Phyllis Diller dies at 95 in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Phyl­lis Diller, the house­wife turned humorist who aimed some of her sharpest barbs at her­self, punc­tu­at­ing her jokes with her trade­mark cackle, died Mon­day morn­ing in her Los Ange­les home at age 95.

“She died peace­fully in her sleep and with a smile on her face,” her long­time man­ager, Mil­ton Suchin, told The Asso­ci­ated Press.

Diller, who suf­fered a near-fatal heart attack in 1999, was found by her son, Perry Diller. The cause of her death has not been released.

She was a sta­ple of night­clubs and tele­vi­sion from the 1950s — when female comics were rare indeed — until her retire­ment in 2002. Diller built her stand-up act around the per­sona of the corner-cutting house­wife (“I bury a lot of my iron­ing in the back yard”) with bizarre looks, a wardrobe to match (by “Omar of Omaha”) and a hus­band named “Fang.”

Wrote Time mag­a­zine in 1961: “Onstage comes some­thing that, by its own descrip­tion, looks like a sack­ful of door­knobs. With hair dyed by Alcoa, pipe-cleaner limbs and knees just miss­ing one another when the feet are wide apart, this is not Princess Volupine. It is Phyl­lis Diller, the poor man’s Aun­tie Mame, only suc­cess­ful female among the New Wave come­di­ans and one of the few women funny and tough enough to belt out a ‘standup’ act of one-line gags.”

“I was one of those life-of-the-party types,” Diller told The Asso­ci­ated Press in 1965. “You’ll find them in every bridge club, at every coun­try club. Peo­ple invited me to par­ties only because they knew I would sup­ply some laughs. They still do.”

She didn’t get into com­edy until she was nearly 40, after her first hus­band, Sher­wood Diller, prod­ded her for two years to give up a suc­cess­ful career as an adver­tis­ing and radio writer. Through it all, she was also a busy mother.

“We had five kids at the time. I don’t how he thought we’d han­dle that,” she told the AP in 2006.

A Chicago Tri­bune colum­nist, describ­ing her appear­ance at a nightspot there in 1958, noted she was from San Fran­cisco, hailed her as “the weird­est, wildest yet” — and made sure to men­tion her five youngsters.

Her hus­band man­aged her career until the couple’s 25-year mar­riage fell apart in the 1960s. Shortly after her divorce she mar­ried enter­tainer Warde Dono­van, but they sep­a­rated within months.

Through both mar­riages and other rela­tion­ships, the foibles of “Fang” remained an inte­gral part of her act.

“Fang is per­ma­nent in the act, of course,” she once said. “Don’t con­fuse him with my real hus­bands. They’re temporary.”

She also appeared in movies, includ­ing “Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Num­ber” and “Eight on the Lam” with Bob Hope.

In 1966–67, she was the star of an ABC sit­com about a soci­ety fam­ily try­ing to stave off bank­ruptcy, “The Pruitts of Southamp­ton.” Gypsy Rose Lee played a nosy neigh­bor. In 1968, she was host of a short-lived vari­ety series, “The Beau­ti­ful Phyl­lis Diller Show.”

But standup com­edy was her first love, and when she broke into the busi­ness in 1956 it was a field she had largely to her­self because female comics weren’t widely accepted then.

Although she could be seri­ous dur­ing inter­views, sooner or later a joke would pop out, often as not fol­lowed by that out­ra­geous “AH-HHAAAAAAAAAAAA-HA-HA-HA!” laugh.

“It’s my real laugh,” she once said. “It’s in the fam­ily. When I was a kid my father called me the laugh­ing hyena.”

Her looks were a fre­quent topic, and she did every­thing she could to accen­tu­ate them — neg­a­tively. She wore out­ra­geous fright wigs and delib­er­ately shopped for stage shoes that made her legs look as skinny as possible.

“The older I get, the fun­nier I get,” she said in 1961. “Think what I’ll save in not hav­ing my face lifted.”

She felt dif­fer­ent about plas­tic surgery later, though, and her face, and other body parts, under­went a remark­able trans­for­ma­tion. Efforts to be beau­ti­ful became a main­stay of her act.

Com­ment­ing in 1995 about the repaint­ing of the Hol­ly­wood sign, she cracked, “It took 300 gal­lons, almost as much as I put on every morn­ing.” She said her home “used to be haunted, but the ghosts haven’t been back since the night I tried on all my wigs.”

She recov­ered from a 1999 heart attack with the help of a pace­maker, but finally retired in 2002, say­ing advanc­ing age was mak­ing it too dif­fi­cult for her to spend sev­eral weeks a year on the road.

“I have energy, but I don’t have last­ing energy,” she told The Asso­ci­ated Press in 2006. “You have to know your limitations.”

After retir­ing from standup, Diller con­tin­ued to take occa­sional small parts in movies and TV shows (“Fam­ily Guy”) and pur­sued paint­ing as a seri­ous hobby. She pub­lished her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “Like a Lamp­shade in a Whore­house,” in 2005. The 2006 film “Good­night, We Love You” doc­u­mented her career.

Her other books included “Phyl­lis Diller’s House­keep­ing Hints” and “Phyl­lis Diller’s Mar­riage Manual.”

When she turned 90 in July 2007, she frac­tured a bone in her back and was forced to can­cel a planned birth­day appear­ance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” But it didn’t stop her from wise­crack­ing: “I still take the pill ‘cause I don’t want any more grandchildren.”

Born Phyl­lis Dri­ver in Lima, Ohio, she mar­ried Sher­wood Diller right out of school (Bluffton Col­lege) and was a house­wife for sev­eral years before get­ting out­side work.

She was work­ing as an adver­tis­ing writer for a radio sta­tion when a com­edy turn at San Francisco’s Pur­ple Onion night­club launched her toward stardom.

She made her net­work TV debut as a con­tes­tant on Grou­cho Marx’s game show, “You Bet Your Life.” (Diller, asked if she was mar­ried: “Yes, I’ve worn a wed­ding ring for 18 years.” Marx: “Really? Well, two more pay­ments and it’ll be all yours.”)

She cred­ited the self-help book, “The Magic of Believ­ing” by Claude M. Bris­tol, with giv­ing her the courage to enter the busi­ness. For decades she would rec­om­mend it to aspir­ing enter­tain­ers, even buy­ing it for them sometimes.

“Don’t get me wrong, though,” she said in a 1982 inter­view that threat­ened to turn seri­ous. “I’m a comic. I don’t deal with prob­lems when I’m working.”

“I want peo­ple to laugh.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.