Celebrity Biographies
William Phipps
He played numerous roles over the decades, although he is best known for one film, “Cinderella,” in which he did not appear on screen. William Edward Phipps died at the age of 96, in Santa Monica (California), on June 1, 2018, as a result of cancer.
Born on February 4, 1922, William Edward Phipps – full name of the actor – majored in accounting at the University of Charleston, Illinois. During World War II he served as a radio operator on various ships on the Pacific front. At the end of the fight he moved to Los Angeles, where he later studied acting at Actor’s Lab.
In this school he had a role in a play, but the shortest straw was played with a classmate who would star in the first session, while the other would take care of the afternoon session. He played the second, with such good fortune that the renowned actor Charles Laughton attended that performance, who was impressed by his work. He immediately recruited him to work with him in the theater.
He made his film debut alongside Robert Mitchum in Crossroads of Hate . But he gained popularity especially when Walt Disney himself came to see him to voice Prince Charming in Cinderella . Although he did not physically appear in the famous animated film, the company embarked on a tour to choose the voice of the protagonist, which was picked up by the media. The chosen one would have a date with him as a prize. “They gave me $100 and a limousine, with a driver so we could go wherever we wanted. Like her character, at midnight we take her back to her hotel. The driver left me at my residence a modest pension of seven dollars a week.
He lavished himself on low-budget westerns, such as Fort Osage or Rosa de Cimarron . He played Wash Perry, one of the residents of the town next to whom a Martian ship falls, in The War of the Worlds , 1953. That same year, the roundest of his career, he also faced aliens, as a sergeant of the army, in Invaders from Mars , by William Cameron Menzies , and played one of Mark Antony’s ( Marlon Brando ) servants, in Julius Caesar .
After the death of his wife in a car accident, William Phipps remarried, but his second marriage ended in divorce. In the latter part of his career he appeared in numerous series, such as Batman and Twilight Zone . In the late 1960s, he decided to temporarily leave the industry to retire to the island of Maui, in Hawaii. He returned in 1976 to take part in the series Eleanor and Franklin , where he played President Roosevelt. His last job was the romantic comedy Sordid Lives , where he was also a producer.