Comedian Phyllis Diller, the former housewife whose raucous cackle and jokes about her own looks made her one of America's first female stand-up comedy stars, died in her sleep on Monday at age 95, her longtime manager said.
Diller was found in her bed at her home in the affluent Brentwood section of Los Angeles by her son, Perry, who had come to visit her, manager Milt Suchin said.
"She had a smile on her face, as you'd expect," Suchin said.
Her publicist, Fred Wostbrock, said: "She was a true pioneer. She was the first lady of stand-up comedy. She paved the way for everybody."
Diller created an indelible persona with her distinctive braying laugh, a cigarette holder, teased hair, outlandish costumes and a fictional lout of a husband she called Fang.
Her act consisted of rapid-fire jokes and one-liners that often spoofed social pretences by poking fun at herself ("I went bathing nude on the beach the other day; it took me 20 minutes to get arrested") as well as a world of invented characters.
In addition to husband Fang - "What would you call a man with one tooth that was two inches long?" - there was her mother-in-law Moby Dick, her skinny sister-in-law Captain Bligh and her neighbour Mrs. Clean.
Diller prided herself on keeping her jokes tightly written and boasted that she held a world record for getting 12 laughs a minute.
A late-bloomer by show business standards, Diller got her start at age 37, making her debut at San Francisco's Purple Onion in 1955 as she broke into the maledominated comedy circuit.
Her first national exposure came as a contestant on Groucho Marx's TV quiz show You Bet Your Life.
At that time Diller was a housewife who had raised five children. She was also a newspaper columnist, publicist and radio writer.
She discovered a flair for stand-up jokes at school parent-teacher meetings and similar gatherings and decided to make comedy a career at the urging of her then-husband, Sherwood Diller. The couple divorced in 1965 and a second marriage to singer Warde Donovan ended 10 years later.
Diller gradually adopted the props, zany wardrobe and stage persona that would become her trademark.
"If I showed you my opening night photo, I looked like the woman next door," Diller once said. "And it took me a while to realize that people don't pay to see the woman next door. They can look at her for nothing."
A series of TV appearances followed and Diller soon became an instantly recognized star.
In 1966-67, she was the star of an ABC sitcom about a society family trying to stave off bankruptcy, The Pruitts of Southampton. In 1968, she was host of a short-lived variety series, The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.
Her TV experience included a trip to Victoria to shoot Take Off, the pilot for an ill-fated TV comedy show, at Craigdarroch Castle in the 1980s.
Diller had a close friendship with the late comedy great Bob Hope and costarred with him in three movies.
Diller built a career around lampooning her looks but spent a fortune perfecting them. By her count, she had more than 20 plastic surgeries.
In later years, she suffered from heart problems and fractured her pelvis in a fall but continued to work in clubs and on television well into her 80s.
