Thomas Hal Phillips

For other people named Thomas Phillips, see Thomas Phillips (disambiguation).

Thomas Hal Phillips (October 11, 1922 – April 3, 2007) was an American actor and screenwriter.

Biography

Born in Corinth in Alcorn County in northeastern Mississippi, Phillips graduated in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree from Mississippi State College. He served in the United States Navy during World War II. In 1948, he earned a master's degree in writing at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He then taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and wrote books. In 1959, he was appointed by Democratic Governor James P. Coleman to the Mississippi Public Service Commission to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Phillips' younger brother, attorney Rubel Phillips. In 1963, Hal Phillips managed his brother's unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial campaign against the Democrat Paul B. Johnson, Jr.

His first novel The Bitterweed Path was a best seller in its first paperback edition from Penguin Press. The novel was first published in an almost underground way, as a very small, limited run in hardback in 1950 by Rinehart & Co., Inc., and advertised, at the time, as "something new in the literature dealing with man's love for man.........in a period when even psychologists knew little of such matters, and people in small towns new nothing." The book, The Bitterweed Path depicts the struggles of two gay men in the Southern United States at the turn of the century, and how an unconventional love triangle involving these two men, and one of their fathers, impacts their three marriages in small-town, deep South.

After returning to the US from service in France in World War II, where he was stationed and fought as a Captain in the US Navy, he began a successful career in Hollywood. His screenplay career continued through the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. He died in Kossuth, Mississippi.[1]

Books

Movies

Short stories

References

  1. ↑ Associated Press. Novelist, screenwriter Phillips dies at 84. Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
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