Phil Silvers
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Phil Silvers (May 11, 1911 – November 1, 1985) was an American entertainer and comedy actor.
His best-known work is The Phil Silvers Show, a 1950s sitcom set on a US Army post in which he played Sergeant Bilko; the show was also often referred to by this name. He won a Tony Award for Top Banana in 1952 (it was turned into a film in 1954). The show's chief writer, Nat Hiken, was TV's first writer-producer, and Hiken helped set a high comic tone for the show through his inventive plots and snappy comedic repartee for the characters.
Silvers, interviewed before his death in 1985, revealed one of his secrets: “I’m an impatient comedian. And I feel the audience is as impatient as me.”
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Silvers was the youngest of eight children in a Russian Jewish family. His father was one of the workers on the early New York skyscrapers. Silvers started entertaining at age 11, when he would sing in theaters when the projector broke down (a common occurrence in those days). Two years later, he left school to sing professionally, before appearing in vaudeville as a stooge. Some say that he was born with the name Phillip Silversmith but there is no documentary evidence to suggest this.
Silvers then landed work in short films, burlesque houses, and on Broadway, where he made his debut in the short-lived show Yokel Boy. The critics raved about Silvers, who was hailed as the bright spot in the mediocre play. He then wrote the revue High Kickers, until he went to Hollywood to star in films.
He made his film debut in Hit Parade of 1941 (1940) (his previous appearance as a pitch man in Strike Up the Band was cut). Over the next two decades, he appeared in character roles for MGM, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, in such films as Lady Be Good, Coney Island, Cover Girl, and Summer Stock. When the studio system started collapsing, he then turned to television and more stardom in the role of Sgt. Ernie Bilko.
Throughout the 1960's, he appeared in films such as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He also guested on various variety shows such as The Carol Burnett Show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and The Dean Martin Show.
He famously starred as a guest in one of the famed British Carry On films, Follow That Camel (1967), as a Sergeant Bilko character in a spoof of the Foreign Legion films. Peter Rogers employed him to ensure the Carry On films' success in America.
His salary was £30,000, the largest Carry On salary ever, only later met by the appearance of Elke Sommer in Carry On Behind (1975). Despite his appearance in the film, he didn't ensure the film's success on either side of the Atlantic.
Famed voice actor Daws Butler employed an impression of Silvers as the voice of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Hokey Wolf and also used the same voice in numerous cartoons for Jay Ward. Furthermore, the premise of The Phil Silvers Show was the basis for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Top Cat.
Silvers was very ill in the last few years of his life, even though he continued work into the early 1980s in film and TV, including a cameo appearance on Happy Days as the father of "Jenny Piccolo" (played by his real-life daughter Cathy Silvers). He died in 1985 of a heart attack at the age of 74.
In 2003 "The Phil Silvers Show" was [voted Best Sitcom] in the BBC guide to television comedy. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted #42 on the list of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Dick Van Dyke, who made his TV debut on "Bilko," says he "was always fascinated with Phil's sense of timing. Incredible."
Stage credits
- 1939 Yokel Boy
- 1947 High Button Shoes
- 1951 Top Banana
- 1960 Do Re Mi
- 1972 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Filmography
- Ups and Downs (1937) (short subject)
- 'Here's Your Hat'' (1937) (short subject)
- The Candid Kid (1938) (short subject)
- Strike Up the Band (1940) (scenes deleted)
- Hit Parade of 1941 (1940)
- The Wild Man of Borneo (1941)
- The Penalty (1941)
- Tom Dick and Harry (1941)
- Ice-Capades (1941)
- Lady Be Good (1941)
- You're in the Army Now (1941)
- All Through the Night (1942)
- Roxie Hart (1942)
- My Gal Sal (1942)
- Footlight Serenade (1942)
- Tales of Manhattan (1942) (scenes deleted)
- Just Off Broadway (1942)
- Coney Island (1943)
- A Lady Takes a Chance (1943)
- Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)
- Cover Girl (1944)
- Take It or Leave It (1944)
- Something for the Boys (1944)
- Diamond Horseshoe (1945)
- Don Juan Quilligan (1945)
- A Thousand and One Nights (1945)
- If I'm Lucky (1946)
- Summer Stock (1950)
- Top Banana (1954)
- Lucky Me (1954)
- Something's Got to Give (1962) (unfinished)
- 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962)
- It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
- A Guide for the Married Man (1967)
- Follow That Camel (1967)
- Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968)
- The Boatniks (1970)
- Hollywood Blue (1970) (documentary)
- The Strongest Man in the World (1975)
- Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
- The Chicken Chronicles (1977)
- Hey, Abbott! (1978) (documentary)
- The Cheap Detective (1978)
- Racquet (1979)
- The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980)
- There Goes the Bride (1980)
External links
- ["The Phil Silvers Show" a complete website]
- [Brief biography]
- [You'll Never Get Rich: The Bilko Story (BBC Radio)]
- [Phil Silvers' Gravesite]
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