Phil Harris
Encyclopedia
Harris and Faye married in 1941; it was a second marriage for both (Faye had been married briefly to singer-actor Tony Martin
) and lasted 54 years, until Harris's death. Harris engaged in a fistfight at the Trocadero
nightclub in 1938 with RKO studio mogul Bob Stevens; the cause was reported to be over Faye after Stevens and Faye had ended a romantic relationship. In 1942, Harris and his entire band enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and they served until the end of World War II
. By 1946, Faye had all but ended her film career. She drove off the 20th Century Fox
lot after studio czar Darryl F. Zanuck
reputedly edited her scenes out of Fallen Angel
(1945) to pump up his protege Linda Darnell
.
Originally a vehicle for big bands, including Harris' own, The Fitch Bandwagon became something else entirely when Harris and Faye's family skits made them the show's breakout stars. Coinciding with their desire to settle in southern California and raise their children---Phil Jr. (born 1935 and whom Harris had adopted while previously married), Alice (born 1942) and Phyllis (born 1944), The Fitch Bandwagon name disappeared when Rexall
became the program's sponsor in 1948; the show was renamed The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show
. By that time, it had become a full-fledged situation comedy featuring one music spot each for Harris and Faye.
Harris was the vain, language-challenged, stumbling husband, and Faye was his acid but loving wife on the air. Off the air, as radio historian Gerald S. Nachman has recorded, Harris was actually a soft-spoken, modest man. "But it was the 'Phil Harris' character," wrote radio historian John Dunning
(in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio), "that carried [the show]: his timing was exceeded by none, including [Jack] Benny himself. Like Benny, Harris played a character who in real life would be intolerable. That both men projected themselves through this charade and made their characters treasures of the air was a notable feat."
Young actresses Jeanine Roos and Anne Whitfield played the Harris' two young daughters on the air; unlike Ozzie and Harriet Nelson's two young sons, the Harris's real-life children did not seem to have any inclination to join their famed parents on the air. The series also featured Gale Gordon
as Mr. Scott, their sponsor's harried representative, and Great Gildersleeve
co-star Walter Tetley
as obnoxious grocery boy Julius Abruzzio. Elliott Lewis
--already a distinguished radio performer and producer/director--found himself in a comic role that would be long remembered, playing Frank Remley, a layabout guitarist whose mission in life seemed to be getting Harris into and out of trouble almost continuously; his "I know a guy . . ."---usually, referring to a shady character he'd enlist to help Harris out of a typical jam---became one of the show's catch-phrases.
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show ran until 1954, by which time radio had succumbed to television
. Harris continued to appear on Jack Benny
's show, along with his own, from 1948 to 1952. Because the Harris show aired immediately after Benny's on a different network (Harris and Faye were still on NBC, whereas Benny jumped his show to CBS in 1949), Harris would only appear during the first half of the Benny show; he would then leave the CBS studio and walk approximately one block to his own studio down the street, arriving just in time for the start of his own program. He was succeeded as Benny's orchestra leader in the fall of 1952 by Bob Crosby
.
. He made numerous guest appearances on 1960s and 1970s TV shows, including the Kraft Music Hall
, Burke's Law
, with the most memorable being as a college-educated, jive-talking horn-player in "Who Killed Billy Jo", The Dean Martin Show
, F Troop
, The Hollywood Palace
and other musical variety programs. He appeared on ABC
's The American Sportsman
hosted by Grits Gresham
, and later sports announcer Curt Gowdy
, which took celebrities on hunting
, fishing
or shooting
trips around the world.
Song hits by Harris included the early 1950s novelty song
, "The Thing
." The song describes the hapless finder of a box with a mysterious secret and his efforts to rid himself of it. Harris also spent time in the 1970s and early 1980s leading a band that appeared often in Las Vegas, often on the same bill with swing era legend Harry James
.
Harris was also a close friend and associate of Bing Crosby
and appeared in an episode of ABC's short-lived The Bing Crosby Show
sitcom. After Crosby died in 1977, Harris sat in for his old friend doing color commentary for the telecast of the annual Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament. Harris said of Crosby's death, "I have grown up to learn that God doesn't make mistakes. Today, I'm beginning to doubt that." An old episode of The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show began with Harris telling the story of how he once won the tournament.
for animated films, lending his distinctive voice to the Disney
animated features The Jungle Book
(1967) as Baloo
, The Aristocats
(1970) as Thomas O'Malley and Robin Hood
(1973) as Little John
(another bear).
The Jungle Book was his greatest success in the years following the end of his radio career. As Baloo
the Sloth Bear
, he sings one of the film's showstoppers, "The Bare Necessities," a performance that introduced Harris to a new generation of young fans who had no awareness of his radio fame. Harris also joined Louis Prima
in "I Wanna Be Like You," delivering a memorable scat singing
performance.
The Aristocats features Harris as alley cat Abraham de Lacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley, who joins in the film's showstopper, "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat," with Scatman Crothers
. In Robin Hood, Harris's Little John
sings the popular anti-Prince John tune "The Phony King of England."
In 1989, Harris briefly returned to Disney to once again voice Baloo, this time for the cartoon series TaleSpin
. He was later replaced by actor Ed Gilbert. His last animated film project was the 1991 Rock-a-Doodle
, directed by Don Bluth
, in which he played the friendly, laid-back Basset Hound
Patou .
, where Crosby also made his home. Harris was also a benefactor of his birthplace of Linton, Indiana, establishing scholarships in his honor for promising high school students, performing at the high school, and hosting a celebrity golf tournament in his honor every year. Harris and Faye donated most of their show business memorabilia and papers to Linton's public library.
in Palm Springs 1995 at age 91. Alice Faye died of stomach cancer three years later. Two years before his death, Harris was inducted into the Indiana Hall of Fame. Both Harris and Faye are interred at Forest Lawn-Cathedral City
in Riverside County, California. Phyllis Harris was last reported living in St. Louis (she had been with her mother at her father's bedside when he died), while Alice Harris Regan was reported living in New Orleans.
Harris remained grateful to radio for the difference it made in his professional and personal life. He was quoted as saying, "If it hadn't been for radio, I would still be a traveling orchestra leader. For 17 years I played one-night stands, sleeping on buses. I never even voted, because I didn't have any residence."
Episodes of The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show turn up frequently on compact-disc collections of old-time radio classics, both on their own sets and amid various comedy collections. At least half the surviving episodes of the show's final season include Harris's audience warmup routine, performed for ten minutes before the show was to begin recording. Many old-time radio historians (such as Nachman and Dunning) consider the show at its best to have stood the test of time, thanks to above-average writing (mostly by the team of Ray Singer and Dick Chevillat) and the two stars who executed it with impeccable timing.
Tony Martin (entertainer)
Tony Martin is an American actor and singer.-Career:Tony Martin was born on Christmas Day, 1913 as Alvin Morris in San Francisco, California to Jewish immigrant parents. He received a saxophone as a gift from his grandmother at the age of ten. In his grammar school glee club, he became an...
) and lasted 54 years, until Harris's death. Harris engaged in a fistfight at the Trocadero
Trocadero
The stylish connotations of the name "Trocadero" derive from the Battle of Trocadero in southern Spain, a citadel held by liberal Spanish forces that was taken by the French troops sent by Charles X, in 1823...
nightclub in 1938 with RKO studio mogul Bob Stevens; the cause was reported to be over Faye after Stevens and Faye had ended a romantic relationship. In 1942, Harris and his entire band enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and they served until the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. By 1946, Faye had all but ended her film career. She drove off the 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
lot after studio czar Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...
reputedly edited her scenes out of Fallen Angel
Fallen Angel (1945 film)
Fallen Angel is a 1945 black-and-white film noir directed by Otto Preminger, with cinematography by Joseph LaShelle, who had also worked with Preminger on Laura a year before. The film features Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Charles Bickford. It was the last film Faye made as a major...
(1945) to pump up his protege Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell
Linda Darnell was an American film actress.Darnell was a model as a child, and progressed to theater and film acting as an adolescent. At the encouragement of her mother, she made her first film in 1939, and appeared in supporting roles in big budget films for 20th Century Fox throughout the 1940s...
.
Originally a vehicle for big bands, including Harris' own, The Fitch Bandwagon became something else entirely when Harris and Faye's family skits made them the show's breakout stars. Coinciding with their desire to settle in southern California and raise their children---Phil Jr. (born 1935 and whom Harris had adopted while previously married), Alice (born 1942) and Phyllis (born 1944), The Fitch Bandwagon name disappeared when Rexall
Rexall
Rexall was a chain of North American drugstores, and the name of their store-branded products. The stores, having roots in the federation of United Drug Stores starting in 1902, licensed the Rexall brand name to as many as 12,000 drug stores across the United States from 1920 to 1977...
became the program's sponsor in 1948; the show was renamed The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, a comedy radio program which ran on NBC from 1948 to 1954, evolved from an earlier music and comedy variety program, The Fitch Bandwagon...
. By that time, it had become a full-fledged situation comedy featuring one music spot each for Harris and Faye.
Harris was the vain, language-challenged, stumbling husband, and Faye was his acid but loving wife on the air. Off the air, as radio historian Gerald S. Nachman has recorded, Harris was actually a soft-spoken, modest man. "But it was the 'Phil Harris' character," wrote radio historian John Dunning
John Dunning
John Dunning may refer to:* John Dunning , American writer of detective fiction* John Dunning * John Harry Dunning , British economist* John Dunning , American film editor...
(in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio), "that carried [the show]: his timing was exceeded by none, including [Jack] Benny himself. Like Benny, Harris played a character who in real life would be intolerable. That both men projected themselves through this charade and made their characters treasures of the air was a notable feat."
Young actresses Jeanine Roos and Anne Whitfield played the Harris' two young daughters on the air; unlike Ozzie and Harriet Nelson's two young sons, the Harris's real-life children did not seem to have any inclination to join their famed parents on the air. The series also featured Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon was an American character actor perhaps best remembered as Lucille Ball's longtime television foil—and particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television situation comedy, The Lucy Show...
as Mr. Scott, their sponsor's harried representative, and Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve , initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. Built around Throckmorton Philharmonic Gildersleeve, a character who had been a staple on the classic radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, first Introduced to...
co-star Walter Tetley
Walter Tetley
Walter Tetley , an American voice actor, was a child impersonator in radio's classic era, with regular roles on The Great Gildersleeve and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, as well as continuing as a voice-over artist in animated cartoons, commercials, and spoken-word record albums...
as obnoxious grocery boy Julius Abruzzio. Elliott Lewis
Elliott Lewis (radio)
Elliott Lewis was active during the Golden Age of Radio as an actor, producer and director, proficient in both comedy and drama. These talents earned him the nickname "Mr Radio"....
--already a distinguished radio performer and producer/director--found himself in a comic role that would be long remembered, playing Frank Remley, a layabout guitarist whose mission in life seemed to be getting Harris into and out of trouble almost continuously; his "I know a guy . . ."---usually, referring to a shady character he'd enlist to help Harris out of a typical jam---became one of the show's catch-phrases.
The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show ran until 1954, by which time radio had succumbed to television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. Harris continued to appear on Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
's show, along with his own, from 1948 to 1952. Because the Harris show aired immediately after Benny's on a different network (Harris and Faye were still on NBC, whereas Benny jumped his show to CBS in 1949), Harris would only appear during the first half of the Benny show; he would then leave the CBS studio and walk approximately one block to his own studio down the street, arriving just in time for the start of his own program. He was succeeded as Benny's orchestra leader in the fall of 1952 by Bob Crosby
Bob Crosby
George Robert "Bob" Crosby was an American dixieland bandleader and vocalist, best known for his group the Bob-Cats.-Family:...
.
After radio
After the show ended, Harris revived his music career. In 1956, he appeared in the film Good-bye, My LadyGood-bye, My Lady (film)
Good-bye, My Lady is a 1956 American film adaptation of the novel Good-bye, My Lady by James H. Street. The book had been inspired by Street's original story appearing in The Saturday Evening Post. As written, the story takes place in Mississippi, but was Hollywood changed to the state of Georgia,...
. He made numerous guest appearances on 1960s and 1970s TV shows, including the Kraft Music Hall
Kraft Music Hall
The Kraft Music Hall was a popular variety program, featuring top show business entertainers, which aired on NBC radio and television from 1933 to 1971....
, Burke's Law
Burke's Law
Burke's Law is a detective series that ran on ABC from 1963 to 1965 and was revived on CBS in the 1990s. The show starred Gene Barry as Amos Burke, millionaire captain of Los Angeles police homicide division, who was chauffeured around to solve crimes in his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud...
, with the most memorable being as a college-educated, jive-talking horn-player in "Who Killed Billy Jo", The Dean Martin Show
The Dean Martin Show
The Dean Martin Show is a TV variety-comedy series that ran from 1965 to 1974 for 264 episodes. It was broadcast by NBC and hosted by crooner Dean Martin...
, F Troop
F Troop
F Troop is a satirical American television sitcom that originally aired for two seasons on ABC-TV. It debuted in the United States on September 14, 1965 and concluded its run on April 6, 1967 with a total of 65 episodes. The first season of 34 episodes was filmed in black-and-white, but the show...
, The Hollywood Palace
The Hollywood Palace
The Hollywood Palace is an hour-long American television variety show that was broadcast weekly on ABC from January 4, 1964 to February 7, 1970. It began as a mid-season replacement for the short-lived Jerry Lewis Show, another variety show which had lasted only three months...
and other musical variety programs. He appeared on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's The American Sportsman
The American Sportsman
The American Sportsman was a television series from 1965 to 1986 on ABC which presented filmed highlights of hunting and/or fishing trips involving the program's hosts and celebrities. It was typically presented on Sunday afternoons, frequently following coverage of live sporting events...
hosted by Grits Gresham
Grits Gresham
Claude Hamilton "Grits" Gresham, Jr. was an internationally-known American sportsman, author, photographer and television personality who hosted ABC's The American Sportsman series from 1966-1979...
, and later sports announcer Curt Gowdy
Curt Gowdy
Curtis Edward "Curt" Gowdy was an American sportscaster, well known as the longtime "voice" of the Boston Red Sox and for his coverage of many nationally-televised sporting events, primarily for NBC Sports in the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:The son of a manager for the Union Pacific railroad,...
, which took celebrities on hunting
Hunting
Hunting is the practice of pursuing any living thing, usually wildlife, for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law...
, fishing
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....
or shooting
Shooting
Shooting is the act or process of firing rifles, shotguns or other projectile weapons such as bows or crossbows. Even the firing of artillery, rockets and missiles can be called shooting. A person who specializes in shooting is a marksman...
trips around the world.
Song hits by Harris included the early 1950s novelty song
Novelty song
A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music. The other two divisions...
, "The Thing
The Thing (song)
"The Thing" is a hit novelty song by Charles Randolph Grean which received much airplay in 1950.The most popular version of the song was recorded by Phil Harris on October 13, 1950 and released by RCA Victor Records as catalog number 20-3968. The record first reached the Billboard charts on...
." The song describes the hapless finder of a box with a mysterious secret and his efforts to rid himself of it. Harris also spent time in the 1970s and early 1980s leading a band that appeared often in Las Vegas, often on the same bill with swing era legend Harry James
Harry James
Henry Haag “Harry” James was a trumpeter who led a jazz swing band during the Big Band Era of the 1930s and 1940s. He was especially known among musicians for his astonishing technical proficiency as well as his superior tone.-Biography:He was born in Albany, Georgia, the son of a bandleader of a...
.
Harris was also a close friend and associate of Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
and appeared in an episode of ABC's short-lived The Bing Crosby Show
The Bing Crosby Show
The Bing Crosby Show is a 28-episode situation comedy television program starring crooner, film star, iconic phenomenon, and businessman Bing Crosby and actress Beverly Garland as a middle-aged couple, Bing and Ellie Collins, rearing two teenaged daughters during the early 1960s...
sitcom. After Crosby died in 1977, Harris sat in for his old friend doing color commentary for the telecast of the annual Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament. Harris said of Crosby's death, "I have grown up to learn that God doesn't make mistakes. Today, I'm beginning to doubt that." An old episode of The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show began with Harris telling the story of how he once won the tournament.
Animation
He worked as a vocalist and voice actorVoice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
for animated films, lending his distinctive voice to the Disney
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
animated features The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book (1967 film)
The Jungle Book is a 1967 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Released on October 18, 1967, it is the 19th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was inspired by the stories about the feral child Mowgli from the book of the same name by...
(1967) as Baloo
Baloo
Baloo is the fictional bear featured in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book from 1894 and The Second Jungle Book from 1895.-Name and species:He is described in Kipling's work as "the sleepy brown bear"...
, The Aristocats
The Aristocats
The Aristocats is a 1970 American animated feature produced and released by Walt Disney Productions in 1970 and stars Eva Gabor and Phil Harris, with Roddy Maude-Roxby as Edgar the butler, the villain of the story...
(1970) as Thomas O'Malley and Robin Hood
Robin Hood (1973 film)
Robin Hood is an 1973 American animated film produced by the Walt Disney Productions, first released in the United States on November 8, 1973...
(1973) as Little John
Little John
Little John was a legendary fellow outlaw of Robin Hood, and was said to be Robin's chief lieutenant and second-in-command of the Merry Men.-Folklore:He appears in the earliest recorded Robin Hood ballads and stories...
(another bear).
The Jungle Book was his greatest success in the years following the end of his radio career. As Baloo
Baloo
Baloo is the fictional bear featured in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book from 1894 and The Second Jungle Book from 1895.-Name and species:He is described in Kipling's work as "the sleepy brown bear"...
the Sloth Bear
Sloth Bear
The sloth bear , also known as the labiated bear, is a nocturnal insectivorous species of bear found wild within the Indian subcontinent. The sloth bear evolved from ancestral brown bears during the Pleistocene and shares features found in insect-eating mammals through convergent evolution...
, he sings one of the film's showstoppers, "The Bare Necessities," a performance that introduced Harris to a new generation of young fans who had no awareness of his radio fame. Harris also joined Louis Prima
Louis Prima
Louis Prima was a Sicilian American singer, actor, songwriter, and trumpeter. Prima rode the musical trends of his time, starting with his seven-piece New Orleans style jazz band in the 1920s, then successively leading a swing combo in the 1930s, a big band in the 1940s, a Vegas lounge act in the...
in "I Wanna Be Like You," delivering a memorable scat singing
Scat singing
In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.- Structure and syllable choice...
performance.
The Aristocats features Harris as alley cat Abraham de Lacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley, who joins in the film's showstopper, "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat," with Scatman Crothers
Scatman Crothers
Benjamin Sherman "Scatman" Crothers was an American actor, singer, dancer and musician known for his work as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man, and as Dick Hallorann in The Shining in 1980...
. In Robin Hood, Harris's Little John
Little John
Little John was a legendary fellow outlaw of Robin Hood, and was said to be Robin's chief lieutenant and second-in-command of the Merry Men.-Folklore:He appears in the earliest recorded Robin Hood ballads and stories...
sings the popular anti-Prince John tune "The Phony King of England."
In 1989, Harris briefly returned to Disney to once again voice Baloo, this time for the cartoon series TaleSpin
TaleSpin
TaleSpin is a half-hour American animated television series based in the fictional city of Cape Suzette, that first aired in 1990 as part of The Disney Afternoon, with characters adapted from Disney's 1967 animated feature The Jungle Book. The name of the show is a play on "tailspin", the rapid,...
. He was later replaced by actor Ed Gilbert. His last animated film project was the 1991 Rock-a-Doodle
Rock-A-Doodle
Rock-a-Doodle is a 1992 American animated re-telling of Edmond Rostand's comedy, Chantecler. This film was directed by Don Bluth, produced by Goldcrest Films for The Samuel Goldwyn Company, and originally released in the United States on April 3, 1992.-Plot:Chanticleer is a proud rooster whose...
, directed by Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
, in which he played the friendly, laid-back Basset Hound
Basset Hound
The Basset Hound is a short-legged breed of dog of the hound family. They are scent hounds, bred to hunt rabbits and hare by scent. Their sense of smell for tracking is second only to that of the Bloodhound....
Patou .
Honoring his roots
Harris was a longtime resident and benefactor of Palm Springs, CaliforniaPalm Springs, California
Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 37 miles east of San Bernardino, 111 miles east of Los Angeles and 136 miles northeast of San Diego...
, where Crosby also made his home. Harris was also a benefactor of his birthplace of Linton, Indiana, establishing scholarships in his honor for promising high school students, performing at the high school, and hosting a celebrity golf tournament in his honor every year. Harris and Faye donated most of their show business memorabilia and papers to Linton's public library.
Death and Legacy
Harris died of a heart attackMyocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in Palm Springs 1995 at age 91. Alice Faye died of stomach cancer three years later. Two years before his death, Harris was inducted into the Indiana Hall of Fame. Both Harris and Faye are interred at Forest Lawn-Cathedral City
Forest Lawn Cemetery (Cathedral City)
Forest Lawn Cemetery , renamed from Palm Springs Mortuary & Mausoleum in 2005, is a cemetery in Cathedral City, California near Palm Springs...
in Riverside County, California. Phyllis Harris was last reported living in St. Louis (she had been with her mother at her father's bedside when he died), while Alice Harris Regan was reported living in New Orleans.
Harris remained grateful to radio for the difference it made in his professional and personal life. He was quoted as saying, "If it hadn't been for radio, I would still be a traveling orchestra leader. For 17 years I played one-night stands, sleeping on buses. I never even voted, because I didn't have any residence."
Episodes of The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show turn up frequently on compact-disc collections of old-time radio classics, both on their own sets and amid various comedy collections. At least half the surviving episodes of the show's final season include Harris's audience warmup routine, performed for ten minutes before the show was to begin recording. Many old-time radio historians (such as Nachman and Dunning) consider the show at its best to have stood the test of time, thanks to above-average writing (mostly by the team of Ray Singer and Dick Chevillat) and the two stars who executed it with impeccable timing.