A true comedy legend has died at the age of 95. Phyllis Diller passed away in her sleep earlier today at her home in Brentwood, California.
Born in 1917 in Lima, Ohio, Diller was first a housewife, mother and then a advertising copywriter. She’d studied music in her earlier years but gave it up, believing that she’d never be as good as her teachers.
In 1955, she was a mother of five children living in Northern California. It was then, at the age of 37, that she made her nightclub debut at the Purple Onion in San Francisco. She kept working there for 87 straight weeks and over the years developed a unique self-deprecating act that kept her working in stand-up for the rest of her life.
