PHILLIPS, THOMAS HAL:  1922 -                               

         Born on 11 October 1922 on a farm near Corinth, Mississippi,
    Thomas Hal Phillips is the author of five published novels, several
    short stories, and numerous screenplays.  His father, W. T. Phillips,
    was a farmer of English descent, while his mother, Ollie Fare Phillips,
    was a school- teacher of Scotch-Irish descent.  One of six children,
    Phillips attended Alcorn Agricultural High School near Corinth in
    Kossuth; there he played football, edited the school newspaper, and
    joined the debating team.  After graduation, he enrolled at Mississippi
    State College, working his way through his first two years by drying
    "77,000,000 dishes," and, in his final two years, working at the YMCA.
    He majored in social science and participated on the debating team.  He
    received his B.S. in 1943 and went immediately into the U.S. Navy.  He
    served three years as a lieutenant (junior grade) with the amphibious
    forces in North Africa, Italy, and France.  Part of this time he was
    commander of an LC-1 and participated in the invasions of Anzio, Elba,
    and southern France. Upon leaving the military, Phillips returned to
    college at the University of Alabama where he studied creative writing
    under Hudson Strode and Edward Kimbrough.  In 1948, he received his
    M.A. As his thesis, he wrote a draft of THE BITTERWEED PATH, which
    would become his first published novel.  From 1948 to 1950, he taught
    creative writing in Dallas, Texas, at Southern Methodist University.
    Early in his career, Phillips was the recipient of several grants which
    allowed him to devote much of his time to writing:  a Julius Rosenwald
    Fellowship in fiction in 1947, the Eugene F. Saxton Award in 1948, a
    Fulbright Fellowship for study in France in 1950, and in 1953 a
    Guggenheim Fellowship.  In 1958, he succeeded his brother Rubel Lex
    Phillips as Public Service Commissioner of the northern district of
    Mississippi.  He served in this office until 1963 when he resigned to
    manage Rubel's gubernatorial campaign.  Rubel, however, failed in his
    bid to be elected, and Thomas went into private business in Corinth and
    Jackson.

         Since the sixties, Phillips has worked on a number of screenplays,
    as a consultant, author, or "screen doctor" and on several films in
    capacities other than writer.  Among many films he has worked on are:
    Tarzan's Fight for Life, The Brain Machine, Ode to Billy Joe, Minstrel
    Man, Walking Tall II, Huckleberry Finn, Nightmare in Badham County, and
    Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.  He worked on the Emmy award winning
    Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and has been associated with Robert
    Altman's Thieves Like Us, California Split, Nashville, and Buffalo
    Bill. In Nashville, Phillips was the author of the "Hal Phillip Walker"
    segments after Altman directed him to invent a popular candidate--a man
    whom Phillips would like to see elected--and gave him no further 
    limitations. Phillips himself recorded the speeches of "Hal Phillip
    Walker" for the sound track although the candidate's face was never
    seen in the film. At the present time (spring of 1978), Phillips has
    completed a screenplay for country singer Bobbie Gentry based on her
    song "Fancy," and is beginning work on the screenplay of Robert Penn
    Warren's novel, A Place To Come To.

         Despite his success in the motion picture industry, Phillips
    claims to be "more at home" with the novel.  His first, THE BITTERWEED
    PATH was published in 1950, and deals, like most of his novels, with a
    young man's coming of age.  The main character, Darrell Barclay, is the
    son of a failed share-cropper who becomes attached to Roger Pitt, the
    son of the successful owner of a cotton plantation.  Darrell's father,
    a Ku Klux Klan night-rider, goes to work for Malcolm Pitt, Roger's
    father, and is later killed in Klan activities.  The Pitts employ
    Darrell, but they come to love him as a member of the family.  The
    novel mainly concerns itself with Darrell's adjustment over the years
    to his adopted family and to his relationship with Roger.  The book
    traces Darrell's initial disorientation at the generous love of the
    Pitts to his gradual understanding and acceptance of it.  As a first
    novel, THE BITTERWEED PATH was generally well-received, garnering
    praise for its delicate touch and subtle restraint.  The motivation
    was called "solid and good," although some portions of the book were
    considered unconvincing.  As is usual in Phillips' work, place and time
    is evoked in a delicate and warm way.  Critics particularly appreciated
    this aspect of his work and recognized Phillips as a promising new
    author with great control and sensitivity.

         His second novel, THE GOLDEN LIE, published in 1951, dealt again
    with the growing up of a young boy, Foster Lloyd, and his friendship
    with another boy, Kirby.  However, this novel injected the additional
    complications of race relations; Kirby is black. The boy's father helps
    to coach the black school's football team and his mother is a "saint"
    in the local Primitive Church.  As Foster moves toward maturity, he is
    shown moving away from his mother's religious views and gradually
    coming to a recognition of the hypocrisy inherent in the racially
    divided society.  Kirby's possible future as a football player on
    scholarship is shattered when the church burns down and a benefit game
    is played between the white school and the black school. An angry fan
    kicks Kirby in the head after a hard collision between Foster and him,
    and Kirby dies.  Although THE GOLDEN LIE was written with much of the
    same sensitive handling that characterized his first novel, critics
    considered the characters less complex and the theme less intricately
    worked out.  The novel was praised for its subtle portrayal of family
    life in the South, but the book was not considered to be as emotionally
    intense as his first.  Despite the explosiveness of his subject, even
    the brutality of Kirby's death is handled with a control that subdues
    the sensational possibilities in such a scene, perhaps diminishing its
    impact.

         SEARCH FOR A HERO, published in 1952, is Phillips' most critically
    successful novel to date.  The central figure, Don Meadows, is a bright
    student whose accomplishments are not appreciated by his father or his
    brothers who are football players.  The brothers, who can barely get
    through high school, abuse Don and force him to cheat for them on
    examinations so that they can go on to college.  Don is completely
    isolated in his family, hating his brothers and father because of their
    insensitivity and ignoring his mother who is in a mental world of her
    own.  Nonetheless, Don is also painfully aware of his father's desire
    for a heroic son and he talks his parents into signing the necessary
    papers for him to enlist.  Once in the navy, Don continues to write
    themes for his brothers' freshman English so they can remain eligible
    to play football.  He becomes part  of an amphibious force that is sent
    to the Mediterranean and volunteers for a dangerous mission that turns
    into a fiasco.  He is wounded in the escape from the area and returns
    home.  He is treated with a certain awe and new respect by his family;
    however, he has matured and senses that his military heroism is nearly
    as meaning- less as his brothers' gridiron exploits.

         Most of the reviews of SEARCH FOR A HERO praised Phillips' ear for
    dialogue, his humor and handling of the theme. Again, he proved himself
    a subtle writer particularly interested in intrafamilial relationships.
    The central sections of the book, "A Man Called Victor," "Yosef the
    Tailor," and "Music of the Dead" are very well written.  The bond
    between Yosef and Don is depicted particularly well.  Phillips probably
    employed his own wartime experiences to recount Don's story; however,
    he skillfully avoids the melodrama and high seriousness of conventional
    war narrative. Although the war sections maintain a serious tone,
    Phillips weaves light and ironic touches throughout the text to
    illustrate his theme of the superficiality of most heroism.  Phillips
    briefly touches on the issue of race relations when Don bunks near a
    black sailor, but it is not explored as deeply as it is in THE GOLDEN
    LIE.

         In 1954, Phillips published KANGAROO HOLLOW in England. Because
    the book was never published in the United States, it has received
    little notice.  Yet its intricacy of plot, its scope, and its complex
    themes perhaps make the book his most ambitious work. A large number of
    characters are examined closely, viewpoint is carefully shifted from
    character to character, and a large number of years go by. The central
    figure is Rufus Frost, a sharecropper who marries a moderately wealthy
    landowner and later goes into politics.  Just as the United States
    enters World War I, Rufus marries Anna Shannon, despite their unequal
    social position and his passion for Todda.  On the night that Anna
    gives birth to their first child, Rufus impregnates Todda. Rufus is
    drafted, along with several of the men from the Hollow, and although
    Anna's brother is murdered as the alleged father of Todda's child,
    Rufus is never exposed in the Hollow as the real father.  Rufus
    survives the war and returns to run for sheriff in order to remove the
    stigma of having married into wealth.  He enriches himself after
    winning the election by immediately becoming corrupted.

         The final chapters of the book concern themselves mostly with
    the relationships among Rufus, Rex, and his intellectual brother
    Bayard.  As in SEARCH FOR A HERO, the intellectual brother feels an
    antagonism toward his football-playing brother, resenting his brother's
    recognition and apparent lack of character. Bayard becomes an activist
    writer and leaves the university after Rex, in a fit of anger, breaks
    Bayard's fingers.  After this episode, Rex matures dramatically.  He
    gives up a chance to play in the Sugar Bowl in order to return to his
    ill father's bedside.  Later, as Rex runs for public office, he finds
    himself losing because of Bayard's sympathetic writing of Blacks and
    Rufus' proliquor record.  Rex sees the emptiness of his football
    heroism, withdraws from the campaign with a speech adamantly defending
    the rights of Blacks.  At the end of the novel, Rex, Bayard, and their
    father are drawn closer as the boys prepare to enter the Second World
    War.

         KANGAROO HOLLOW  explores many of Phillips' interests to some
    depth.  Again he wrote primarily of the love-hate relationships inside
    families, of the antagonism between the intellectual and the more
    highly praised, physical individuals, and of the racial prejudice just
    beneath the surface of the society.  Skillfully written, KANGAROO
    HOLLOW  deserved much more recognition than it received.  The trench
    warfare scenes are convincing and vivid, and the anguish of Howard
    (Jesse's murderer) is explored in detail. The scenes of Rufus with his
    sons on holiday are among the best of Phillips' protrayals of family
    life.

         THE LOVED AND THE UNLOVED, published in 1955, is Phillips' last
    published novel.  World War II veteran Max Harper is in prison for
    murder.  At the beginning of the book the narrative consists of his
    recollection of the events leading up to his sentencing.  The Harper
    family work as sharecroppers on the farm of Sid Acroft, whose son Vance
    torments Max at school and  elsewhere. When Max returns from the war,
    he comes to believe Vance is trying to rob him.  Subsequently, he kills
    him.  THE LOVED AND THE UNLOVED received mixed reviews when it was
    published.  Although the opening is interestingly handled, reviewers
    felt that Max was not insightful enough to make some of the
    observations that he does.  Although some of the humor of the book was
    praised, critics felt that the inconsistent narrative voice undermined
    the work.

         Since 1955 Phillips has published no new novels although he has
    for some years been working on a novel tentatively entitled "A Road
    Through a Cemetery."  Not as well known as his novels or film scripts,
    several of Phillips' short stories received critical notice in the
    1950's.  "The Shadow of an Arm" (Virginia Quarterly Review, 16 [1950],
    578-86) was among the O. Henry Prize Stories of 1951.  "A Touch of
    Earth" (Southwest Review, 34[1949], 340-47) was included in the Martha
    Foley Best American Short Stories of 1949. In 1952, "Lone Bridge"
    (Southwest Review, 36[1951], 104-10) was listed in the Martha Foley
    "Roll of Honor."  "Mostly in the Fields" (Virginia Quarterly Review,
    27[1951], 546-55) became part of SEARCH FOR A HERO.  An interview with
    Phillips was published in the spring 1973 issue of Notes on Mississippi
    Writers, pp. 3-13.

                                                 James M. Davis, Jr.

         THE BITTERWEED PATH. New York:  Rinehart, 1950.
         THE GOLDEN LIE. New York:  Rinehart, 1951.
         KANGAROO HOLLOW. London:  W. Allen, 1954.
         THE LOVED AND THE UNLOVED. New York:  Harper, 1955.
         SEARCH FOR A HERO. New York:  Rinehart, 1952.




    Source:  James B. Lloyd, Editor.  LIVES OF MISSISSIPPI AUTHORS,
             1817-1967, p.370-372.  Jackson:  University Press of
             Mississippi, 1981.

    Data transcription by: Cheryl Hurley, Kossuth High School
                           October 24, 1992.