Phil Foster Filmography

Phil Foster was an American actor and performer. He is best known for playing Frank De Fazio on the television sitcom Laverne & Shirley. He was born in Brooklyn, New York as Fivel Feldman. He took his stage name's surname from Foster Avenue in Brooklyn. He had his first taste of performing when he was a child, when he and his pals began singing and dancing in front of movie theatres. Then he began appearing in amateur shows, competing for prizes. With him on occasion was another beginner named Jackie Gleason. At the height of the Great Depression, he started in the dramatic field,... playing in halls, back rooms and wherever possible during a period when theatres weren't available. "We did all sorts of plays, including all of Clifford Odets' early works — for $28 to $35 a week, living three in a room eating — if there was any food around" he recalls. Foster made his debut as a night club comic in Chicago in the late 1930s when he was pushed out on the floor suddenly to fill in for a stand-up comic. "I just got up and talked," he says. "I didn't know you were supposed to have an act. But I was offered the job at $125 a week.
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