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Iowa’s Phyllis Love: Talented educator and successful actress
Talented educator and former successful actress Phyllis Love of Des Moines, Iowa. Photo credit: The New York Times
There are many fine educators who enjoyed success in the entertainment industry before they became classroom teachers. One of these was Iowa’s Phyllis Love, a movie and television actress who also taught Drama and English.
Phyllis was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on December 21, 1925. Her parents were both small business owners. Her father owned a food market and her mother owned and managed a small restaurant. As a youngster, Phyllis attended first Perkins Elementary School, then Callanan Junior High School, and finally Theodore Roosevelt High School, all in Des Moines. While in high school, one of Phyllis’s close friends was actress Chloris Leachman.
Once she graduated from high school in 1944, Phyllis attended the School of Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. She earned her Bachelor’s degree there in 1948.
After college, Phyllis relocated to New York, where she honed her skills as an actress at the Actors Studio. Paul Newman and Marlon Brando were her classmates. Her talent earned her roles on Broadway and in the movies. She performed in The Rose Tattoo (1950), The Country Girl (1950), The Friendly Persuasion (1956), The Egghead (1957), A Distant Bell (1959), and Flowering Cherry (1959), and The Young Doctors (1961). She also performed in numerous roles on television, including appearances on Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The FBI, and Twilight Zone.
After Phyllis retired from acting in the 1970’s, she launched herself into her career as an educator. She taught Drama and English for 15 years at Morningside High School in Inglewood, California.
Sadly, in her later years, this talented educator and actress suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. She passed away on October 30, 2011, in Menifee, California. She was 85 years old. You can read her obituary, see this link to the New York Times.
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Beloved actor Andy Griffith once taught music and drama
Beloved actor Andy Griffith once taught music and drama. Photo credit: Historic Images
Many people are familiar with the beloved television actor Andy Griffith. He starred as the affable sheriff Andy Taylor on the 1960’s series the Andy Griffith Show. Later, he starred as the curmudgeonly lawyer Ben Matlock on the legal drama show Matlock. But did you know that before his career as an actor, Andy Griffith taught high school music and drama?
Andy was born on June 1, 1926, in Mount Airy, Surry County, North Carolina. He was the only child of Carl and Geneva Griffith. Carl was a furniture carpenter, and Geneva was a homemaker. Even as a child, Andy was aware that he lived on “the wrong side of the tracks.” He was a shy and introverted child, but he soon learned how to make his classmates laugh, and that helped him to gain self-confidence.
As a young man, Andy harbored hopes of becoming an opera singer. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music at the University of North Carolina in 1949. Once he earned his degree, he taught at Goldsboro High School in North Carolina. His career there spanned three years.
Andy, who was so good at so many things, once confessed that he didn’t think he was a very good teacher. “First day, I’d tell the class all I knew, and there was nothing left to say for the rest of the semester,” he once told The New York Times.
To read more about Andy Griffith, consult this obituary published by the New York Times in 2012.
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Illinois music teacher and Hollywood actress Dee Green: She was no Stooge
Dee Green with The Three Stooges in the movie Brideless Groom (1947). Photo credit: Find a Grave
Many talented classroom teachers achieve success in fields other than education. One such teacher was Delores Mae Green, who was better known as Dee Green.
Dee was a beloved music and choir teacher who was also an acclaimed actress in Hollywood. Her claim to fame is that she worked with the Three Stooges. She is well-known for playing the part of one of Shemp’s potential brides. She was the plain, tall, and fawning Miss Fanny Dinkelmeyer in the comedy short Brideless Groom. She also portrayed the homely and unattractive fiance in I’m a Monkey’s Uncle and the daughter of King Rootintootin’ in Mummy’s Dummies. Unfortunately, Dee’s acting career ended when a motor vehicle ran over her feet in New York. The accident resulted in the need for orthopedic footwear for the remainder of her life.
Dee was born on November 16, 1916, in Peoria, Illinois. After she concluded her career in show business, she earned her Master’s degree in Music. She returned to her home town and taught music and choir classes at Peoria Heights Grade School in Peoria Heights, Illinois, during the 1960’s. Throughout the late 1970’s and early 1980’s she taught Language Arts and Drama at Roosevelt Junior High, which is now known as Rockford Alternative Middle School, in Rockford, Illinois. She produced many annual events, including a production of Babes in Toyland and numerous elaborate Christmas pageants that included every student in the school.
Dee inspired more than one of her students to pursue a career in theater. Some of them eventually earned success on Broadway in New York. She was often described by her students as kind and generous, and a woman of great courage, talent, and vision.
This amazing Chalkboard Champion passed away from cancer on April 24, 1985, in Rockford, Illinois. She was 65 years old.
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KISS musician Gene Simmons: Flamboyant rocker and former sixth grade teacher
Gene Simmons: Flamboyant musician and make-up wearing, tongue-wagging rocker once taught sixth graders in Spanish Harlem. Photo credit: guitar.com
Almost everyone has heard of the rock band KISS. But did you know that the band’s vocalist, Gene Simmons, was once an elementary school teacher? This flamboyant make-up wearing, tongue-wagging rocker once taught sixth graders in the Spanish Harlem section of New York City.
Gene was born on August 25, 1949, in Tirat Carmel, Israel. At birth, his mother, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, name him Chaim Witz. When he was eight years old, he immigrated to the United States with his mother. They landed in New York City. His father remained in Israel with his other children. Once he arrived in the United States, Chaim changed his name to Eugene Klein, adopting his mother’s maiden name.
Upon his high school graduation, Gene attended first Richmond College and then Sullivan County Community College, both located in New York. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Education. A master of languages, Gene speaks Hungarian, Hebrew, Turkish, High German, Japanese, Spanish, and English.
Before he inaugurated his career as a performer, Gene worked a number of odd jobs in New York City. He served as a deli cashier, an office temp, and an assistant to an editor of the fashion magazine Vogue. He also taught sixth graders at PS 75 in Spanish Harlem.
To be honest, Gene’s career as a teacher was very short. “The reason I quit after six months,” the rocker once explained, “is that I discovered the real reason that i became a teacher. It was because I wanted to get up on stage and have people notice me,” he confessed. “I had to quite because the stage was too small. Forty people wasn’t enough. I wanted forty thousand,” he concluded.
Gene still supports education. Not too long ago he filmed a British reality television show called Rock School in which he formed a rock band from a group of classically-trained children at a prestigious English boarding school.
To read more about Gene’s career as a rocker, click on this link to A&E Biography.
