A Ski Bum Blazed the Trail in Sports Filmmaking

Mr. Miller sold the film business in 1989 and later abandoned his role in producing and narrating the films. But his roadshow model never stopped. This season, the company that still bears his name did 152 screenings in 88 cities with its latest film, “Warren Miller’s Line of Descent.” It sold 305,000 seats, up 6% from last year.

The brand has survived despite shifting trends in snow sports, several sales of Warren Miller Entertainment (which at one point battled Mr. Miller in court) and business decisions made by the filmmaker that even he questioned.

“You don’t enter the ski filmmaking business to make money, at least not with me running the show,” Mr. Miller wrote in his 2016 autobiography “Freedom Found.”

The longevity of the Warren Miller theater tour is surprising too because of the avalanche of competing video producers, from massive marketers like Red Bull to everyday skiers and snowboarders armed with GoPros, camera drones and YouTube accounts.

“We get that question a lot: How does this still work?” says Andy Hawk, managing director of Boulder, Colo.-based Warren Miller Entertainment.

The arrival of a Warren Miller film each year is a tradition that has continued over generations in some ski and snowboard communities. “It’s as much a rock concert as it is a ski movie for a lot of people,” Mr. Hawk says.

Five crews and hosts hit theaters throughout the fall. The title sponsor of this year’s film is

Volkswagen

; other sponsors include travel companies and equipment manufacturers. Ticket sales, though, remain the primary source of revenue, Mr. Hawk says. The movies get a digital and DVD release but only after the season’s theatrical tour is over.

Into the 1960s, when Mr. Miller was still shooting and editing himself, he crisscrossed the country in a station wagon with his skis, “often filming during the day before showing the film at night,” he wrote. In those days, he hosted every screening and narrated the films live, introducing them with the theme song to “Dragnet”—which he played on a reel-to-reel tape recorder to avoid licensing fees.

The scale of the movies grew along with his filmmaking team, and in the early ‘80s he partnered with a rock concert producer to expand the business.

Mr. Miller’s film tours created a mini-economy for local groups. In Connecticut, the Hartford Ski Club booked his films at the Bushnell theater starting in the 1950s. Over the course of about 17 years, those annual ticket sales allowed the club to pay off the mortgage on the ski lodge it owns at the Mad River Glen resort in Vermont, says club historian Mark Vining.

The ski industry was booming in the ‘60s and ’70s as Mr. Miller documented the rise of extreme skiing on the slopes, with new shooting venues, sponsors and revenue sources. He offered promotional films to fledgling resorts, sometimes accepting payment in the form of real estate on the mountains.

He sold the company in 1989 to his son, Kurt Miller, and Kurt’s partner, Peter Speek. They increasingly sought big sponsors from outside the ski industry. “Beer and airline money,” Mr. Speek recalls. “That upset Warren because he was a purist and a rabble rouser. It was a pact with the devil, and Warren was always about the purity of being the ultimate ski bum.”

Amid pressure from media competitors like the X Games, Mr. Miller also chafed at the rock music that encroached on the droll narration and majestic symphonic music he preferred in his movies. One of the snow-doc business’s biggest barriers to entry—the hefty cost of film stock and camera gear—fell with the advent of digital video. Still, Warren Miller was an institution and continued to draw top athletes and filmmakers. “We were at the top of the mountain, so we always had the best people,” Mr. Speek says.

Mr. Miller stopped writing and narrating the films after the company was sold in 2002 to

Time
Inc.,

whose magazine roster included SKI magazine. In 2007, a Swedish publishing group, Bonnier, bought Warren Miller Entertainment. In 2009, WME sued a production company that had used Mr. Miller’s narration in a film. An ensuing arbitration established that Mr. Miller could use his voice and likeness outside of ski movies.

In 2013, Warren Miller Entertainment was sold to Active Interest Entertainment, its current owner, which rebuilt a relationship with the founder and his family. Mr. Miller appeared in the 2016 release “Warren Miller’s Here, There & Everywhere,” in which he reflected on his career.

Says Mr. Hawk, “Every year we struggle to come up with a good title, and we realize that if we put ‘Warren Miller’s’ in front of it, it’ll work.”

Write to John Jurgensen at john.jurgensen@wsj.com