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Philip left Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn during his senior year to work as a bailiff. It was a fight that had led to this first job.
“One day a friend and I went to the RKO Orpheum Theater after school to see a vaudeville performance and a movie,” he told Playbill in 2005. “There was a fight on the balcony and a bailiff was beaten up. I said to my friend, “I bet it won’t be tomorrow. I went to see the theater director and asked him if he had a bailiff’s position available. He said, “Smitty, come down and put your uniform on.” I accepted the job and never looked back.
He later became director of the RKO Palace (now the Palace) in Times Square, a former 1,740-seat vaudeville flagship that continued to book shows.
“Eight months after I started at the Palace, I was asked to take Judy Garland and her husband, Sid Luft, on a tour of the theater,” he recalls. “This led to Judy’s record-breaking engagement in 1951. I remember when she first brought Liza” – her daughter – “on stage to perform with her. After Judy, there was a whole series of stars – Danny Kaye, Betty Hutton, Liberace, Jerry Lewis.
At a party one night in 1957, Mr. Smith met Irving Morrison, an executive at Shubert, who hired him for the Imperial box office. His career was launched.
He married Phyllis Campbell, a dancer, in 1960. She died in 1994. A second marriage, in 1999, to Tricia Walsh, ended in divorce in 2008. Besides his daughters, from his first marriage he leaves in mourning five grandchildren and a brother, Joseph.
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