| Name |
Phil Harris |
| Height |
|
| Naionality |
American |
| Date of Birth |
24-June-1904 |
| Place of Birth |
Linton, Indiana, U.S. |
| Famous for |
Singing |
Phil Harris was an American singer, songwriter, jazz musician, actor, and comedian. Though successful as an orchestra leader, Harris is remembered today for his recordings as a vocalist, his voice work in animation (probably most famous later in his career for his roles as bears, one being Baloo in Disney's The Jungle Book, and as Little John in Disney's Robin Hood). He also voiced Thomas O'Malley in Disney's The Aristocats. Harris was also a pioneer in radio situation comedy, first with Jack Benny, and then in a series in which he co-starred with his wife, singer-actress Alice Faye in eight years.
Harris was born in Linton, Indiana, but grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and identified himself as a Southerner (his hallmark song was "That's What I Like About the South"). His upbringing accounted for both his trace of a Southern accent and, in later years, the self-deprecating Southern jokes of his radio character. The son of two circus performers, Harris's first work as a drummer came when his father, as tent bandleader, hired him to play with the circus band. Harris began his music career as a drummer in San Francisco, forming an orchestra with Carol Lofner in the latter 1920s and starting a long engagement at the St. Francis Hotel. The partnership ended by 1932, and Harris led and sang with his own band, now based in Los Angeles. Phil Harris also played drums in the Henry Halstead Big Band Orchestra during the mid-1920s.
In 1931, Lofner-Harris recorded for Victor. After Harris recorded for Columbia in 1933, he recorded for Decca in 1935. From December 1936, through March 1937, he recorded 16 sides for Vocalion. Most were hot swing tunes that used a very interesting gimmick; they faded up and faded out with a piano solo. These were probably arranged by pianist Skippy Anderson.
On September 2, 1927, he married actress Marcia Ralstone in Sydney, Australia; they had met when he played a concert date. The couple adopted a son, Phil Harris, Jr. (b. 1935), but they divorced in September, 1940.
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 next produced Flying Down to Rio, which started the successful careers of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Additionally, he appeared in Thunder Across the Pacific (1951), alongside Forrest Tucker and Walter Brennan, during the same year, 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.
