Dig A Hole: Wally Phillips, Voice of Chicago’s WGN Radio, for sure!
March 27th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Wally and gansermacher Benie Stein clown around at a Variety Club Casino Night, fer sure!
There is no more name in the black box Wally Phillips designed to outwit psychics, only his corpse. Mmm, hmm, the former WGN-Radio legend has died at the age of 82, and that’s for sure.
In a magnanimous display of people helping people, I’ll be sending his widow a Seymour Paisan scarf and a certificate for dinner at the Berghoff’s.
Phillips, who was born on July 7, 1925, in Portsmouth, Ohio, backed into radio superstardom quite by accident. A Steve Allen-ish ‘man on the street’ bit recorded for a college drama school class landed Wally a job as a radio announcer on a small station in Grand Rapids, Mich.
By 1950 Wally was working for WCPO/Cincinnati, where he attracted listeners with his cornball sense of humor and wacky radio stunts. On October 1, 1956, Ward Quall, the Goy who put the ‘G’ in WGN, brought Phillips to Chicago and a radio dynasty was born.
At the same time Wally was brought on board, Quall hired another iconic Chicago clown, Bob ‘Bozo’ Bell. According to WGN.com, Quaal felt it was his, “Good fortune and honor to introduce both Phillips and Bell to Chicago.”
Between 1965 and 1986 Phillips was the undisputed king of morning drive. With his patented ultra-sincere sincerity and well-rehearsed spontaneous shtick Phillips was considered a pioneer of modern talk radio. He was one of the first deejays to make prank phone calls. Wally’s idea of fun was calling a gymnasium and asking for “Jim Shoe.” Mmm hmm, now that’s what I call a good rib-tickler. Don’t worry, though. It was never Wally’s intention to be cruel or malicious and every good sport who fell victim to one of his lame phonies was rewarded with a gift from the WGN prize closet.
The Chicago Tribune must have been thinking of Bruner, not Phillips, when they wrote that Wally’s “delivery occasionally had an edge to it.” They cite the time he tracked down formal-wear mogul Ben “Tuxedo Junction” Gingiss on a cruise ship on the Pacific Ocean and got him on the phone, saying “We’re down here at the store. . . . Where do you keep the fire extinguisher?” Mmm hmm!
Or how about when Wild Man Wally started a broadcast day by chatting with porcine farm reporter Orion Samuelson about the coming Stomach Rumbling Finals in Stuttgart, Germany? Now you know where Lenny Bruce got his act.
With the strongest signal of any radio station in the Midwest, it’s no wonder Phillips was always number one in his slot. Wally was worshiped by farmers and Tinley Park dupas alike. The average age of one of Wally’s listeners was dead. He had tons of freebies to give away which callers didn’t have to beg too hard to get.
Whenever the topic of movies came up, my mother would encourage me to call the show. I did and won a pair of tickets to a preview screening of Franklin Schaffner’s Papillon at the United Artists Theatre. Parking was a bitch and by the time we got there the only remaining seats were in the far balcony and off to the side. It threw my entire enjoyment of the show (which I saw again opening weekend, properly seated fourth row center, at Benie Steins’ Golf Mill Theatre) off kilter.
I called the show the next day to thank Wally for the tickets and give my review. Try as I might, I couldn’t cajole a free dinner out of him.
Phillips’ “art” was seamlessly dropping sound effects or dialog from old movies amidst his blabby banter. Advertisers craved the “Phillips touch” that Wally brought to each commercial.
So big was Wally’s recognizability that he actually penned a local best seller. You can probably find a copy of The Wally Phillips People Book on eBay for a buck, fifty cents if it’s autographed.
My parents…EVERYBODY’S parents listened to Wally Phillips in the 60s and 70s. It was only a matter of time before a couple of “loathsome toadies” found plenty of room for satire in Phillips’ sing-song delivery and vanilla observations. Steve Dahl and Garry Meier took Wally, and just about the entire ‘GN roster to task on a daily basis. While Dahl’s impression was anything but dead on, he did manage to capture Wally’s rhythm and vocal inflection, hmm mmm, fer sure! Steve and Garry did the unimaginable: they made Wally Phillips listenable.
Occasionally he had guests on the show. (My kingdom for a tape of Mickey Rooney touting Christianity and his school of acting for teens!) The real stars of the show were the callers. No matter how dense, cigarette-throated or thick-tongued they might be, Wally always displayed the patience of a saint.
And was there anything more captivating than the 10 am baton pass between Wally and the even more white bread Roy Leonard? My left leg is beginning to fall asleep just thinking about it!
Not much has been written about Wally’s off-air existence and my memory of on air discussions has long since faded. I couldn’t find any information on his marriage, but do recall that every housefrau’s dependable dream man divorced and remarried his wife Barbara, thus setting off a mini-scandal in kitchens all across the western suburbs.
Wally was also loved for being a charitable soul with his annual Christmas gift to families across Chicagoland, the Neediest Children’s Fund. It was impossible to ignore as was the Variety Club trailer that seemed to open every movie in the early 70s. I saw it more times than I have Duck Soup! It’s been over thirty years, but that damned pity pitch remains forever ingrained on my brain. From underneath his layer cake toupee and surrounded by kids in sickbeds, Phillips warned “You may never get to meet the little boy or girl you help, but chances are without your help they may not make it.” After that, the house lights would go up and pimply faced ushers would pass a plastic sherbet container with a slot cut in the top through the crowd.
Having had enough of the morning grind, in 1986 Wally moved to an afternoon show where he was never able to duplicate his sunup success. When last heard on WGN, Wally had a noontime program that generated from an assortment of local eateries, most notably Arnie Morton’s Rush Street dive. It was a simple formula: Wally would roam the tables shoving his microphone in the faces of unsuspecting celebrity diners. Guests’ blue plate specials cooled as Wally attempted to warm the hearts of his audience. “Mmm hmm, before he sinks his knife into that plate of veal scallopini, let’s see if we can’t get former governor Jim Thompson to say a few words to our listeners.” The best shows were those with a low lunchtime turnout. Phillips was forced to interview waiters and busboys. It made for riveting radio!
In 1996, after 42 years on the air, the venerable voice of Chicago radio retired from WGN. Wally’s last stand was a weekly two hour program heard on WAIT, a tiny AM station located in Crystal Lake.
The last time I saw Wally was around five years ago on a Chicago Tonight interview with Bob Sirott. This was just about when traces of Alzheimer’s disease began setting in, a subject Phillips openly acknowledged. He spoke in a slower clip and appeared shrunken to the point that his famous rug fit him like an oversized helmet. The disease would eventually claim his life.
At one point or another everybody tuned into Wally’s show if for no other reason than to hear whether or not the previous night’s snow warranted school closings. Yes, I listened. I listened a lot. Not only did Wally provide the city with an invaluable source of information as it happened, in an odd way his parallel universe acted as a personal set up for things to come. Ultimately, it’s shows like his that make me appreciate Howard Stern’s honesty and outspokenness all the more.
For sure, how about a 1980 commercial for The Wally Phillips Show from Fuzzy TV Memories?
photos: Chicago TV & Radio
Tags: Benie Stein, Chicago, Chicago radio, For Sure, Garry Meier, Howard_Stern, Morning Drive, Obituary, Steve Dahl, WAIT Radio, Wally Phillips, WGN, WGN RadioShare: 
Filed Under Obituaries, Rants
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6 Responses to “Dig A Hole: Wally Phillips, Voice of Chicago’s WGN Radio, for sure!”
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“You said it was wet today/ Oh, Wally, I just love your cheap K-Mart toupee/ Wear some horrid clothes/ Be sure to blow your nose/ And go to Ace Hardware/ To get a garden hose/ Ohhhhh, Wally!”
Very sad to hear this. Is he being buried with his rug? Are they giving out panty hose at the funeral?
Of course you refer to Numode Hosiery with the no-bind top. Also a regular bucket #1 prize on “Bozo’s Circus” where some of the kids parents would actually use the stockings when knocking over banks.
You know how hard that Grand Prize game was? But you got some good prizes. Boo, Bozoputer! Yay, Magic Arrows!
You figure Eddie Schwartz would have gone first. I’ll bet his funeral would be a party! Full buffet and all the Miss Illinoises you could shake a stick at!
And eggrolls from Ho-Kow.
As for Miss Illinois, “we’re taking it slowly.”
I think Eddie’s nailed ever Miss Illinois since 1974. “If the Taiwan Basket at the Sybaris is a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.”
If he hopped on a Taiwanese basket he’d wind up in Taiwan!