What have we learned in our first 50 years of making ski movies? A skier can grow taller, wiser, crazier, richer, poorer, happier and sadder. A skier can grow a family, a business and gray hair-but a skier never has to grow up. Not all the way...

A casual observer might see it as a paradigm of the American dream, or perhaps the invention of a hyperactive imagination. But who could dream that high? Who in their wildest conception could believe it might come to this? Among the several implausible elements, these stand out: A self-proclaimed nomad. A borrowed camera. A lust for adventure. Ah, yes, that insatiable craving for untamed places and wilder deeds.

Now, 50 years after Warren Miller made his first feature-length ski movie, the company he founded on a whim now stands as a model of modern enterprise. Warren Miller Entertainment, Inc.-owned and operated for more than a decade by Miller's son, Kurt, and partner Peter Speek-is a far-ranging firm whose tentacles extend deep into international filmmaking and communication. Far from its shoestring origin, the company now circulates the Miller trademark in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Norway and France. More than 500,000 ski and snowboard enthusiasts view the movie each season.

In the 15 years since taking over the company, Kurt and Peter have successfully refined the film's image and sound quality, musical talent, range of exotic expeditions, level of athleticism and distribution. The Emmy-award-winning company has become an international media player, producing television specials, documentaries, commercial production and is pursuing other feature film projects. The company also boasts a lifestyle marketing division with numerous blue-chip accounts.

At one of the dozen or so showings Warren Miller arranged for his landmark film, he collected exactly $7 and a ski patrol button. Now, during the prime four-week period each autumn, the movie ranks Number 1 at the box office in per-screen average revenue against all Hollywood films.

As a teenage southern California surfer, Warren Miller once delivered newspapers to the home of Walt Disney. Now, the many films produced by the company he founded are distributed through Disney's Buena Vista Home Videos. The list of modern successes include this magazine, which won the 1998 Gold Ink Award as the best-printed, most visually effective consumer publication in North America. Along with a new, more lively version of the hallmark movie, each year seems to bring a fresh adventure into the world of media development. All this bears scant resemblance to the early footage Warren produced with a rudimentary camera while living in the parking lot at Sun Valley, Idaho, with a cohort named Ward Baker in a pull-along trailer that measured eight feet long by four feet high.

By then, Warren had the notion of producing ski movies for the film lecture circuit. "I had seen my first ski movie and I didn't think it was very good. But I realized the guy was making a living at it. I figured I could do at least as well."

He got his first 16 mm camera on a sort of lend lease deal from Chuck Percy, president of Bell and Howell, whom he'd met at dinner.

"I was making $125 a month teaching skiing and I couldn't afford to buy one. They made an arrangement for me to pay them out of earnings. Four years later, I finally paid it off."

During the winter of 1949-50, he found himself teaching at the new Squaw Valley, which opened with exactly one chairlift and two ropetows-the only chair in the Tahoe Basin and only the third in California. With this to recommend it, Squaw became the subject for the first Warren Miller ski movie.

"It was an hour and a half long, with the background music on a tape recorder. I recorded a friend who played an organ in church because I couldn't afford phonograph records."

Miller recalls he got paid for only half the showings that first year, counting the ski patrol pin. Nor did the fiscal pace accelerate anytime soon. Financial necessity also dictated the hugely successful format in which he narrated his own films. Warren's gravely tenor soon became one of the most recognizable voices in the nation. The infectious humor also was a product of need.

"Some of the early stuff was so bad I had to say crazy things to cover it up. I suppose I was fortunate to come into the business at the time I did. You could buy a good house in Aspen for $600, but nobody had $600. I don't know when things began to turn around, because I was concerned only about making the next movie.

"I always was under financed and when I had extra money, I'd make a film on spec. I made dozens of outside movies on horse racing, sailing, winemaking. Some lost money, but we always had a lot of fun."

His most exciting ski memory was a six-month stint spent traveling across three continents with Jean-Claude Killy to produce a series of TV shows. Warren never got paid.

Continuing this quest for adventure, the company's film crews search the mountains of seven continents each year in pursuit of the ultimate snow riding experiences. A half-century later, there's always another movie to be made. The audience is waiting.