Kay Linaker

Biography

Kay Linaker (born Mary Katherine Linaker, 1913 – 2008) was an American actress and screenwriter who spent much of the 1930s and 1940s in the supporting ranks of B movies. She is best remembered today for her role in Kitty Foyle and for writing The Blob (1958) under her married name, Kate Phillips.

Born in Arkansas, she attended a private school in Connecticut and New York University before training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After small parts on Broadway, she signed with Warner Bros. Most of her screen work offered limited roles, though she had a few leads, including The Girl from Mandalay (1936). She made her screen debut in The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936) and often appeared uncredited in films such as Young Mr. Lincoln and Laura. During the Second World War she wrote for the Voice of America and also worked for the Red Cross. Her last film role came in Bring On the Girls (1945).

From the 1960s onward she devoted much of her energy to teaching. She taught in the film studies department at Keene State College from 1980 to 2006 and later taught acting and screenwriting at Hampshire Country School in Rindge, New Hampshire. She died in Keene, New Hampshire, in 2008.

Key films

• Laura (1944): an uncredited bit as a woman in Otto Preminger's classic thriller.
• Young Mr. Lincoln (1939): another uncredited small part in John Ford's portrait of the future president.
• Kitty Foyle (1940): as Veronica Strafford, she appears in one of the most remembered films of her career.
• Blood and Sand (1941): an uncredited appearance in this adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's novel.
• The Blob (1958): credited as screenwriter under the name Kate Phillips for this popular science-fiction horror film.