The famous Leslie Samuel Phillips CBE was an English actor, voice artist, and author. He achieved prominence in the 1950s, playing smooth, upper-class comic roles utilizing his Ding Dong and He-llo catchphrases.
Leslie Samuel Phillips was born on 20 April 1924 in Tottenham, London, England, the third child of Cecelia Margaret and Frederick Samuel Phillips, who worked at Glover and Main, manufacturers of cookers in Edmonton. Phillips has described his street as beyond the sonic reach of the Bow Bells but within the general footprint of cockneydom. In 1931, the family moved to Chingford, Essex, where Phillips attended Larkswood Primary School. Consequently, Phillips has described himself as both a cockney and an Essex boy. In 1935, his father died at 44, having suffered from a weak heart and oedema brought on by the filthy, sulphurous air of the factory.
After his father’s death, Phillips was sent to the Italia Conti Academy at his mother’s insistence. There, he attended drama, dance, and notably elocution to lose his cockney accent; at the time, a regional accent was considered an impediment to an aspiring actor. Phillips took time to refine his Received Pronunciation accent and later declared that the biggest elocution lessons came from mixing with people who sounded right, people in theatrical circles, and the officers’ mess during the war. He left school at 14 in 1938.
Phillips made his stage debut in 1937 as a wolf in Peter Pan alongside Anna Neagle at the London Palladium. In the 1938-39 season, he was promoted to the role of John Napoleon Darling, alongside Jean Forbes-Robertson as Peter and Seymour Hicks as Captain Hook. Acting allowed Phillips to earn extra money for his family, who had struggled financially after his father’s death.
Phillips made his first film appearance in the 1938 musical comedy Lassie from Lancashire. He made further uncredited appearances in Climbing High (1938) and The Mikado (1939), among the earliest films made at Pinewood Studios. Upon the 70th anniversary of the studios in 2006, Phillips considered himself one of the earliest actors to have worked there still alive and working. A minor part in Ealing Studios’ The Proud Valley (1940) afforded Phillips the chance to work alongside Paul Robeson, who he greatly admired.
In the early years of the Second World War, Phillips worked in the West End for Theatre Royal Haymarket for Binkie Beaumont and H. M. Tennent. The shows were frequently interrupted by air-raid sirens and Phillips later recalled that audiences would evaporate and head for cellars or Underground stations. Called up to the British Army in 1942, Phillips rose to the rank of lance-bombardier in the Royal Artillery. Due to his acquired upper-class accent,
Phillips was selected for officer training at Catterick and duly commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in 1943. In his autobiography, he would recall that his anti-aircraft battery destroyed numerous German V1 flying bombs launched against the UK during the period. He was transferred to the Durham Light Infantry in 1944 but was later declared unfit for service just before D-Day after being diagnosed with a neurological condition that caused partial paralysis. He was initially sent to a psychiatric hospital in error but was then sent to the correct facility for treatment.
Leslie Phillips died on November 7th, 2022 after a prolonged illness but his cause of death is yet to be made public. He died at the g of 98.
