Phyllis Diller | 1917-2012

Diller at the Emmy Awards. In her TV career, she hosted a 1964 talent show called “Show Street,” starred as the widowed matriarch of a financially strapped society family in the 1966-67 situation comedy ““The Pruitts of Southampton”” (renamed “”The Phyllis Diller Show”” midway through the season), and starred in the short-lived 1968 comedy-variety series “”The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.””  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

A critic wrote of Diller: “She “wasn’’t the first woman stand-up comedian, but she was the first to make it respectable, to drag female comedy out of the gay bars, backrooms and low-rent resorts and go toe-to-toe with her male counterparts in prime clubs.””  (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)