Betty Phillips

In her midteens she sang leading roles in musicals at Richmond High School and also sang in a girls choir organized by Burton Kurth in the early 1940s she studied voice with in turn Mignon Duke Gidy Avis Phillips and Phylis Inglis and piano with Phyllis Schuldt She appeared at TUTS for the first time in a 1946 production of Robin Hood and subsequently played leads in more than 20 TUTS productions until 1960 she is best remembered for the role of Mrs Anna in The King and I Phillips radio career began in 1948 with a CBC Vancouver light classical series and has included regular appearances 195365 on the CBCs Leicester Square to Broadway variety work in 1955 on the BBC solo recital and folksong performances on the CBC and many British Columbia school broadcasts 19702 On CBC TV she sang Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus in 1954 costarred 19567 with Ernie Prentice on Lollytoodum and was hostess 19657 for Bazaar Phillips has performed at the Vancouver International Festival and with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and has appeared in Vancouver Opera productions Flora in La Traviata 1961 Nicklausse in Tales of Hoffmann 1961 Clotilde in Norma 1963 Vera Boronell in The Consul 1964 Zulma in The Italian Girl in Algiers 1965 and the Witch in Hansel and Gretel 1966 She has performed in musical comedy throughout Canada on tour 1967 with One Hundred Years of Musical Comedy at the 1968 and 1969 Charlottetown Festival in Anne of Green Gables and Johnny Belinda and at Winnipegs Rainbow Stage in Fiddler on the Roof 1971 She sang locally in TheatreinthePark productions of The Sound of Music 1974 and Fiddler on the Roof 1975 while studying 19726 at the University of British Columbia As an actress she has played many roles at Bastion Theatre Victoria and the Arts Club Theatre Vancouver and has also appeared at Persephone Theatre Saskatoon and at Citadel Theatre Edmonton In the first Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Co season 1963 she appeared as Madame Dubonnet in The Boy Friend and has continued to act for that company over the years She has been in over 40 Canadian and US movies some of them feature films and the others made for television In 1962 Phillips married the actor writer and librettist Peter Haworth who has collaborated with Leonard Wilson Healey Willan and the English composer Robert Simpson