Long before female talk show hosts and comediennes selling our arenas, there was Phyllis Diller… alone on stage, making audiences uncomfortable with laughter.
She influenced the female comedy stylings of Joan Rivers and Roseanne Barr, often regarded as the first sort of raunchy-style female stand-up comedian.
Diller built her entire act around the things women weren’t supposed to joke about: her looks, her husband, her housekeeping, her body, her age.
She appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, headlined Las Vegas, released comedy albums, wrote books, and opened doors that hadn’t existed before she walked through them.
She died in 2012 at 95 — still sharp, still funny, still largely uncredited for what she built.
Here are some funny one-liners that’ll live on forever.
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