Actress and writer Kate Phillips died 18 April 2008. Born Kay Linaker in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, on 19 July 1913, she changed her name when she married singer and writer Howard Phillips (who was later an NBC television executive) during World War II (at the time, she was serving as a USO hostess and writing for Voice of America). As an actress, she appeared on Broadway and in more than 50 movies in the 1930s and ’40s, usually in supporting roles. She’ll be best remembered as a co-writer of the 1958 horror film The Blob. After retiring from Hollywood, she became a college professor, and was the chairman of film studies at New Hampshire’s Keene State College from 1980 until she retired from that profession in 2006.
While working on the script for The Molten Meteor with Theodore Simonson in 1956, Phillips referred to the creature as “the blob,” and the producers took her lead, renaming the film.
“Both Steve McQueen and I were to receive $150 plus 10 percent of the gross,” Phillips said in an interview for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “Neither one of us got the percentage—and the film and its remake have earned millions—but I got an important writing credit and Steve became a star.”
She is survived by her son, Bill; her daughter, Regina Paquette; and four grandchildren (her husband predeceased her).