Phyllis Diller Dead: Comedian Dies At 95

Phyllis Diller, an actress and comedian best known for her stand-up comedy act, is dead at age 95. TMZ reports that the comedian passed away at her Los Angeles home at 9:30 a.m. Monday in the company of her family.

Host Dan Rowan, Phyllis Diller, host Dick Martin on the set of 'Rowan and Martin's Laugh In", Nov. 25, 1968.

Diller's agent Fred Wostbrock confirmed the news to NBC, telling its news website, "It is a great loss today... She was a true pioneer and the first lady of stand-up. She paved the way for Chelsea Handler, Roseanne Barr, Joan Rivers and Ellen DeGeneres. She was the best. The first female stand-up to play Vegas. She was on Broadway, she made movies, she did it all."

"She died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face," manager Milton Suchin also told the Associated Press.

Diller, who was born in 1917 in Ohio, witnessed revolutionary change for female comedians in the latter half of the 20th century. Her close relationship with the comedian Bob Hope spurred nearly two dozen co-starring television specials during the 1960s. Diller would also go on to star in two eponymous television series for network television: "The Phyllis Diller Show," from 1966 to 1967, and "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show," one year later.

Diller is survived by three children, Sally, Suzanne and Perry, from her first marriage to Sherwood Anderson Diller. She remarried actor Warde Donovan in 1965 and divorced him in 1974.

Throughout the 1960s, she appeared regularly as a special guest on many television programs. For example, she appeared as one of the What's My Line? Mystery Guests. The blindfolded panel on that evening's broadcast included Sammy Davis, Jr., and they were able to discern Diller's identity in just three guesses. Also, Diller made regular cameo appearances making her trademark wisecracks on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. 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 for the trash?" she'd yell. The driver's reply: "No, jump right in!"


http://tv.msn.com/tv/article.aspx?news=751919&ocid=ansent11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Diller