Phillip Terry

Phillip Terry, born Frederick Henry Kormann on March 7, 1909, in San Francisco, California, was an American actor whose career spanned film, radio, television, and Broadway. He was the son of Frederick Andrew Kormann and Ida Ruth (Voll) Kormann. Terry received his elementary education in schools across the oil regions of Texas and Oklahoma before attending Iona High School in New York and Sacred Heart College in San Francisco. He died on February 23, 1993.

Terry's professional training began at the Royal Academy, after which he spent four years touring British provinces in stock theater productions. Returning to the United States, he joined CBS Radio in Hollywood, where he performed in numerous broadcast plays with a particular focus on Shakespearean roles. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scout heard one of these radio performances in 1937 and arranged a screen test, which resulted in a studio contract. Among his earliest film appearances was a bit part in Mannequin (1937), starring Joan Crawford. Two years later he signed with Paramount Pictures, where he took on starring roles in The Parson of Panamint and The Monster and the Girl, both released in 1941, followed by supporting work in Wake Island (1942) and Bataan (1943), the latter filmed while he was on loan to MGM.

During World War II, Terry was classified 4F and deemed unfit for military service due to defective vision. After departing Paramount, he signed with RKO, appearing in Music in Manhattan, George White's Scandals, Pan-Americana, Born to Kill, and the lead role in Seven Keys to Baldpate (1947). Over the course of his career Terry appeared in more than eighty films, with many of his earliest roles being small and uncredited. The 1940s brought him more substantial parts in notable productions, including The Lost Weekend (1945), starring Ray Milland, and To Each His Own (1946), starring Olivia de Havilland, whose performance in that film earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1950, Terry brought his performing career to Broadway, appearing in Pardon Our French. The production marked his credited stage work in New York and represented an extension of the range he had developed across radio, film, and theater throughout his career.

On July 21, 1942, Terry married film star Joan Crawford at the Hidden Valley Ranch in Ventura County, California. During their marriage, Crawford adopted a son whom she named Phillip Terry, Jr. Following the couple's divorce in 1946, Crawford renamed the boy Christopher Crawford.

Terry continued to act in the decades following his Broadway appearance. During the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s he accepted periodic film roles, including The Leech Woman (1960), with Grant Williams, and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966), with Mamie Van Doren. He also appeared in television episodes of The Name of the Game and Police Woman, and made five guest appearances on Perry Mason, among them the role of murder victim Robert Doniger in the 1960 episode "The Case of the Gallant Grafter" and the role of murderer Lawrence Kent in the 1961 episode "The Case of the Resolute Reformer."