Not necessarily the best comic, or the funniest, or even the most iconic comic, Phyllis Diller passed away at 95 years of age this morning. Diller, she of electrified hair and shall we be kind, less than graceful curves, survived decades as the preeminent Rat Pack-era comic. Self-depreciating, always skewering her fictional husband “Fang” and finding unique ways to let off her explosive laugh that could startle Mount Rushmore, Diller graced more roasts, stags, Vegas rooms, arenas, and local dives than there are whole numbers.
When she started, there were no “Comedy Clubs” and very few stand-up comics were female. Vegas was one of the few venues where a comic could hone their chops and she headlined for decades at all the classic places. Of course she worked blue but didn’t work blue because she didn’t have talent, she worked blue from time to time because it was funny. Her delivery was Old School, joke, punch line, joke, punch line. There was never the pretension of art or trying to change the world with her ‘comedy stylings’ or unique observations.
Perhaps the quote from the AP story sums it up:
“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.”
She succeeded.
RoadDave 
To modify a phrase from one of my great pillars in life, “She boldly went where no woman had gone before”. And just like Ron Palillo of “Welcome Back, Kotter”, another piece of my background takes that final curtain call.
Speaking of such, where’s the Tony Scott tribute? Tony was THE greatest “porn” director ever. “Top Gun” – F-14 porn. “Days Of Thunder” – NASCAR porn. “Crimson Tide” – sub porn. “Unstoppable” – train porn. While he could weave interesting stories and bring gripping characters into action-packed confrontations, there always seemed to be some form of machinery playing a key part. Another huge, and saddening, loss.
True, Tony Scott passing was sad and he was a great director of technology-fixated movies. Interestingly, they say badness comes in threes, so Ron Palillo, Tony Scott and Phyllis Diller would keep that meme working its savage path.
But then you throw in William Windom (the captain from the heavily damaged starship in Star Trek’s “The Doomsday Machine”) and Scott McKenzie “If You’re Going To San Francisco”, and that blows the threesome theory. Unless you pull Ernest Borgnine in as a 6th. 😦
Jeez, enough of this, I’m gettin’ de-PRESSED here! 🙂
She was a staple of nightclubs and television from the 1950s – when female comics were rare indeed – until her retirement in 2002.
The rat-a-tat gag lines were definitely old-school, but Phyllis Diller, who died on Monday at age 95, was a pioneer nonetheless. There were other female stand-ups at the time — the “blue” comedy of Rusty Warren, the sophisticated ironies of Jean Carroll — but Diller was the first to achieve front-rank stardom. For much of a decade — until younger comics like Joan Rivers and Totie Fields came along, colonizing the territory she opened up — she had the field almost entirely to herself. “I became the genre,” she said in later years. And she was right.