There are two actors named Peter Miles. This is unusual, inasmuch as the various guilds and so forth do their best to prevent that from happening. In most cases, if you’re trying to figure out which person has a name, you’re looking at, say, a director and a cinematographer, or an actor and a writer, or something along those lines. That is not the case here. There is Peter Miles, 1928-2018, a British actor with a career of the Standard British Acting Career sort including a prominent appearance on Doctor Who. And then there is Peter Miles, 1938-2002, also credited as Richard Miles, an American actor who started as a child, had a brief movie career and a brief television career then went on to writing. One of those men wrote a movie called They Saved Hitler’s Brain. My choice was clear.

Peter Miles was actually born Gerald Richard Perreau-Saussine in Tokyo. The family then moved to Beverly Hills. All four children got into acting. In fact, Peter’s sister, Gigi Perreau, got her first job because their mother didn’t have a babysitter to leave her with when taking Peter to an audition. Peter didn’t get that job, but he did play Humphrey Bogart’s son in Passage to Marseille. He also played a bunch of love interests’ younger brothers. He is fifth-billed in The Red Pony although he was the main character, but he’s billed under Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum and, well, yeah.

From there, he had some minor television work. He was one of Perry’s clients. He was in two Dragnet episodes, both coincidentally starting with “The Big.” His last acting role was in 1962. And it’s not because a single episode of The Blue Angels couldn’t compete with the heady heights of Trigger, Jr. At least I don’t think that’s it. He moved into writing. The year after Straightaway, his final appearance, he released his first novel, That Cold Day in the Park, then made into a movie starring Sandy Dennis. The fourth movie directed by Robert Altman.

And, yes, They Saved Hitler’s Brain. I have never seen it. By all accounts, it is terrible. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be. Apparently, it’s a movie called Madmen of Mandoras but with twenty additional minutes of footage. Always a good sign. It seems they could make more money selling it to TV if the movie was longer. I’m sure Miles was consulted about the whole thing and was definitely okay with the horrific clickbaity title, though to be fair, he did write the movie that could be warped into a movie called They Saved Hitler’s Brain.

Peter Miles quit acting. He may have done more writing that doesn’t appear on my reference pages. And he became a teacher. In fact, he was president of the Burbank Teachers Association. He curated art shows. He was, to be honest, a great example of how to grow up from being a child star. No meltdowns that I know about. A decent career and external interests. I just wish he’d lived long enough to have been able to marry his partner, and not just because Wikipedia and IMDb are sketchy about telling you how long people were with partners they weren’t married to, which ignores the reality of long-term queer relationships.

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