Kay Linaker's passing has been noted by the NY Times.
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Kate Phillips, Actress Who Christened 'The Blob,' Is Dead at 94
By DENNIS HEVESI [New York Times]
Kate Phillips, who played mostly supporting roles on Broadway and in more
than 50 films in the 1930s and '40s and who later was a co-writer of the
1958 horror film "The Blob," died on April 18 [2008] in Keene, New
Hampshire. She was 94.
The death was confirmed by Lawrence Benaquist, chairman of film studies at
Keene State College. Mrs. Phillips, known during her acting career as Kay
Linaker, taught at the college from 1980 until two years ago.
In 1956, while working with Theodore Simonson on the script for a movie that
was supposed to be called "The Molten Meteor," Mrs. Phillips referred to the
giant jellylike creature from another planet that had plopped into a field
outside of a small town as "the blob." Overhearing her, the producers
changed the name of what became something of a cult classic.
"The Blob" gave a fresh-faced Steve McQueen his first starring role, as one
of two teenagers whose warnings about the voracious appetite of the
enlarging monster are ignored until many people are engulfed.
"Both Steve McQueen and I were to receive $150 plus 10 percent of the
gross," Mrs. Phillips said in an interview for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas
History & Culture (she was a native of Pine Bluff, Ark.). "Neither one of us
got the percentage - and the film and its remake have earned millions - but
I got an important writing credit and Steve became a star."
Although Mrs. Phillips usually played small parts during her stage and film
career, in 1936 she was cast in a leading role opposite Conrad Nagel in "The
Girl From Mandalay," about a man who marries a resort entertainer after his
sweetheart back in England tires of waiting for him.
Another of her more notable roles was that of a society matron who marries
the former husband of Ginger Rogers in the 1940 film "Kitty Foyle." In the
movie she visits an upscale department store and is waited on by her
working-class counterpart, unaware of what the two have in common. She had
smaller parts in "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1939); "Blood and Sand" (1941);
and five "Charlie Chan" movies.
Mary Katherine Linaker was born on July 19, 1913. She studied at the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York [New York] during the day
while taking classes at New York University at night. After graduating from
N.Y.U., she got a film contract with Warner Bros., having attracted the
attention of scouts with her work on Broadway.
During World War II, Mrs. Phillips joined the Red Cross, serving as a
hostess at U.S.O. clubs. She also began writing for the Voice of America.
About that time she met, and soon married, Howard Phillips, a singer and
writer who later became an NBC television executive.
Her husband died before her. She is survived by a son, Bill, of El Cerrito,
California; a daughter, Regina Paquette of Keene; and four grandchildren.
In July 2003, Mrs. Phillips traveled to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, to
celebrate the town's annual Blob Fest. As always, hundreds of B-movie fans
raced out of the Colonial Theater, re-enacting the panic caused by a
gelatinous creature in a scene filmed there almost five decades ago.
