Phyllis Diller, the inimitable 95-year-old comedian who built a long-lasting career around self-deprecating humor and eccentric stage costumes, died today at her Los Angeles home. Her longtime business manager, Milton Suchin, confirmed the sad news to the Associated Press, adding that she passed away “peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face.”
Credited as being the first true female stand-up, Diller did not begin her comedy career until her first husband, Sherwood Diller, convinced her to give up her job as an advertising and radio writer in her late 30s. After appearances on The Jack Paar Show, she developed a long-running working relationship with her idol, Bob Hope, and would appear in 23 of his television specials. (In tribute to him, she kept an enormous oil painting of the comedy icon in her formal living room and grew roses named for him and his wife, Dolores Hope, in the garden surrounding her home in Brentwood, California.) Among her favorite comedic subjects: domestic life (“Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance?”), her looks (“My photographs don’t do me justice—they just look like me”), her age (“You know you’re old if your walker has an airbag”), marriage (“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight”), and children (“Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home”). Diller was also a talented pianist who performed as a soloist with 100 symphony orchestras as her character Dame Illya Dillya between 1971 and 1981.
In 2002, at the age of 84, Diller retired from stand-up to concentrate on painting. She also wrote her autobiography, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, published in 2005. After reportedly canceling a Tonight Show appearance in 2007, during which she was scheduled to celebrate her 90th birthday, she made an appearance four years later on Anderson Cooper 360, where she told the host, “You’re so white. You look like somebody put too much bleach on you.”
Diller is survived by a son, Perry, daughters Sally and Suzanne, four grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.
