Happy (posthumous) 100th to Phil Silvers!

Born Philip Silver in Brooklyn on May 11, 1911, the entertainer and comedy actor known as "The King of Chutzpah" died in Century City, California on November 1, 1985.

He was best known for starring in You'll Never Get Rich (later retitled The Phil Silvers Show), a 1950s sitcom set on a U.S. Army post in which he played Sergeant Bilko.

Voice actor Daws Butler employed an impression of Silvers as the voice of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Hokey Wolf, the star of a 1960-61 segment on The Huckleberry Hound Show. He also used the same voice in numerous cartoons for Jay Ward.

The premise of The Phil Silvers Show was the basis for the 1961-62 Hanna-Barbera cartoon Top Cat, for which Arnold Stang imitated Silvers' voice for the title character.

The 1993 DiC Entertainment cartoon series Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehogfeatured a character called Wes Weasley, who had a very similar appearance and voice to him.

In the 1994 Simpsons episode Homer The Vigilante, Bart tricks Phil Silvers' character Otto Meyer from the 1963 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World into driving into a river.

Silvers voiced Irwin in the 1980 special Take Me Up To The Ball Game. In it, baseball players from Earth try their luck against the Alien All-Star Intergalactic Champs. It's an interplanetary space jam!

He wrote the lyrics to the Jimmy Van Heusen song "Nancy (With the Laughing Face)" for friend Frank Sinatra's firstborn child Nancy Sinatra. The song was heard on the soundtrack of Ralph Bakshi's 1981 animated feature film American Pop.


"You said 'but.' I've put the finger on the whole problem. You're a 'but' man. Don't say 'but.' That little word 'but' is the difference between success and failure." -- Phil Silvers as MSgt. Ernest G. Bilko, The Phil Silvers Show

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"Oh boy." -- Allan Sherman