In a long career, Ms. Phillips was actress, playwright, press rep, TV writer, memoirist and much more, living life so fully that up to her 82nd year she was still scuba diving. In one extraordinary story from her past, O'Connor recounted, she saved the life of Leni Riefenstahl (Hitler's filmmaker, director of 1935's "Triumph of the Will") while diving in the Middle East. She would later write a fictionalized account of it in the novel "Two Women Under Water." The writer would later point out to friends the story's ironic fact — Ms. Phillips was Jewish.