How did a young Jewish woman who escaped Nazi-occupied Austria in the late 1930s end up in New York and emerge as one of the most dynamic illustrators of comic books a few years later?
In a new episode of the “Exile” podcast series, hosted by actor Mandy Patinkin, and produced by the Leo Baeck Institute, the story of Lily Renée Phillips (née Wilhelm) is fully told.
Wilhelm was born in 1921 in Vienna. “It was a lovely city,” she said in a 2019 taped interview. “I mean, culture was in the air. You couldn’t escape it. It was really present every day.”
Wilhelm’s father was a shipping executive, so her family lived comfortably in a plush apartment with a chef and maid. An only child, Lily began drawing at a young age.
Yet the Austria Lily was growing up in was increasingly falling under the threat of fascism. Anti-Semitism was a constant presence in Vienna. The menace became more real after Germany annexed Austria in 1938. To make matters worse, many Austrians welcomed the Nazis enthusiastically. By then, Lily was in her late teens.
Immediately after the Nazi takeover, there were signs that life for Vienna’s Jewish community was going to get worse. One day, while Lily was waiting in line at a foreign consulate, SS officers showed up and forced her and a group of other Jews into a nearby synagogue. They feared the SS would set the synagogue on fire. They were released without further incident.
Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a spree of violence against Jews,
occurred in Germany and Austria soon afterward. It was clear Lily needed to leave Austria. With help from an English penpal, she was able to travel to the UK as part of the Kindertransport program sponsored by the British.
Lily ended up living with a family in Leeds. In 1941, she discovered that her parents had managed to flee Austria and make their way to New York.
Lily soon booked passage on a ship and sailed to America to join her parents.
But she was shocked at how they’d aged when she finally met them. Her parents had lost everything, and it had taken a toll. Her mother was frail, having been kicked by a Nazi soldier back in Vienna. The Wilhelms were also living in reduced circumstances, in refugee housing. “And they had one room,” recalled Lily. “And it was so hot that I sat out on the fire escape in the back during the night because the humidity and the heat was so horrendous.”
Things changed for Lily when her mother spotted an ad for a comic book publishing company called Fiction House seeking artists. “They went to the newsstand, they bought a couple of comics, Lily studied them, and she drew a couple of panels, just sample panels, and brought those to Fiction House, along with, of course, her portfolio of her non-comic work,” explains Trina Robbins, a comic book historian.
Lily was hired, although found working at Fiction House difficult. “It was like hell because there were these men who were like adolescents that were thinking of nothing but sex all the time,” she recalled. “And here I was landed in the middle of this. It was just terrible.”
Eventually she was given an opportunity to work and develop a comic book. And soon she was conjuring up forceful female characters, sometimes vampy and seductive and sometimes fierce and pugnacious. “She had a kind of a German expressionist style, which of course, she’s from Vienna, the place of Klimt, you know?” recalls Robbins.
As her skill and talent were recognized, Lily was put in charge of more popular strips. Eventually she began to draw the character who would make her name: Senorita Rio. With flowing jet black hair, long elegant legs, and a deadly left hook, agent Rio was a spy with movie star looks—an iron fist in a velvet glove. Moonlighting as a nightclub entertainer, Rio travels around South America battling Axis agents and foiling Nazi plots.
Lily became one of Fiction House’s most accomplished artists. But in 1950, she quit the comic books industry and focused on marriage and raising two children.
It was only years later that her granddaughter discovered that Lily had a fan club of her art, and there was even an exhibit of her work at a New York comics gallery. “She didn’t know there was a fan club,” says Nina Pillips, her daughter. “She didn’t know that she was in print in any way. She thought it was all in the past and no one paid any more attention and she certainly hadn’t paid any attention.”
Lily was invited to speak at events and on panels. In 2007, Comic Con recognized Lily with an Inkpot award, given to individuals for their contributions to the world of comics. And in 2021 she was inducted into Comic Con’s Eisner Hall of Fame.
Then the Jewish Museum in Vienna decided to put on an exhibit of her work in Vienna in 2019. It was called “Three With a Pen” and explored the life and work of three Viennese artists and cartoonists forced into exile. A selection of Lily’s cartoons and book illustrations were featured, including photos from her childhood and pieces from throughout her life.
“One of the greatest moments that I think all of us shared in the family with her was when she was being honored in Vienna, through an exhibit at the Jewish Museum,” says Nina Phillips. “So they had this big auditorium that after viewing this exhibit, speeches were made. And at the end of the speeches, they presented my mother with the first copy of her book in English and in German.”
A couple of years later, the exhibition was recreated at the New York Austrian Cultural Center.
In 2022, Lily died in Manhattan at the age of 101.
