Son of the carnival concessionaire and owner of Goodman's
Greater Shows who later became a Brooklyn storekeeper and optician,
Philip spent hundreds of childhood hours on New York's lower east side in plays and
musical shows
in school and at the fabled Educational Alliance. His first
professional work was at Catskill
resort hotels, where he played trumpet in swing bands, and at Ft. Bragg, North
Carolina where, during Field Artillery training, he was featured in the all-soldier musical review, Take
A Break.
.
Just after the War ended he joined the radio workshop of the Armed Forces Radio Station, WVTM, Manila, spent a summer with WHA Players at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and was in the CBS radio network show,You Are There, with a cast of famous newsmen just before radio drama disappeared.
After graduation from Brooklyn College and graduate work at USC, where his instructors included Slavko Vorkapich in Cinema and William C. DeMille in Drama, he returned to New York where he appeared in Equity Library Theater productions of Saroyan's My Heart's in the Highlands, Robert Sherwood's The Road to Rome, and as Farwell (LaHire) in Maxwell Anderson's Joan of Lorraine.
He was stage manager during the premiere season of the Corning Summer Theater, Production Stage Manager at the Newport Casino Theater, Assistant Director on the Arthur Treacher/Arnold Stang TV pilot, Bulletin From Bertie, and Advance Director of the summer tour of the musical review. High Time, with Patsy Kelly and Jack Albertson.
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Ray Golden's "High Time" at Laconia, New Hampshire. Starting 3rd from left: Kathy Barr, Hal Lohman, Ronnie Cunningham, Patsy Kelly, Jack Albertson, Gabriel Dell, Faith Dane.Goodman directed movie star Brian Donlevy in a summer theater tour of Jean Kerr's King of Hearts, and wrote many television scripts and stories, among them Season for Murder in the CBS series, Danger, with Carroll Baker and Jack Lord , 14 plays in the Dumont Network series, Rocky King, Detective, NBC Matinee Theatre, DuPont June Allyson, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, John Cassavetes' jazz and private eye series, Johnny Staccato, and OMNI: the New Frontier with Peter Ustinov. He directed TV commercials for major advertisers, Coca Cola, RCA, Nabisco, Warner Brothers, Rheingold Beer among them, screen tests for 20th Century Fox , and was one of the original organizers of the Screen Directors International Guild, which later merged with DGA. He appeared as Oedipus in CBS-TV's series, Long Before Shakespeare.At The Actors Studio he directed his own plays, Love is a Candy Cane (with Patrricia Bosworth, Bob Heller, and Loretta Leversee) and This Notoriety Business (Gerald O'Loughlin, Janet Ward, Kevin McCarthy). Work in industrial films included directing Eddie Bracken in How Green Was My Spaceman, Phil Leeds and Jane and Gordon Connel in Vistaril Wins Again, and many other prominent performers including Joan Crawford, Carlton Carpenter, Chet Huntley, Vincent Gardenia, Mason Adams, and Cesar Romero in the theatrical feature film, We Shall Return.
He wrote and directed major film productions for ATandT, several dozen films and video programs for the U.S. Commerce Department, NOAA, the U.S. Defense Department, the U.S. Postal Service, The Committee for Economic Development, and the President's Commission on Productivity. One project, a series with Dave Garroway, was produced by Michael Ritchie for Robert Saudek Associates. Impressed by that work , Saudek engaged Goodman to write three plays in the Peabody Award-winning NBC series, Profiles in Courage, which featured Burgess Meredith, Walter Mathau, Carroll O'Connor, and John Cassavetes in prominent roles.Goodman became more involved with documentary films in the seventies; he worked on NET/Channel 13's memorable series, Our Vanishing Wilderness, on the EPA/NOAA film, Arms of the Sea, The Global Weather Experiment, Monex, The Seventh Service, and First Dive-Last Dive, those last with Peter Rosen. PSG also wrote and directed Inflation, Jobs For the Hard-to-Employ, CUCSI, Generations, Goal to Go, The Earth People, Son of Wildcat, The Shape and the Future, More...and Louder, Pacific Crossroads, and a number of films on farming, tillage and pesticide use. For five years he did annual ad-sales promotional films for Fortune Magazine, including two documentaries in association with Sheldon Cotler, and a number of comedy shorts with performers Weeden, Finkle, and Faye.
During the 80s he made six trips to Asia as writer-director of Adventures in the China Trade and the PBS special, Japan Reaches for the 21st Century.He directed the award-winning laserdisc mystery, Murder, Anyone? and the NOAA film, Hurricane. In the first decade of the 21st century his stage musical, A GOOD MAN, had a world premiere in Vienna, Austria. His new play, IS THE VIGORISH ENOUGH had a staged reading at the Playwrights and Directors Unit of The Actors Studio in New York.
Mr. Goodman has received many awards, among them eight CINE Golden Eagles, the Columbus festival's Chris Award, Diploma from Italia sul Mare, Video Review's ViRA as Best Director, and certificates and plaques from U.S. Film Festival, Film and TV Festival of New York, the Columbus Film Festival, and others.
Other recent and current work is discussed on the Painted People Home Page.