Phyllis Diller, R.I.P.

Phyllis Diller and the Muppets

I always thought Phyllis Diller was a very funny person. I found her autobiography at a thrift store a couple of years ago with her autograph in it. Rest in peace Mrs. Diller.

From EW.com --

Comedian, actress, artist, and author Phyllis Diller died Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 95.

“She was a true pioneer,” Diller’s longtime agent Fred Wostbrock told EW. “She was the first lady of stand up comedy. She paved the way for everybody. And she conquered television, movies, Broadway, record albums, nightclubs, books, and radio. She did it all. A true pioneer.”

Mad Monster Party

The housewife-turned-advertising copywriter and mother of  six got her big showbiz break in 1955 at the age of 37 when the owner of San  Francisco’s now-defunct Purple Onion nightclub gave her a substitute stand-up  spot one night. “When I went on, the room went totally quiet and I knew that I  had this magnetic thing that you had to be born with,” Diller told EW in 2005.  “You can’t buy it or even learn it.” Diller’s shtick — often revolving around  her pathetic fictional husband “Fang” and her less-than-gorgeous looks (“I love  to go to the doctor. Where else would a man look at me and say, ‘Take off your  clothes?’”) — quickly made her famous. She became a legend to generations of  female comics (“To a lot of us she was better than Bob Hope,” Roseanne Barr told  EW).

In the 1960s and ’70s, Diller became a frequent guest on The Tonight  Show, The Flip Wilson Show, and Laugh-In, though TV series meant to showcase the  comic (The Phyllis Diller Show, The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show) never took  off. She continued to get work as she got older, appearing in movies like A  Bug’s Life as well as TV shows such as Family Guy, 7th Heaven, and The Drew  Carey Show. In 2005, the same year she published her autobiography (Like a  Lampshade in a Whorehouse), she appeared along with Sarah Silverman and Bob  Saget in the humor documentary The Aristocrats, proving that even 88-year-olds  can tell dirty jokes — in her case, in a typically zany wig and punctuated by her  trademark cackle of a laugh.