Born: 17 July 1917, United States
Died: 20 August 2012
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Phyllis Ada Driver
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Born in 1917, Phyllis Diller, “whose sassy, screeching, rapid-fire stand-up comedy helped open the door for two generations of funny women” according to The New York Times, didn’t make her professional debut until 1955. Although others found her funny, it was only after reading a self-help book, Claude M. Bristol’s The Magic of Believing, that she gained the confidence to write routines, hire a drama coach, and start doing whatever paid or unpaid gigs she could get at hospitals, women’s clubs, and church halls. After her debut at a San Francisco nightclub called Purple Onion, she began touring nightclubs but gained a national reputation once she started performing on The Tonight Show in 1958.
“My material was geared towards everyone of all ages and from different backgrounds, and I wanted to hit them right in the middle,” she explained in her 2005 autobiography, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy. It was one of several books she wrote during her career.
Her standard material included jokes about her looks, her disinclination toward domestic duties, and a cast of characters that included a husband “Fang,” mother-in-law “Moby Dick,” and sister-in-law “Captain Bligh,” and delivering one-liners while clad in outrageous outfits. In addition to her work in stand-up, television, and film, Diller, a trained musician, appeared as a piano soloist with around 100 symphony orchestras across the country under the joking pseudonym Dame Illya Dillya. A review in The San Francisco Examiner called her “a fine concert pianist with a firm touch.”
After she retired, she told the Associated Press, “I don’t miss the travel. I miss the laughter. I do miss the actual hour. I don’t want to sound like I’m on dope, but that hour is a high; it’s as good as you can feel. A wonderful, wonderful happiness, and great power.”