Film Actor at Age of Nine

Wanganui Chronicle, 3 October 1947, Page 7

Film Actor at Age of Nine

A young man of wide experience is Peter Miles, world traveller, linguist, and film star—at the age of nine. The engaging youngster has the leading juvenile role In the Charles K. Feldman-Lewis Milestone production of John Steinbeck's “The Red Pony,” a Technicolour film by Republic Studios. Peter—whose real name is Gerald Perreau—was born on April 1, 1938, in Tokyo. His father, a French national, represented a Paris firm in Japan

When war in Europe seemed imminent, Peter s parents left Japan with him shortly after his birth. Peter’s earliest recollections are of France during the Nazi occupation. When thc Germans marched into Paris, Peter and his mother fled to relatives in Normandy. By the end of 1940, Peter’s father had been invalided out of the French Army, and made arrangements to take his family to the United States. The Germans were not permitting any able-bodied Frenchmen to leave France, but he was given a passport, after long delays because of his own ill health. They sailed on a freighter, and came to Hollywood shortly after arriving in the United States.