- A talk-show regular, she was the first woman to substitute for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962).
- Beat out Barbra Streisand for a Tony Award in 1962, winning the Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Musical) award for "Subways Are for Sleeping". She was also Tony Award nominated in 1987 at Best Actress (Featured Role - Play) for "Broadway Bound".
- An avid game show panelist in the 1960s, notably the game shows To Tell the Truth (1956) and What's My Line? (1950).
- A breast cancer survivor, following her bout with the disease, Newman wrote a memoir of her life and career, titled "Just in Time". In it, she revealed that her husband, Adolph Green, confided to her that he had actually voted for Barbra Streisand over her for the 1962 Best Supporting Actress in a Musical Tony Award, which Newman won, for her performance in "Subways Are for Sleeping".
- Often mistaken for Betty Comden, who was Newman's composer husband (Adolph Green)'s long-term collaborator and songwriter/lyricist. Newman won a Tony Award on Broadway for "Subways Are for Sleeping" (1962) which was written by Comden and Green, and earned a Tony Award nomination two decades later for "Broadway Bound". Newman and Green had two children, Amanda Green and Adam Green.
- Born on the same date, in the same year, as actress Renée Taylor.
- She was the daughter of Rachel (Gottlieb) and Sigmund Arthur Newman, Jewish immigrants to the United States from Eastern Europe. Her parents worked on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, her father as "Gabel the Graphologist", a handwriting analyst, and her mother as a fortune teller, "Marvelle, the Fortune Teller".
- Phyllis and husband Adolph Green are one of several sets of spouses to both win Tony Awards. Phyllis was nominated twice: 1962 she won for "Subways are for Sleeping"(Featured Actress in a Musical), and in 1987 she was nominated for "Broadway Bound"(Featured Actress in a Play). Phyllis was also the first recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award in 2009. Adolph was nominated 12 times, winning 7 awards: in 1953 for "Wonderful Town"(Best Musical);1968 for "Hallelujah, Baby!"(Best Score and Best Musical); 1970 for "Applause"(Best Musical); 1978 for "On the Twentieth Century"(Book of a Musical and Best Score); and 1991 for "The Will Rogers Follies"(Best Score).
- A club and concert singer, among her many hit musical shows were "Bells Are Ringing", "The Apple Tree", "On the Town", "Annie Get Your Gun" and "I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road".
- In February 1996, she launched "The Phyllis Newman Women's Health Care Initiative of the Actors Fund".
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