Phyllis Diller

Only the ones she married.

So true, r1.

She liked gay people, had several good friends who were gay, and believed in equal treatment of gays.

But, she was also a Republican, so that kind of erases any sort of notion that she was a friend of the Gays.

Howcha-do, howcha-do, howcha-do!

Loved her voice. She was friends with Liberace, for whatever that's worth.

Mayhaps.

[quote] But, she was also a Republican, so that kind of erases any sort of notion that she was a friend of the Gays.

They were nowhere near as bad then as they are now. Not even close.

Was Liberace even gay? I don't think he ever officially came out.

She was an East Bay housewife whose comedy was subversive in its day. My intellectual Democratic parents saw her shows in SF in the 50s. I think she was my Mom's hero. I think we had her record albums around the house, along with Tom Lehrer's and others. Just a guess, but doubt she's be a Republican today. I remember seeing her TV show in the 1960s when I was very young and thought she was a scream. Thinking back, it was high camp.

"But, she was also a Republican, so that kind of erases any sort of notion that she was a friend of the Gays."

We've done this to death. Hollywood and or much of California GOP back in day were nothing like the hot mess you have today.

If went up and down list of Hollywood actors, directors, producers, writers, etc... from back in day you'd find pretty much most were republicans. True some like John Wayne would likely feel right at home attending a MAGA rally, but others perhaps not so much. Charlton Heston was old California GOP up to his neck, but even he drew the line when it came to antics of John Wayne.

For a $1.99 steak at Ponderosa she was happy to be friends with anyone.

A majority of Hollywood celebrities were Republican up until George Bush (the first or the second).

Oh please. How some of you try to act like the Republican Party back then wasn't corrupt as it is now is hilarious. This is the party of Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater, Pat Buchanan, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robinson, and The Southern Strategy. The idea that they were less crazy back then is simply rewriting history. Just watch the debate between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. Most of the things Gore highlighted about the Republican Party then (e.g., racism, greed, war-mongering, hating of the poor, .etc) is as true today as it was back then. They were just savvier in concealing all of that shit.

Anyway, I liked Phyllis Diller, despite being a Republican. She was excellent when she opened Barbra Streisand's AFI Lifetime Achievement ceremony.

David Sedaris tells a story of the two of them becoming friends in her sad, last days.

In the late 90s when I still lived in LA, a friend got a group together and we went to see her show at a casino in Gardenia. Her act was pure Phyllis, but what killed the evening was her flat-out refusal to step away from her dressing room for a fan meet-n-greet afterwards. As if she was a star at a Patti Lupone level.

OP, look at her hair. What do you think?

as a 50s republican she was more left economically than today's progressive democrats

R15 No one owes you their time.

I'll forgive the Republicanism because she was an atheist. Wish I knew when she revealed that, because for a woman born in 1917, in America, that's pretty cool. Wikipedia says she was raised Methodist (only child of two older parents, 36/55 - after being taken to some funerals as a kid, and traumatized I guess, she realized humor was a kind of therapy).

I did find this:

Kindness was her religion, she once said. In his 2021 book "A Carnival of Snackery," David Sedaris recalled visiting Diller at home in 2010 when the topic turned to religion: " 'A bunch of garbage,' Phyllis called it." "So you're an atheist?" Sedaris asked. "Hell yes," she replied. On another visit two years later, the subject was prayer. "Isn't that the worst," Diller said. "I hate it even more when they want you to hold their [expletive] hand. Blech!"

“Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can’t buy any of it.”

—Diller in A&U/America's AIDS magazine (November 2001)

She was also friends with Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini.

She was friends with Pat Rocco, a gay activist and filmmaker. She obviously didn't have a problem with being friends with gays.

My mother loved her. Housewives every where loved her.

It seems like Joan Rivers get the credit for being the first “real” female stand up, but shouldn’t that be Phyllis?

Gabrielle Carteris babysat her.

I’d say Fanny Brice was before Joan or Phyllis.

She lived to the ripe old age of 95. I remember her on television in the 1960s onward, my mother enjoyed her comedy, she was quite the character.

For those here too young to remember, the old Republican Party really ended in 1994 with Gingrich.

The Republican party of today owes a lot to Nixon. It's not really accurate to say that the Republicanism of today started in the 1990s, it was much earlier.

I understand there were people who were Eisenhower Republicans or even a Dewey or Willkie Republican (he'd been a Democrat and was basically still a Dem after he changed parties) and who held on to the party even into the 1960s and beyond, when they should have known better. Diller was probably like that. She'd have been in her 50s when the Republican party really changed for the worse, and by then, people are set in their ways.

Way ahead of her time. She influenced a whole generation of female comedians.

And remember back then, there were two wings of the Democratic Party and one wing was what the MAGAs are now, if not worse. Vocal in-your-face racist segregationists, KKK types (George Wallace is a sanitized version). Really demonic.

Republicans didn't have a really trashy wing back then, I don't think. Racists and poors who needed FDR's help (even Ronald Reagan's poor daddy got help from one of the alphabet programs and Ron was a Democrat till he met that bitch Nancy).

But part of being Republican was being a snob or celebrity -- oh and McCarthy went after Democrats mainly, accusing them of Communist sympathies and blacklisting them. (not all -- but Democrats like Bogart and Bacall were the exception, not the rule.). You just can't talk about 1950s Rs like you can after Goldwater/Nixon deployed the "Southern strategy" to get all the racists on the R side. (It was hard to hate Eisenhower, esp after WWII and those marvelous interstates - and he warned about the military-industrial complex). Sorry for tl/dr, I'm just heartbroken that I think our democracy is doomed.

There were racist Republicans back then. Please.

Republicans always served the rich, and always had fascistic tendencies masquerading as "anti-communist." There is a reason why the Red Scare was largely fermented by Republicans against Democrats and leftists, and why any form of social net dating back to FDR was derided as "communism."

*social safety net.

R31 You're correct. Those Democrats were known as "Dixiecrats."

[Quote]1948 was a big year for the switch between Republicans and Democrats. The Dixiecrat, or more formally known as States’ Rights Democratic Party formed and dissolved in 1948 by several Democrats who believed the democratic party became weak towards segregation. Dixiecrats wanted to preserve segregation and opposed federal intervention in the interest of supporting civil rights. In fact, the slogan for the Dixiecrat Party was “Segregation Forever!”

[quote]Republicans always served the rich

Not always, they were the liberal party until roughly 1920. For a while in the early 1900s there wasn't much difference between the sane Democrats (i.e. not the Klanners) and the Republicans, but somewhere in the 1920s, the Republicans partnered up with business interests to help get ahead politically. That symbiotic relationship gradually increased until Eisenhower, who was moderate in a lot of ways, packed his administration with millionaire businessmen. By the time Nixon (Eisenhower's VP) ran against Kennedy, the Republicans were firmly entrenched in profits over politics or the good of the country.

[quote]But part of being Republican was being a snob or celebrity -- oh and McCarthy went after Democrats mainly, accusing them of Communist sympathies and blacklisting them.

Joe McCarthy went after the STATE DEPT, not celebrities. HUAC was the organization responsible for blacklisting actors and writers.

Her memoir is wonderful.

Well, she grew up in Lima, Ohio like the Glee kids. Maybe she was Sue Sylvester’s real mom.

We had a peeping tom in our neighborhood. When he finally peeped my bedroom window, he threw up on the glass!

I’m not ashamed of my body. Although one night at a club a man asked me to dance, and had me turned around backwards the entire time!

He kept complimenting my figure and I said, “You idiot, those are my shoulder blades!”

He said he thought my bangs did seem too long.

I tried teasing my hair. It BIT me!

R39 R40 R41 Thanks LOL!!!

R34 Joan was a friend of Phyllis and cited her as a major influence on her. Phyllis was an interesting, intelligent woman. The quote where she said kindness was her religion is quite sweet. If there is a heaven, I think she'd be there for that alone, despite her atheism.

As a side note, has anyone seen "The Boneyard" from 1991? It's a ridiculous B-shlock horror comedy where she and her pet poodle become superhuman mutants, and she's a hoot in it.