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CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
After completing school, she concentrated on
theatre. Many of her friends were signing options with Warner Brothers. Unsatisfied with some of the conditions of the contract,
including the salary, she simply crossed out the lines she didn’t like and changed them. "I just gave myself a decent
salary," she said.
Interviewed in McNeely’s back yard, Phillips
recalled shortly after she disembarked from the plane, she was taken to the studio’s salon. At the time, she had waist-length
hair, which was promptly cut off. When the hair and make-up was complete, she looked at the person in the chair beside her
and discovered it was Olivia deHavilland.
During her career, Kay Linaker, as the studio named
her, was in more than 30 films. She acted next to Hollywood greats such as Erroll Flynn, Jack Benny, for director John Ford,
and was in eight Charlie Chan films.
While serving a stint with a Red Cross training unit, she met her future husband Howard Phillips. The couple eventually made the transition from acting to writing. In the late 1950s, Kate was asked to write the script
for a low-budget horror film. Promised $150 and royalties, she was told where the filming would take place, where equipment
could be rented and who could work. A young Steve McQueen was chosen as the lead in the production. When the film was sold
prior to distribution, she never saw the royalties.
When Kate and Howard were married, they honeymooned
in Gananoque, near Kingston. So started annual trips to the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence that continued until eventually,
the family bought a cottage in the area.
It was there Phillips met McNeely, who ran a gift
shop/hair salon in the town. The two became fast friends and have continued that relationship.
"She’s my almost-mother and I’m her almost-daughter,"
McNeely said. "I’m sort of an extra mother to her," Phillips said.
At 93, she is the only person alive who had any part
of The Blob. That’s even more amazing when one considers much of the cast were teenagers.
Phillips is still teaching a night school course on
film study at Keene State University in Keene, New Hampshire, where she now lives to be close to her daughter.
She will soon be celebrating her 94th birthday.
Feared by many, birthdays have become something special for Phillips. She went for a hot air balloon ride when she turned
80, and parachuted at 85.
"I don’t know what we’re going to
be doing, but it will be something special," Phillips said.
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