Her retirement isn't getting quite the attention it deserves…but then, the last 10 or 20 years she's been performing, Phyllis Diller didn't get the attention she deserved. She was truly a pioneer of comedy, wedging her way into the Boys' Club, back when the only female employees of a nightclub were singing, dancing or serving drinks. It was not easy. Like Joan Rivers and Totie Fields — the first big stars to follow through the doors Phyllis knocked down — she had to resort to the one kind of stand-up comedy than audiences would accept from a woman: Self-deprecation. All three of them stood on a stage and told you how ugly they were and how their husbands (Fang, Georgie and Edgar) wouldn't have sex with them.
That's what it took and, even if you didn't always find Phyllis Diller funny — even when the outfits and laugh were too much — you had to admire the effort. As it happens, I found her funny. I remember a time she was on The Celebrity Game, which was a precursor to Hollywood Squares. She was asked, "Where does your liver bile duct empty?" and she answered, "I don't care where it empties, so long as it doesn't empty into my pocket." Her act was a study in solid, punchy punchlines — like the joke about the woman who couldn't get a date so she went on a round-the-world cruise, hoping to meet men. She returned with rice in her hair and a friend who met her at the dock assumed she'd gotten married. "No," the lady said. "A Chinaman threw up on me." Silly…but Phyllis just fired them at you so fast, you had to go along for the ride. And she still has it. Last year at a Tribute to Nanette Fabray, I saw her come out and do 10-15 minutes of killer stand-up that would have had them cheering at any comedy club in the whole English-speaking domain.
We shouldn't have been surprised. You don't last 40-some-odd years doing stand-up without being funny. It would be like pitching in the majors for 40 years without a fastball. Can't be done. At age 84, she's certainly entitled to retire but I wish the current generation had "rediscovered" her before that happened.