Son of a carnival concessionaire and owner of Goodman's Greater Shows, Philip spent many happy childhood hours in plays and musical shows in school on New York's lower east side and at the Educational Alliance settlement house there. His first professional work was at Catskill resort hotels, where he played in several casino bands, and at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina where, during Field Artillery training,  he was featured in the ambitious all-soldier musical, Take A Break.

He was in 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 network show,You Are There, with a brilliant cast of radio 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 several  Equity Library Theater productions: 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 joined Equity during the premiere season at the Corning Summer Theater, was 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 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 during the 50s  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' jazzy 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),  screen tests for 20th Century Fox in New York, 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.  He directed 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 the Saudek people 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 also became involved with documentary films in the seventies, 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 some 30-plus films on farming, tillage and pesticide use.  For five years  he did  promotional  films for Fortune Magazine, including two documentaries in association with Sheldon Cotler, and a number of comedy sketches  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.

Mr. Goodman has received many awards, among them eight CINE Golden Eagles, the Chris Award, Diploma from Italia sul Mare, Video Review's ViRA as Best Director (1983), and certificates and plaques from U.S. Film Festival, Film and TV Festival of New York, the Columbus Film Festival, and others.

Recent work is discussed on the  Painted People Home Page.