A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Birthplace:
Boise, Idaho, USA
Born:
July 18, 1915
Died:
August 1, 1995
Phyllis Brooks was an American actress and model. Brooks was born Phyllis Seiler in Boise, Idaho on July 18, 1915. She began her career in films at age 20, and had been known as the "Ipana Toothpaste Girl" due to her work as a model. Brooks, who had about 30 performances in films, was a B-movie leading lady during the 1930s and 1940s, with roles in such films as In Old Chicago (1937), Little Miss Broadway (1938), and the Shanghai Gesture (1941). In the late 1930s, she dated Cary Grant, who called her Brooksie, and rumors that the two would be married were circulated. Brooks, something of a socialite, also dated Howard Hughes. Along with fellow actress Una Merkel, and accompanied by noted actor Gary Cooper, Phyllis was the first civilian woman to travel to the Pacific Theater of War during World War II, on a USO tour. She was married to Torbert Macdonald, an 11-term Massachusetts Congressman who was John F. Kennedy's roommate at Harvard, and who remained a close friend and confidante throughout his life. She moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts with her new husband in 1945 so he could complete his Harvard Law degree. Congressman Macdonald had been a Harvard football captain and a decorated PT boat captain in World War II. He died in office in 1976. Phyllis continued performing in summer stock theater after her marriage, and hosted the first television interview program in Boston in the early 1950s (on WBZ-TV). She retired from public performances after that, concentrating on raising her family. The couple had four children, the eldest of whom was President Kennedy's godson. She died on August 1, 1995 in Cape Neddick, Maine at the age of 80.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.