Phill Norman is a four-time Emmy Award winning Title Designer for legendary movies and television shows. Nominated multiple times, his prominent career spanned over 50 years with credits including the famed, all-time classic, Indiana Sports film, Hoosiers. He also created title designs for feature films like On Golden Pond, Out of Africa, Ordinary People, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Mask, Star Trek Insurrection, Jeremiah Johnson, The Cowboys, Man of La Mancha, The Way We Were, and many more. For television, Charley’s Angels and Dynasty are among his long list of title sequences that he produced.
His amazing career started as a fluke, but all because of a Marion Giant connection. Phill’s close friend from Marion High School worked at a company called UPA in California. Phill planned a vacation there to visit his fellow Giant on the property. One day at lunch Phill impressed a bigwig of the studio so much that he literally offered Phill a job right on the spot. Though this took Phill by surprise, he seized the opportunity and never finished his vacation. He immediately went to work and stayed three years before transitioning into designing main titles for movies and television.
Though Phill had attended art school in Indiana for three years after high school, he had no prior experience painting, making titles or animation. However, his timing couldn’t have been better. UPA had just ramped up production with 130 Mister Magoo shorts and 130 Dick Tracy shorts, all needing titles and credits. Phill not only drew the lettering but designed the title cards for each short as well, keeping up with the fast pace of production: design, approval, and execution. Each of these were done in hours, rather than days.
In 1983, Phill married actress Sheree North and they would return to Marion often to visit Phill’s mother who was a member of First Baptist Church. In 1999, he retired and ten years later passed away after a short illness on July 11 in Los Angeles at the age of 74. Although this Marion Giant is no longer with us, his artistic signature titles on all of these incredible shows will live on forever.