Hi everyone it's Xebs, On June 1st, 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.
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 died Friday night at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica after a battle with lung cancer, his friend, noted showbiz author Tom Weaver, announced.
He was 96.
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