Personal Life
Phillips was one of ten children born to a German Jewish family in Chicago. She studied drama at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where she became a member of Phi Sigma Sigma sorority), receiving a Master of Arts degree before going on to earn a master's degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Phillips wanted to be an actress. From 1925 to 1930 she worked as a school teacher in Dayton, Ohio, teaching drama and theatre history to schoolchildren. While working in this capacity she continued to attempt a career as an actress, and after performing several acting roles for radio productions at WGN in Chicago, she left her career as a teacher. At the age of 42, Phillips adopted a son, Thomas Dirk Phillips. A year later, she adopted a daughter, Katherine Louise Phillips.
Read more about this topic: Irna Phillips
Famous quotes related to personal life:
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters ‘woman’s peculiar sphere,’ her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)