Denny Miller was born in Bloomington, Indiana, where his father, Ben Miller, was a physical education instructor at Indiana University. He and his brother, Kent, began playing basketball almost from the day they were born. The Miller family left Bloomington when Denny was in the fourth grade. He and his brother played basketball in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Baldwin, New York, before the family moved to Los Angeles. It was at University High School in Los Angeles where Denny and Kent came to the attention of coach John Wooden. They were given full-ride scholarships to UCLA. The Miller brothers played together at UCLA for one year, and their father joined the faculty of UCLA. In his senior year, while working as a furniture mover to pay for school, Denny was discovered on Sunset Boulevard by a talent agent, who signed him with MGM. His first role was a bit part in Some Came Running (1958), which was filmed in Madison, Indiana. Denny said, "I was the only one who came running. I came running to tell Dean Martin that somebody was in town to shoot him!" He became the first blond Tarzan in Tarzan, the Ape Man (1959)), a low-budget quickie that lifted most of its footage from earlier Johnny Weissmuller movies. MGM had him under contract for 20 months; in that time he worked 8 weeks as "Tarzan". After that he did guest spots on a number of TV series, finally becoming a regular on Wagon Train (1957) as Duke Shannon (his name was then Scott Miller). In 1965-66 he starred (as Denny again) with Juliet Prowse in Mona McCluskey (1965).