles intimately and loved it unapologetically, and where Dorothy Parker famously dismissed it as 72 suburbs in search of a city, he lauded it as collection of villages that fit together perfectly. His promotion of the city became a self-fulfilling prophesy. As the magazine expanded, landing on every star's coffee table, LA changed from a dozy studio town surrounded by orange groves into a sophisticated high-rise city full of international designer boutiques and cosmopolitan restaurants.

He also promoted sales by using the ready pool of star beauty previously featured only in fan magazines. One of his favourite stories concerned a photoshoot of Farrah Fawcett Major, then at the height of her fame. Certain the Charlie's Angels star would disapprove of his favourite image from the shoot (her posing on all fours in a swimsuit) he was surprised to discover that the salacious picture was in fact her favourite too. "That's it!" she exclaimed joyously, later using it as a career boosting poster.

He was equally surprised when he discovered in the mid-Sixties that he had employed the cult film director Terry Gilliam, then an unpromising employee in a local advertising agency who was contributing to San Francisco surfing magazines. "An early photographer and cartoonist was a California beach boy turned hippie," Miller wrote in the magazine's 40 anniversary issue, "later to gain fame – much to our astonishment – as a member of Monty Python, and then as a highly respected filmmaker."

George Geoffrey Miller was born August 1 1936 in Salt Lake City, and moved with his family to Beverly Hills as a small child. The second of two sons of businessman Edward Miller and his wife, the former Rosemary Conlon, a porcelain artist, he graduated from the city's Loyola high school. At 13 he was altar boy at Elizabeth Taylor's 1950 wedding to Conrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr in the Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills.

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