Phyllis Diller

Phyllis Ada Diller (née Driver; July 17, 1917 – August 20, 2012) was an American stand-up comedian, actress, author, musician and visual artist, noted for her eccentric stage persona, characterized by her self-deprecating humor, wild hair and clothes, and exaggerated, cackling laugh.

Diller was one of the first female comics to become a household name in the United States, credited as an influence by Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr and Ellen DeGeneres, among others. She had German and Irish ancestry (the surname "Driver" had been changed from "Treiber" several generations earlier). She was raised Methodist but was a lifelong atheist, even in childhood. Her father and mother were older than most when she was born (55 and 36, respectively) and Diller attended several funerals while growing up. The exposure to death at a young age led her to an early appreciation for life and she later realized that her comedy was a form of therapy.

Diller attended Lima's Central High School, discovering early on she had comic gifts. Later, Diller observed, "I was always a pro— even as a little tiny kid. I was an absolutely perfect, quiet, dedicated student in class. But outside of class, I got my laughs." Diller studied piano for three years at the Sherwood Music Conservatory of Columbia College Chicago, but decided against a career in music after hearing her teachers and mentors play with much more skill than she thought that she would be able to achieve, and transferred to Bluffton College where she studied literature, history, psychology and philosophy.

Career 1930s–1950s In 1939 she met Sherwood Diller, the brother of a classmate at Bluffton,

During World War II, Sherwood worked at the Willow Run B-24 Bomber Plant, in Ypsilanti Charter Township, Michigan. In 1945, Sherwood Diller was transferred to Naval Air Station Alameda Alameda, California, where he was an inspector.

Diller began working as the women's editor at a small newspaper, The 15-minute series was a Bay Area Radio-Television production, directed for television by ABC's Jim Baker. and as a vocalist for a music-review TV show called Pop Club, hosted by Don Sherwood.

"It took two years of nagging by my husband to get me onto that stage," she (Diller) told Nachman. Finally, she said, she "sat down, called the Red Cross and said, 'I have an act. Where do you want it?' They sent me to the veterans hospital at the Presidio, where I pushed a piano into a room that had four guys in it. I played, sang, told jokes while they yelled, 'Leave us alone; we're already in pain!' The Purple Onion, she made her professional stand-up debut. Up until then, she had only tried out her jokes for fellow PTA members at nearby Edison Elementary School. Maya Angelou, who was already performing at the club, wrote that Diller "would not change her name because when she became successful she wanted everyone to know it was, indeed, her herself". Her first professional show was a success and the two-week booking stretched out to a record Diller had found her calling and eventual financial success while her husband's business career failed. She explained, "I became a stand-up comedian because I had a sit-down husband." She wrote her own material and kept a file cabinet full of her gags, honing her nightclub act. Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and Jonathan Winters were early influences, but Diller developed a singular comedic persona — a surreal version of femininity. This absurd caricature with garish baggy dresses and gigantic, clownish hair made fun of her lack of sex appeal while brandishing a cigarette holder (with a wooden cigarette because she didn't smoke), punctuating the humor with a hearty cackle to show she was in on the joke. Multiple bookings on the Jack Paar Tonight Show led to an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which brought her national prominence as she continued to perform stand-up throughout the United States.

Starting in 1959 and throughout the 1960s, she released multiple comedy albums, including the titles Wet Toe in a Hot Socket!, Laughs, Are You Ready for Phyllis Diller?, and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller.

1960s

From 1961 to 1965, Phyllis Diller lived in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Several of her children had stayed with Sherwood's relatives in St. Louis, and the oldest, Peter, attended Washington University. They worked together in films such as Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966), Eight on the Lam (1967), and The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell (1968), all critically panned, but did well at the box office. Diller accompanied Hope to Vietnam in 1966 with his USO troupe near the height of the Vietnam War.

She appeared regularly as a special guest on many television programs including The Andy Williams Show. She was a Mystery Guest on What's My Line? but the blindfolded panel (including Sammy Davis Jr.) discerned Diller's identity in three guesses. Diller made regular cameo appearances, making her trademark wisecracks on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Noted for her self-deprecating humor, Diller's typical joke repertoire included one in which she ran after a garbage truck pulling away from her curb. "Am I too late for the trash?" she would yell. The driver's reply: "No, jump right in!" She became a semi-regular on The Hollywood Squares, starting in 1967, appearing in 28 episodes until 1980.

Diller continued to work in film, making an appearance as Texas Guinan, the wisecracking nightclub hostess in Splendor in the Grass (1961). Throughout the 1960s, she appeared in more than a dozen, usually low-budget, films. She also began a career in voice work, providing the voice of the Monster's Mate in Mad Monster Party? (1967).

Diller also starred in the short-lived television series The Pruitts of Southampton (1966–1967); later retitled The Phyllis Diller Show, a half-hour sitcom on ABC. She received a Golden Globe nomination in 1967 for her role in Pruitts. Diller hosted a variety show in 1968 titled The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.

Beginning December 26, 1969, she had a three-month run in Hello, Dolly! (opposite Richard Deacon), as the second to last in a succession of replacements for Carol Channing in the title role, which included Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, and Pearl Bailey. After Diller's stint, Ethel Merman took over the role until the end of the show's run in December 1970.

1970–2012

Diller continued working in television throughout the 1970s and 1980s, appearing as a judge on premiere and subsequent episodes of The Gong Show and as a panelist on the Match Game PM show. She also guest-starred in The Mouse Factory, Night Gallery, Love American Style, The Muppet Show, CHiPs and The Love Boat. In 1978, she hosted a Showtime comedy special which featured Robin Tyler, who became the first out lesbian on U.S. national television. Between 1999 and 2003, she played roles in 7th Heaven and The Drew Carey Show.

Her successful career as a voice actor continued when Diller guested as herself in "A Good Medium is Rare," a 1972 episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies. In 1998, Diller provided the voice of the Queen in A Bug's Life. Among her other animated films are The Nutcracker Prince (1990, as Mousequeen), Happily Ever After (1990, as Mother Nature), and Casper's Scare School (2006, as Aunt Spitzy).

She voiced characters in several television series, including Robot Chicken, Family Guy, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, Captain Planet, Cow and Chicken, Hey Arnold! as Arnold's grandpa's sister Mitzi, The Powerpuff Girls, Animaniacs, Jimmy Neutron as Jimmy's grandmother, The Wild Thornberrys and King of the Hill.

Although retired from the stand-up circuit, Diller never fully left the entertainment industry. In 2005, she was featured as one of many contemporary comics in the documentary The Aristocrats. Diller, who avoided blue comedy, did a version of an old, risqué vaudeville routine, in which she describes herself passing out when she first heard the joke, forgetting the actual content of the joke.

On January 24, 2007, Diller appeared on The Tonight Show and performed stand-up before chatting with Jay Leno. Leno has stated that Diller would infrequently call him to contribute jokes during his time as the host of The Tonight Show. That same year, she had a cameo appearance portraying herself in an episode of Boston Legal. In 2011, she appeared in an episode of her friend Roseanne Barr's reality show Roseanne's Nuts.

In January 2012, she recorded a version of Charlie Chaplin's song "Smile" with Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale for the album Get Happy.

Author

Publishing her first best seller in 1966 and releasing more throughout the decade, Diller's books on domestic life featured her self-deprecating humor. The titles include Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints, Phyllis Diller's Marriage Manual, and The Complete Mother.

Between 1971 and 1981, Diller appeared as a piano soloist with symphony orchestras across the country under the stage name Dame Illya Dillya. Her performances were spiced with humor, but she took the music seriously. A review of one of her concerts in The San Francisco Examiner called her "a fine concert pianist with a firm touch."

Artist A self-taught artist, Diller began painting in 1963. She worked in acrylics, watercolors, and oils throughout the 1970s and filled her Brentwood, California home with her portraits and still lifes. In 2003, at age 86, she held the first of several "art parties", selling her artwork along with her stage clothes and costume jewelry.

Personal life Diller credited much of her success to a motivational book, The Magic of Believing (1948) by Claude M. Bristol, which gave her confidence at the start of her career. She was married and divorced twice. She had six children with her first husband Sherwood Anderson Diller, and she outlived two of her grown children. The character of "Fang", the husband whom she frequently mentioned in her act, sprang from an appropriation of elements of the comic strip The Lockhorns.

Diller candidly discussed her plastic surgery, a series of procedures first undertaken when she was 55, and she wrote that she had undergone 15 procedures.

Diller died at home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 20, 2012, at age 95, from heart failure. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered at sea.

Influence and legacy One of Diller's self-designed costumes and her pump organ at the Alameda Museum, California, 2015. Diller was one of the first solo female comedians in the U.S. to become a household name. She stated that making people laugh is a powerful art form. As a pioneering woman in the stand-up field, she inspired many female comedians including Joan Rivers, Lily Tomlin, Margaret Cho and Roseanne Barr. Diller herself was influenced by comedy books and appropriated from sources like The Lockhorns.

Barr, who listened to Diller's records as a child, called her a true artist and revolutionary, saying, "It was timeless, that wacky, tacky character she created; the cigarette holder was genius, paradoxically regal. She was a victorious loser hero, the female iteration of Chaplin's Little Tramp." An obituary in Queerty noted her popularity with gay audiences, calling her a "strong-willed entertainer who challenged the status quo regarding gender and sexuality." She enjoyed the company of gay men, writing in her memoir, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy: "Gay men have the most wonderful sense of humor. And they are willing to laugh. They appeal to me and I appeal to them." In 2021, Ginger Minj portrayed Diller in the Snatch Game of Love on the sixth season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars.

A New York Times remembrance noted that Diller's flamboyant look is echoed in Lady Gaga's concert attire and that Eddie Murphy also punctuated jokes with a loud laugh, in a style reminiscent of Diller's persona. The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery gave her an award for bringing plastic surgery "out of the closet."

In 2003, after hearing of the donation of Archie Bunker's chair to the Smithsonian Institution, Diller opened her doors to the National Museum of American History. She offered them some of her most iconic costume pieces, as well as her gag file, a steel cabinet with 48 file drawers with more than 50,000 jokes she had written on index cards during her career. In 2011, the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery at the National Museum of American History displayed Diller's file and some of the objects that became synonymous with her comedic persona—an unkempt wig, wrist-length gloves, cloth-covered ankle boots, and a bejeweled cigarette holder. Golden Apple Award for Most Cooperative Actress – 1966. Laurel Award for Female New Face 11th place – 1967. Golden Globe nomination for Actress in a Television Series – The Pruitts of Southampton – 1967. Women's International Center Living Legacy Award – 1990. American Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement – 1992. Diller lived in St. Louis with her family from 1961 to 1965 and was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1993. Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Service Show Host – A Tribute to Bob Hope – 1998. Women in Film Lucy Award, recognizing her achievements in enhancing the perception of women through the medium of television – 2000. San Diego Film Festival Governor's Award – 2004. Scripps Howard MVP Award - 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from hometown Lima, Ohio – 2012.

Video games Year Title Voice 1996 You Don't Know Jack Volume 2 Herself

Discography Albums Year Title Label Format Notes 1959 Wet Toe in a Hot Socket Mirrosonic/London/Hallmark vinyl/CD with The Three Flames at the Bon Soir, CD reissued 2016 1961 Laughs Verve vinyl at the Bon Soir NY March 1961 1962 Are You Ready for Phyllis Diller? Verve vinyl produced by Jim Davis 1968 Born to Sing Columbia vinyl/streaming produced by David Rubinson 2001 Live From San Francisco Laugh.com CD/streaming recorded 2000 2009 On Comedy Laugh.com CD/streaming interviewed by Kelly Carlin

Compilations Year Title Label Format Notes 1964 Great Moments of Comedy Verve vinyl Celebrity Series 1967 The Best of Phyllis Diller Verve/Laugh.com vinyl/CD/streaming CD reissued 2002 1968 The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Verve vinyl/streaming Celebrity Series, photography by Roddy McDowall 1968 What's Left Verve vinyl/CD Celebrity Series

Home videos Year Title Studio Format 1977 On Location with Phyllis Diller HBO/Standing Room Only broadcast / DVD 2006 1987 How to Have a Moneymaking Garage Sale J2 Communications VHS 2001 Live in Concert Laugh.com DVD 2004 Goodnight, We Love You: The Life and Legend of Phyllis Diller Mansfield Avenue Productions/Image Entertainment theatrical / DVD 2006 2007 Not Just Another Pretty Face MPI Media Group DVD / streaming