Phil Harris
{{Short description|American actor and musician (1904–1995)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2025}}
{{About|the entertainer|other people named Phil Harris|Phil Harris (disambiguation)}}
{{More citations needed|date=September 2020}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Phil Harris
| image = Phil Harris 1956.JPG
| alt =
| caption = Harris in 1956
| birth_name = Wonga Philip Harris
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1904|6|24}}
| birth_place = Linton, Indiana, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1995|8|11|1904|6|24}}
| death_place = Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.
| resting_place = Forest Lawn Cemetery, Cathedral City, California, U.S.
| nationality = American
| other names = {{flatlist|
- Wonga Harris
- Wonga P. Harris
- Curly
}}
| occupation = {{hlist|Actor|bandleader|comedian|singer}}
| years_active = 1920s–1991
| spouse = {{plainlist|
- {{marriage|Marcia Ralston|1927|1940|end=divorced}}
- {{marriage|Alice Faye|1941}}
}}
| children = 3
}}
Wonga Philip Harris (June 24, 1904 – August 11, 1995) was an American actor, bandleader, entertainer and singer. He was an orchestra leader and a pioneer in radio situation comedy, first with The Jack Benny Program, then in The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show in which he co-starred with his wife, singer-actress Alice Faye, for eight years. Harris is also noted for his voice acting in animated films. As a voice actor, he voiced Baloo in The Jungle Book (1967), Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats (1970), Little John in Robin Hood (1973), and Patou in Rock-a-Doodle (1991). As a singer, he recorded a number one novelty hit record, "The Thing" (1950).
Early life and career
Harris was born in Linton, Indiana, on June 24, 1904,{{Cite web |title=Phil Harris Songs, Albums, Reviews, Bio & More... |url=https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mn0000283832 |access-date=2024-06-07 |website=AllMusic |language=en}} but grew up in Nashville, Tennessee,{{cite news|title=Radiography|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/380322473/?|access-date=27 March 2018|newspaper=Los Angeles Times|date=20 September 1936|page=62}} and identified himself as a Southerner. His hallmark song was "That's What I Like About the South". He had a trace of a Southern accent and in later years made self-deprecating jokes over the air about his heritage. His parents were circus performers. His father, a tent bandleader, gave him his first job as a drummer with the circus band.{{cite news|title=Phil Harris, Comic, Bandleader|work=The Press-Enterprise|date=August 13, 1995|location=Riverside, California|page=B5}}
His unusual first name "Wonga", is said to derive from a Cherokee word meaning "messenger of fleet" or, perhaps more accurately translated, "fast messenger".
Harris began his music career as a drummer in San Francisco, in the mid-1920s playing drums in the Henry Halstead Big Band Orchestra. He formed an orchestra with Carol Lofner in the latter 1920s and started a long engagement at the St. Francis Hotel.{{efn|Billed as "Carol Laughner and his Palm Court Orchestra", they played in Melbourne, Australia from November 1926{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article245446547 |title=Advertising |newspaper=The Herald (Melbourne) |issue=15,450 |location=Victoria, Australia |date=24 November 1926 |access-date=25 August 2022 |page=8 |via=National Library of Australia}} to October 1927.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article243931315 |title=Advertising |newspaper=The Herald (Melbourne) |issue=15,721 |location=Victoria, Australia |date=7 October 1927 |access-date=25 August 2022 |page=7 |via=National Library of Australia}}}} In the 1930s, Lofner and Harris recorded swing music for Victor, Columbia, Decca, and Vocalion. The partnership ended by 1932, and Harris led a band in Los Angeles for which he was the singer and bandleader.
File:PhilHarrisHighandMightyTrailerScreenshot1954.jpg]]
In 1933, he made a short film for RKO called So This Is Harris!, which won an Academy Award for best live action short subject. He followed with a feature-length film, Melody Cruise. Both films were created by the same team that produced Flying Down to Rio, which started the careers of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. He also starred in I Love a Bandleader (1945) with Leslie Brooks. Here he played a house painter who gets amnesia, then starts to lead a band. He recorded Woodman, Spare That Tree (by George Pope Morris and Henry Russell) in 1947. His nickname was "Old Curly". In 1950, Harris recorded a hit novelty song, the million-seller, "The Thing", which hit number one on the U.S. chart.{{cite book
| first= Joseph
| last= Murrells
| year= 1978
| title= The Book of Golden Discs
| edition= 2nd
| publisher= Barrie and Jenkins Ltd
| location= London
| page= [https://archive.org/details/bookofgoldendisc00murr/page/50 50]
| isbn= 0-214-20512-6
| url-access= registration
| url= https://archive.org/details/bookofgoldendisc00murr/page/50
}} Additionally, he appeared in The Wild Blue Yonder (1951), alongside Forrest Tucker and Walter Brennan. He made a cameo appearance in the Warner Bros. musical, Starlift, with Janice Rule and Dick Wesson, and was featured in The High and the Mighty with John Wayne in 1954.
Harris made two feature films with Jack Benny for Paramount Pictures, Man About Town (1939) and Buck Benny Rides Again (1940). Both films also featured Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.
{{external media
| audio1 = [http://jack_benny.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2008-09-29T22_22_13-07_00 Best of Jack Benny Spotlight Podcast! October 4, 1936 – Phil Harris's First Show]
| audio2 = [https://web.archive.org/web/20081207000813/http://otrperk.com/philharris.cgi The Fitch Bandwagon/The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, 102 episodes]
Radio
In 1936, Harris became musical director of The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny singing and leading his band, with Mahlon Merrick writing much of the show's music. When Harris exhibited a knack for snappy one-liners, he joined the cast, portraying himself as a hip, hard-drinking Southerner whose good nature superseded his ego. He gave the others nicknames, such as "Jackson" for Jack Benny. Addressing a man as "Jackson" or sometimes "Mr. Jackson" became popular slang in the early 1940s.{{Cite book|author=Dalzell Victor |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mAdUqLrKw4YC&q=slang+jackson&pg=PA1082|title=The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: J-Z|last2=Partridge|first2=Eric|date=2006|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-415-25938-5|language=en}} His signature song was "That's What I Like About the South". Many of his vocal recordings were comic novelty "talking blues", similar to the songs of Bert Williams, which are sometimes considered a precursor to rap.{{citation needed|date=November 2017}}
In 1942, Harris and his band joined the U.S. Merchant Marine and served for 16 weeks.
In 1946, Harris and wife Alice Faye began co-hosting The Fitch Bandwagon, a comedy-variety program that followed the Jack Benny show on Sunday nights. On The Fitch Bandwagon and its later incarnation as The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, Harris played a vain, stumbling husband, while Faye played his sarcastic but loving wife. Gerald Nachman has written that Harris was a soft-spoken, modest man off the air. In On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio John Dunning wrote that Harris's character made the show popular.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HqhoAgAAQBAJ&dq=%22Phil+Harris+Alice+Faye+Show+Situation+Comedy%22&pg=PA543 |last=Dunning |first=John |title=On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio |section=Phil Harris/Alice Faye Show |date=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press | location=New York, NY | isbn=978-0-19-507678-3 |pages=543–545 | edition=Revised | access-date=6 June 2024}} The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show appeared until 1954. Harris continued to appear on Jack Benny's show from 1948 to 1952.
Recording career
Harris was recording songs as early as 1931.{{Cite book|last=Brooks|first=Tim|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lf7NTiZVvy0C&q=novelty+songs+phil+harris&pg=PA146|title=Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919|year=2010|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-09063-9|language=en}} He sang with a deep baritone voice. Songs by Harris include the early 1950s novelty song, "The Thing". The song describes the hapless finder of a box with a mysterious secret and his efforts to rid himself of it.
Later career
In 1956, Harris appeared in the film Good-bye, My Lady. He made numerous guest appearances on 1960s and 1970s television series, including The Steve Allen Show, the Kraft Music Hall, Burke's Law, F Troop, The Dean Martin Show, The Hollywood Palace, and other musical variety programs. He appeared on The American Sportsman which took celebrities on hunting and fishing trips around the world.
Harris worked as a voice actor for a number of Disney animated films, providing the voice of Baloo the bear in The Jungle Book (1967), Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats (1970), and Little John in Robin Hood (1973).{{Cite book|last=Arnold|first=Mark|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sz1KDwAAQBAJ&q=phil+harris|title=Frozen in Ice: The Story of Walt Disney Productions, 1966–1985|date=2013|publisher=BearManor Media|language=en}} In 1989, Harris was considered to reprise his role as Baloo in the animated series TaleSpin, but he was ultimately replaced with Ed Gilbert.[http://www.animationsource.org/talespin/en/questions/%26numg=158 Voice actor decisions – Baloo and Kit] Jymn Magon, co-creator of TaleSpin who initially cast Harris for the role of Baloo: "his age was a factor. He didn't have the slick, con man timing anymore. I loved working with Phil, so I was distraught to inform management that he just wasn't going to work out for 65 episodes. (Besides, we had to chauffeur him to and from Palm Springs for the recording sessions – a 4 hour round trip!!)", Animationsource.org Harris's final film role was in Rock-a-Doodle (1991), where he voiced Patou, the Basset Hound.{{Cite book|last=McCall|first=Douglas L.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ALmJCgAAQBAJ&q=rock-a-doodle|title=Film Cartoons: A Guide to 20th Century American Animated Features and Shorts|year=2015|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-1-4766-0966-9|language=en}}
Harris spent time in the 1970s and early 1980s leading a band that appeared often in Las Vegas, often on the same bill with bandleader Harry James.{{Cite book|last=Levinson|first=Peter J.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I8zhBwAAQBAJ&q=phil+harris|title=Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James|date=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-028317-9|language=en}}
Personal life
On September 2, 1927,{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146462767 |title=Phil's Luck |newspaper=Table Talk |issue=3095 |location=Victoria, Australia |date=1 September 1927 |access-date=25 August 2022 |page=22 |via=National Library of Australia}} Harris married actress Marcia Ralston (then known as Mascotte Ralston) in Melbourne, Australia, where his band had a long engagement. The couple adopted a son, Phil Harris Jr. (1935–2001). Harris and Ralston divorced in September 1940.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article184530941 |title=Marcia Ralston Gets a Divorce |newspaper=The Telegraph (Brisbane) |location=Queensland, Australia |date=18 September 1940 |access-date=25 August 2022 |page=17 |via=National Library of Australia}}
Harris and Alice Faye married in 1941; it was a second marriage for both (Faye had been married briefly to singer-actor Tony Martin) and lasted 54 years, until Harris's death.
As a Democrat, Harris supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election.Motion Picture and Television Magazine, November 1952, p. 33, Ideal Publishers
Harris was a lifelong friend of singer and actor Bing Crosby. He appeared on telecasts of Bing's Pro-Am Golf Tournament from Pebble Beach, California, {{Citation needed|date=September 2020}} and appeared in an episode of ABC's short-lived sitcom The Bing Crosby Show. After Crosby died in 1977, Harris replaced him as commentator for the annual Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament.
Harris was a resident and benefactor of Palm Springs, California, and was active in many local civic organizations.{{cite book|last=Henderson|first=Moya|title=Images of America: Palm Springs|author2=Palm Springs Historical Society|publisher=Arcadia Publishing|year=2009|isbn=978-0-7385-5982-7|location=Charleston, SC|page=102}}
Death and legacy
Harris died of a heart attack at age 91 in his Rancho Mirage home on the night of August 11, 1995.
{{cite news
|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-13-mn-34742-story.html
|title=Benny Show's Phil Harris Dies at 89
|work=Los Angeles Times
|date=August 13, 1995
|access-date=July 27, 2022
|quote=Phil Harris, the bandleader who became famous by portraying himself as a flashy, hard-drinking musician on the old Jack Benny radio show, died. … He was 89.}} He is interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Cathedral City, California.{{cite book|last1=Brooks|first1=Patricia|title=Laid to Rest in California: a guide to the cemeteries and grave sites of the rich and famous |chapter=Chapter 8: East L.A. and the Desert |page=245 |year=2006|publisher=Globe Pequot Press|location=Guilford, CT|isbn=978-0762741014|last2=Brooks |first2=Jonathan |oclc= 70284362}}
Harris was a benefactor of his birthplace of Linton, Indiana, establishing scholarships in his honor for promising high school students, performing at the high school, and hosting a celebrity golf tournament in his honor every year. Harris and Faye donated most of their show business memorabilia and papers to Linton's public library. Harris was inducted into the Indiana Hall of Fame.{{Citation needed |date=December 2021}}
In 1994, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.{{Cite web|title=The Brightest Stars from New-York to Los Angeles|url=https://palmspringswalkofstars.com/|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121013165655/http://www.palmspringswalkofstars.com/web-storage/Stars/Stars%20dedicated%20by%20date.pdf|archive-date=October 13, 2012|website=Palmspringswalkofstars.com}}
Filmography
= Film =
| class="wikitable"
!Year !Title !Role !Notes |
| 1929
|Drummer in band at The Boiler |Uncredited |
| rowspan="2" |1933
|Alan Chandler | |
| So This Is Harris!
|Himself |Short |
| 1936
|Himself |Short |
| rowspan="2" |1937
|Himself | |
| Harris in the Spring
|Himself | |
| 1939
|Ted Nash | |
| rowspan="2" |1940
|Himself | |
| Dreaming Out Loud
|Peter Atkinson | |
| 1945
|Phil Burton | |
| 1950
|Mike Stanley | |
| rowspan="3" |1951
|Himself |Uncredited |
| The Wild Blue Yonder
|Sgt. Hank Stack | |
| Starlift
|Himself | |
| 1954
|Ed Joseph | |
| rowspan="3" |1956
|Steve Blair | |
| Good-bye, My Lady
|A.H. "Cash" Evans | |
| Saturday Spectacular: Manhattan Tower
|Billy |Television film |
| 1960
|The Big Sell |Salesman | |
| 1963
|Ray Jay Fox | |
| 1964
|Chic Wymore | |
| rowspan="2" |1967
|MacElwaine | |
| The Jungle Book
|Baloo (voice) |
| 1970
|Thomas O'Malley (voice) |
| rowspan="2" |1971
|Tom Jones: Movin' Up the River |Himself | |
| The Gatling Gun
|Luke Boland | |
| 1973
|Little John (voice) |
| 1991
|Patou (voice) |
=Television=
| class="wikitable"
!Year !Title !Role !Notes |
| 1957
|This Is Your Life |Himself | |
| 1964
|Clarence Simmons |Episode: "The Only Place Where They Know My Name" |
| 1966
|Himself |Episode #1.7 |
| 1966-1970
|Himself |8 episodes |
| 1967
|Flaming Arrow |Episode: "What are you doing after the massacre" |
| 1968
|Phil Stanley |Episode: "Lucy and Phil Harris" |
| 1969
|Himself |Episode #1.15 |
| 1970
|Himself |Episode #2.19 |
| 1975
|Himself |Episode #2.43 |
| 1978
|Will Fields |Episode: "Carnival/The Vaudevillians" |
| 1978
|NBC Salutes the 25th Anniversary of the Wonderful World of Disney |Himself |Documentary |
| 1980
|Harvey Cronkle |Episode: "Y' Gotta Have Heart" |
| 1982
|Himself |Episode #14.10 |
| 1984
|Himself | |
| 1985
|The Disney Family Album |Himself |Episode: "Voice Actors" |
Radio appearances
| class="wikitable" | ||
| Year | Program | Episode/source |
|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Suspense | Death on My Hands{{cite journal|title=Those Were the Days|journal=Nostalgia Digest|date=Winter 2013|volume=39|issue=1|pages=32–41}} |
Partial discography
- The Thing. RCA, Victor. 1950.{{Cite book|last=Ruhlmann|first=William|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QNuSAgAAQBAJ&q=phil+harris+the+thing+record&pg=PA109|title=Breaking Records: 100 Years of Hits|date=2004-08-02|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-94719-4|language=en}}
- That's What I Like About The South. RCA, Victor. 1947 20–2471.
- Loaded Pistol, Loaded Dice. RCA, Victor. 1947.
- Hambone. RCA, Victor. 1952. 47-4584.{{Cite magazine|title=Going Strong|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ih4EAAAAMBAJ&q=phil+harris+hambone&pg=PA27|magazine=Billboard|date=1952-03-08|language=en}}
- The South Shall Rise Again. RCA, Victor. 1959 LSP-1985.
- Harris starred as Baloo in the 1967 animated film The Jungle Book and sang the song "The Bare Necessities". He also performed with Louis Prima on the song "I Wan'na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)".
Notes
{{Notelist}}
References
{{Reflist}}
Bibliography
- Steen, Ivan D. (2001). [https://archive.today/20130216052836/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2874700132.html "Harris, (Wanga) Phillip ("Phil")".] The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. Charles Scribner's Sons.
External links
{{commons category}}
- {{allmusic}}
- {{IMDb name}}
- [http://www.speakingofradio.com/interviews/harris-phil Phil Harris 1988 Interview with Chuck Schaden]
- [https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/phil-harris Phil Harris Interview] at NAMM Oral History Collection (1985)
- {{Find a Grave|id=2980}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Phil}}
Category:20th-century American comedians
Category:20th-century American male actors
Category:20th-century American male singers
Category:20th-century American singers
Category:American jazz bandleaders
Category:American male comedians
Category:American male film actors
Category:American male radio actors
Category:American male voice actors
Category:American big band bandleaders
Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Cemetery (Cathedral City)
Category:Comedians from California
Category:Comedians from Indiana
Category:Male actors from Palm Springs, California
Category:Male actors from Indiana
Category:Male actors from Tennessee
Category:Military personnel from Indiana
Category:Musicians from Nashville, Tennessee
Category:Musicians from Palm Springs, California
Category:People from Linton, Indiana