LOS ANGELES — She was a self-described "cartoon," a zany housewife-turned-comedian with an electrified hairdo who broke into the male-dominated world of stand-up comedy in the 1950s with an outlandish wardrobe and a barrage of self-deprecating jokes punctuated by her trademark guffaw.
"I spent seven hours today at the beauty parlor; hell, that was just for the estimate," Phyllis Diller would say on stage, firing off one joke after another.
Miss Diller, whose stand-up career spanned nearly 50 years, died in her sleep Monday at her longtime home in Los Angeles' Brentwood section. She was 95.
Miss Diller followed, after a fashion, in the footsteps of women such as Grand Ole Opry staple Minnie Pearl and Jean Carroll, who joked about domestic life in an understated manner on "The Ed Sullivan Show." But Miss Diller's flamboyant style, signature laugh and sharp barbs about her husband and home life set her apart.
Her high-profile success at being able to go "toe to toe with her male counterparts in prime clubs," as comedy critic and historian Gerald Nachman once put it, helped pave the way for Joan Rivers, Ellen DeGeneres and others.
As a professional comedian, she was a late bloomer: The Lima, Ohio, native was a California mother of five when she made her nightclub debut at the Purple Onion in San Francisco in 1955 — at age 37.
Known for her adept timing and structured jokes, Miss Diller took pride in being able to deliver as many as 12 punch lines per minute.
The first laugh came easy. With her fright-wig hair and garish attire that typically included a fake-jeweled cigarette holder, gloves and ankle boots, she merely had to walk on stage.
Jack Paar once described her as looking "like someone you avoid at the supermarket." Bob Hope called her "a Warhol mobile of spare parts picked up along a freeway."
But Miss Diller was always the first to address her colorfully eccentric stage persona, describing herself as "The Elizabeth Taylor of 'The Twilight Zone' " and a woman who once worked "as a lampshade in a whorehouse."
During her career, she was in more than two dozen movies, including three with Hope, with whom she also appeared on numerous TV specials and traveled with to Vietnam to entertain U.S. troops.
She also was the host of a 1964 TV talent show called "Show Street" and starred in the 1966-67 sitcom "The Pruitts of Southampton" (renamed "The Phyllis Diller Show" midway through the season) and the 1968 comedy-variety series "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show."
But the outlandish Miss Diller always shined best in nightclubs, showrooms and concert halls, where one of her favorite targets was her domestic life, including her fictional husband "Fang."
When she first started, Miss Diller said in 1984, "I looked like the woman next door. I mean, I was just anybody, and on stage that just doesn't work." She then broke into her infectious, trademark laugh.
"So, little by little, I learned," she said. "Making myself a blonde was the first step. I started dressing more theatrically, and then I realized I couldn't make body jokes if they could see my actual figure because I had a good figure. That got me to those little dresses, and then later I designed my funny boots and gloves. I had to wear gloves because all clowns wear gloves."
The famous hairdo, she said, was an accident.
"I had gotten into so much trouble bleaching my hair myself that I had to go to a scalp clinic, and they gave me this comb and said brush the top of your head for circulation. My hair was standing straight up after that, but I was so busy I'd forgotten to put it back down when I'd go out on interviews for jobs. But it worked."
Unlike most performers, the older Miss Diller got, the better she looked. Of course she had help — a lot of it.
In 1970, she had her teeth straightened. A year later, she had a complete face-lift. By 1989, she had had her teeth bonded, a breast reduction, a tummy tuck, a brow lift, a nose job, an under-eye lift, cheek implants, eyeliner tattoos and a chemical peel.
Miss Diller, who suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1999, retired from doing her comedy concert act in 2002 after 47 years as a stand-up comedian.
er marriage to Sherwood Diller ended in divorce, as did a marriage to actor Warde Donovan.
