Actor Bill Phipps ('Five,' 'Twilight Zone') Dead at 96

[A Friend]

William Phipps, Voice of Prince Charming in 'Cinderella' and Sci-Fi
Movie Star, Dies at 96

10:27 AM PDT 6/3/2018 by Mike Barnes

William Phipps, the prolific character actor who starred in sci-fi
movies of the 1950s and provided the voice of Prince Charming in the
Disney classic Cinderella, has died. He was 96.

Phipps died Friday night at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica after a
battle with lung cancer, his friend, noted showbiz author Tom Weaver,
announced.

A contract player at RKO Radio Pictures, Phipps made his big-screen
debut in the Oscar best picture nominee Crossfire (1947), Edward
Dmytryk's film noir classic that revolves around an investigation into
the hate-crime murder of a Jewish man.

Weaver pointed out that as Hollywood began to pump out science-fiction
films in the 1950s, Phipps became one of the genre's first regulars.

He starred as a young poet, one of the five people on Earth to survive
a nuclear explosion, in Five (1951), then fought martians in The War of
the Worlds (1953) and Invaders From Mars (1953), a giant spider in
Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) and the Abominable Snowman in The Snow
Creature (1954).

Walt Disney himself heard Phipps' audition tape and hired him to play
Prince Charming opposite Ilene Woods in Cinderella (1950). The actor
said he was paid about $100 for two hours' work on an afternoon in
January 1949.

Later, when Disney promoted the animated movie with a nationwide
contest for young women — the winner would be brought to Hollywood for
a date with the voice of Prince Charming — Phipps, in white tie and
tails and top hat, and the lucky lady met in front of a live audience
on the stage of the Pantages during a coast-to-coast radio broadcast of
Art Linkletter's show.

According to Phipps, "They gave me (I think) $100 pocket money and a
limousine and a driver so we could go anywhere we wanted. We went to
Ciro's and the Mocambo, which were the two most famous places on the
Sunset Strip at the time, and we went to the Trocadero, too.

"At the end of the night, around midnight, the limousine driver and I
took her back to the Roosevelt Hotel, where she was staying. And then
the chauffeur took me back home — a rooming house we called the House
of the Seven Garbos, a home for fledgling actresses, where I lived in a
room in the basement for seven dollars a week! The next day I went to
the tuxedo rental place and turned in my stuff."

Phipps was born on Feb. 4, 1922, in Vincennes, Indiana. He and his
older brother, Jack, were raised in farm country in nearby St.
Francisville, Illinois, and learned to swim in the Wabash River.

Phipps performed in plays in high school and at Eastern Illinois
University, where he studied to become an accountant. He then decided
to pursue acting, heading to California in 1941.

After his brother was killed in World War II when his plane was shot
down in the South Pacific, Phipps enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served
as a radioman.

He returned to Hollywood following his discharge in 1945 and and used
the G.I. Bill to enroll at the Actors Lab. To make ends meet, he drove
a three-wheeled motorcycle as the delivery boy for Schwab's Pharmacy,
the famed hangout on Sunset Boulevard for young actors and movie execs.

Phipps starred in an Actors Lab production of Men in White, and in the
audience were actor Charles Laughton and Helene Weigel, wife of
playwright Bertolt Brecht, who were casting a Little Theater production
of Brecht's Galileo.

Phipps appeared in the Laughton-directed Galileo as well as other
Laughton stage productions, remaining friends with the actor and his
wife, Elsa Lanchester, until their deaths. (Weaver noted that it was
Phipps who convinced Laughton to cast Robert Mitchum as the homicidal
Southern preacher Harry Powell in the only credited movie he would
direct, 1955's The Night of the Hunter.)

After working with Mitchum, Robert Young and Robert Ryan in Crossfire
(he played the quiet soldier from Tennessee), Phipps became a regular
in low-budget Westerns at RKO, among them The Arizona Ranger and
Desperadoes of Dodge City, both released in 1948.

Phipps left the business in the late 1960s to live in Maui but returned
to portray Theodore Roosevelt in the 1976 ABC miniseries Eleanor and
Franklin, winner of 11 Emmy Awards. He then reprised the role in a
commercial for Maxwell House coffee.

Phipps portrayed a servant to Marlon Brando's Antony in Julius Caesar
(1954), was the French Impressionist painter Emile Bernard in Kirk
Douglas' Lust for Life (1956) and portrayed the old man Quentin in
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993).

He had a recurring role as Curly Bill Brocius on The Life and Legend of
Wyatt Earp and showed up on other TV shows like The Twilight Zone (the
1960 episode "The Purple Testament"), Perry Mason, Rawhide, 77 Sunset
Strip, Gunsmoke, F Troop, Batman, The Virginian and Mannix. IMDb lists
him with 226 acting credits.

Phipps' first wife died in an automobile accident, and his second
marriage ended in divorce. He spent his final years living in Malibu.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/william-phipps-dead-voice-prince-
charming-cinderella-sci-fi-movie-star-was-96-1116676