Dr. R. Philip Smith, An Ex-Seattleite Who Became A Physician To Stars

Co-chairman of Seafair. Washington Athletic Club president. Seattle Yacht Club commodore. Seattle Parks Board member. In the 1950s and early 1960s, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Seattle citizen more prominent than Dr. R. Philip Smith.

Then, in 1965, he left town. The lure: an offer to be the first medical director at the posh La Costa Spa in Carlsbad, Calif., where the stars go to sweat and slim down.

"He got an offer he couldn't refuse," Dr. Boyd Quint, Dr. Smith's former partner in medical practice in Seattle, said yesterday. "Phil always did love celebrities . . .

"He had a lot of this aura of the society doc, but he really wasn't at all. He was a very committed physician. And he was the finest GYN (gynecology) surgeon I ever saw."

Dr. Smith died this week at a California nursing home. He was 83. He worked at the La Costa Spa until 1986, when he retired after suffering a series of strokes.

After moving to La Costa, Dr. Smith didn't get back to Seattle much. Helen Heifner, his former nurse, said she last saw him in 1977, when he came to town to promote his first book, "The La Costa Diet and Exercise Book."

"He was signing books down at Littler's," she remembered. When Heifner approached, Dr. Smith asked her to sit with him. Former patients who came by remarked it was like old times.

"People didn't work for him - they worked with him," Heifner said yesterday. "People loved him dearly."

Dr. Smith was born in Massachusetts. His father was an itinerant preacher, Quint said, and the family moved around a lot. Dr. Smith grew up mostly in Kansas, and graduated from the Kansas University Medical School in 1934.

He moved to Seattle in 1939, opening a practice in obstetrics and gynecology and teaching both subjects at the University of Washington Medical School. Dr. Smith delivered three of the children of former Mayor Gordon Clinton.

"Phil was a very public-spirited man," Clinton said. "Everything he did, he did with class. He was a very solid guy."

He was vice president of Greater Seattle in 1957 and chaired or co-chaired the Seafair celebrations in 1954, 1960 and 1961. He also served on the city's Seattle Center Advisory Committee.

Dr. Smith's avocation was sports. He was a skier, a golfer and a sailor. In the 1950s he sailed his boat, the Gossip, to Honolulu, making a movie about the journey that won an award at an international film festival.

Why did he name the boat the Gossip? "He always said nothing travels faster than Gossip," Heifner said.

Dr. Smith served terms as president of Little League Football and general commissioner of the Greater Seattle Junior Football Association. He also was a big booster of University of Washington football. "We delivered all the scholar/athletes' wives (babies) for free," Quint recalled.

Dr. Smith co-chaired the first Seattle Open Golf Tournament at Broadmoor in 1961. Through golf he got to know celebrities such as Bing Crosby and Phil Harris.

At La Costa, Dr. Smith's clientele included Ali MacGraw, Rod Steiger, William Holden, Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett, Bette Davis and Burt Reynolds.

"What I do is simple," Dr. Smith said of his job at La Costa in a 1977 interview with The Times. "I tell people how to eat and exercise . . . but it's a lot better than the cancer surgery I found myself doing before I left Seattle."

In addition to "The La Costa Diet and Exercise Book," published in 1977, Dr. Smith also co-authored "The La Costa Prescription for a Longer Life" in 1979.

Survivors include his wife, Geraldine; daughters Sharon Hillberg of Renton, Roberta Villarino of Del Mar, Calif., and Rebecca Smith of La Costa, Calif.; and five grandchildren.