November 1: On This Day in History … briefly
Phil Silvers will always be remembered for his role as Sergeant Bilko in the TV series ‘You'll Never Get Rich’.
1985: Phil ‘Bilko’ Silvers leaves the stage
Phil Silvers (May 11, 1911 – November 1, 1985) was an American entertainer and comedic actor, known as ‘The King of Chutzpah’. He starred in The Phil Silvers Show, a 1950s sitcom set on a US Army post in which he played Master Sergeant Ernest (Ernie) Bilko. Born in the working-class Brownsville section, he was the eighth and youngest child of Russian Jewish immigrants, Saul and Sarah (née Handler) Silver. His siblings were Lillian, Harry, Jack, Saul, Pearl, Michael, and Reuben Silver. His father, a sheet metal worker, helped build the early New York skyscrapers.
Silvers began entertaining aged 11, when he would sing in theatres when the film projector broke down (a common occurrence in those days), to the point where he was allowed to keep attending the same movie theatre free of charge, to sing through any future breakdowns. By age 13, he was working as a singer in the Gus Edwards Revue, and then worked in vaudeville and as a burlesque comic.
According to the documentary on the DVD of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Silvers was not a traditional comedian: he was a comic actor. Silvers never did stand-up, and, out of character, he was not known for cracking jokes. Silvers became a household name in 1955 when he starred as Sergeant Ernest G Bilko in You’ll Never Get Rich, later retitled The Phil Silvers Show. The military comedy became a television hit, with the opportunistic Bilko fast-talking his way through one obstacle after another. In 1958, CBS switched the show to be telecast on Friday nights and moved the setting to Camp Fremont in California. A year later, the show was off the schedule.
Silvers returned to Broadway in the musical Do Re Mi in December 1960, receiving a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Stanley Green wrote, ‘It was particularly blessed by offering two outstanding clowns in Phil Silvers as the pushiest of patsies and Nancy Walker.’ Throughout the 1960s, he appeared in films such as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and 40 Pounds of Trouble (1963). He was featured in Marilyn Monroe’s last film, the unfinished Something’s Got to Give (1962). In the 1963–1964 television season, he appeared as Harry Grafton, a factory foreman interested in get-rich-quick schemes, much like the previous Bilko character, in CBS’s 30-episode The New Phil Silvers Show, with co-stars Stafford Repp, Herbie Faye, Buddy Lester, Elena Verdugo as his sister, Audrey, and her children, played by Ronnie Dapo and Sandy Descher.
In 1967, he starred as a guest in one of the British Carry On films, Follow That Camel, a Foreign Legion parody in which he played a variation of the Sergeant Bilko character, Sergeant Nocker. Producer Peter Rogers employed him to ensure the Carry On films’ success in America, though Silvers’ presence did not ensure the film’s success on either side of the Atlantic. His salary was £30 000, the largest Carry On salary ever, only later met by the appearance of Elke Sommer in Carry On Behind.
On November 1, 1985, Silvers died in his sleep in Century City, California aged 74. According to his family, Silvers died of natural causes. He was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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