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Phyllis Diller (born Phyllis Ada Driver on July 17, 1917) is a Golden Globe-nominated American comedian who is considered one of the pioneers of female stand-up comedy. The stage character she created was a wild-haired, oddly dressed housewife who was ugly but didn't realize it, and who made jokes about a husband named "Fang" while smoking from a long cigarette holder. She is also known for her distinctive, cackling laugh, one of the best-recognized in comedy. Diller is generally thought to have opened the stand-up field to women such as Totie Fields, Joan Rivers, Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhard, Joy Behar, Rosie O'Donnell and Roseanne Barr.
Diller was born to Perry Marcus Driver and Frances Ada Romshe in Lima, Ohio, and attended Lima Central High School. A housewife, mother, and advertising copywriter, Diller appeared on The Jack Paar Show and as a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show You Bet Your Life in the mid-1950s. Later in the decade, her career took off after selling out 87 straight weeks at San Francisco's legendary nightclub The Purple Onion. It was there that Diller honed her act. In her heyday, Diller achieved a record that still stands today in the Guinness Book of World Records for delivering 12 punchlines per minute.
Residing on the East Bay island of Alameda (near the west-end Naval Airbase), Diller began as a stand up at San Franciscos famed "Purple Onion" club. Her one weekend booking was extended to several months. Diller's fame was expanded when she co-starred with Bob Hope in 23 TV specials and three films in the 1960s: Eight on the Lam, The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell, and Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!. All of these films were failures at the box office, but Hope invited Diller to perform with him in Vietnam in 1966 with his USO troupe during the height of the conflict in that country. Diller seemed to be everywhere in pop culture in the 1960s. She appeared regularly as a special guest on many television programs during that decade. For example, she did a stint as one of the What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the popular Sunday Night CBS-TV program. The blindfolded panel on that evening's broadcast included Sammy Davis, Jr., and they were able to discern Diller's identity by way of her distinctive laugh in just three guesses.
Self-deprecating to a fault, a typical Diller joke had her running after a garbage truck pulling away from her curb. "Am I too late?" she'd yell. The driver's reply: "No, jump right in!"
Though her main claim to fame is her stand-up comedy act, Diller also has appeared in other films besides the three mentioned above, including a cameo appearance as Texas Guinan, the wisecracking nightclub hostess in the 1961 Hollywood production of Splendor in the Grass. She appeared in more than a dozen, usually low-budget movies, including as The Monster's Mate in the Rankin/Bass animated cult classic Mad Monster Party (1967), co-starring Boris Karloff. Diller also starred in two brief television series: The Pruitts of Southampton on ABC in 1966 and the variety show The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show on NBC in 1968. More recent television appearances for Diller have included a guest spot on the long-running family drama, 7th Heaven, where she hilariously boozed it up while cooking dinner for the household. She posed for Playboy, but the photos were never run in the magazine. Her voice can be heard on Scooby Doo as herself, Jimmy Neutron as Jimmy's grandmother, and on Family Guy.
More recently, additional Hollywood films have continued to capitalize on Diller's charm and recognizability. In 1998, Diller parlayed her unique cackle into the vocals for the Queen in Disney/Pixar's animated movie A Bug's Life. In 2005, Diller was featured as one of many contemporary comics in a documentary film, The Aristocrats. Diller, who avoids working blue, did a version of an old, risque 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, she appeared on The Tonight Show and performed stand-up, before chatting with Jay Leno. Leno asked her to come back on her birthday for a celebration, and she said she'd be delighted.
Diller had a cameo appearance in an episode of ABC's Boston Legal on April 10, 2007. She appeared as herself, confronting William Shatner's Denny Crane character, alleging to have had a torrid love affair with him in the past. They seemed to have enjoyed a romantic moment in a foxhole during World War II.
Diller is a member of the Society of Singers, which supports singers in need. In June 2001 at the request of fellow Society member and producer Scott Sherman, she appeared at Kansas City and Philadelphia Pride events in support of gay pride and rights. The mayor of Philadelphia officially proclaimed June 8, 2001, as "Phyllis Diller Day" in Philadelphia. Onstage she was presented an official proclamation to a standing ovation. In 2006, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom proclaimed February 5, 2006 "Phyllis Diller Day in San Francisco," which she accepted by phone.
She has also recorded at least five comedy LP's, one of which was Born To Sing, released as Columbia CS 9523.
Although known for decades for waving cigarette holders in her comedy act, Diller is a lifelong nonsmoker, and the cigarette holders were stage props that the nonsmoking comedian had specially constructed as props.
Diller, a longtime resident of Brentwood, California, credits much of her success to Bob Hope, in large part because he included her in the pictures and Vietnam USO shows mentioned above. She is an accomplished pianist as well as a painter.
Diller has candidly discussed her plastic surgery, a series of procedures first undertaken when she was 55, and which changed her persona from being deliberately ugly to somewhat chic for her age. Following the initial procedures, Diller also adopted a more stylish hairdo, and opted for more conservative and flattering make-up and clothing. Diller's efforts have drawn numerous awards and acknowledgments from plastic surgeons and medical organizations.
Diller has been married three times, divorced twice, and widowed once. She has five children from her marriage to her first husband, Waunita Diller. Diller's daughter has suffered from schizophrenia for most of her life. Diller's second husband was Warde Donovan. Diller is a grandmother to four — Paul, Michael, Chris and Cory. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in December 2006, Diller briefly mentions that one (or possibly more) of her children predeceased her, and that her youngest son Perry, now 55, oversees her affairs today.
Most recently, Diller has suffered serious medical problems, including a heart attack in 1999. After a hospital stay she was fitted with a pacemaker and released. A bad fall resulted in her being hospitalized for tests on her head and pacemaker in 2005. She has since retired from stand-up comedy appearances.
In 2005, she wrote her autobiography titled Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse. A direct-to-DVD version of the project, complete with early live clips of Diller, and interviews with her showbiz colleagues including Don Rickles, among others, was released in December, 2006. A screenplay about Diller's early years in stand-up, according to blind items in the trades, is in preproduction with Patricia Clarkson slated to play the comedienne in a film due to be released in 2007.
In 1993 she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
