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The Carol Burnett Show Official channel icon The Carol Burnett Show OfficialOriginal creator 17K views Save

Phyllis Diller's stop sign was moving

Carol Burnett and Phyllis Diller go way back. They made the rounds in New York when neither had a job, and they'd meet for coffee to cheer each other up. more

So when Carol brings her out, the welcome is warm. She calls her dear friend "one of the nicest ladies in show business and one of the funniest," and hands over the stage.

Diller's road to that stage started small. She got her start on a Bay Area show, wearing a housecoat and handing out silly advice to homemakers. Her stand-up began in San Francisco, and her big break came as a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show, You Bet Your Life. The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show followed.

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Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life gave Diller the break that led to national TV.

She shows off her outfit first, which she says is all made of tails. "The animals got away." Then she turns to Fang, the husband she brings up again and again, and complains that he never tells her how she looks. His answer is "Why start an argument?"

She's turning gray, she says. Not her hair, her skin. There was even a TV show named after it, Rawhide. When she asks the man at the salon where to start, he says to "notify next of kin." He did tell her she has inner beauty. Actually, what he said was "I admire guts."

Behind the wheel, things get worse. A police officer asks her to pull over to the curb, and she isn't sure which one he means, since there are two. At her driving lessons she carries a stop sign for 10 blocks, and when the teacher asks why she didn't stop, she has her answer ready. "The sign was moving."

An older adult woman wearing a floral-patterned garment with intricate detailing and high collar or ruffled neckpiece in a studio setting, holding a cigarette. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Carol Burnett and Phyllis Diller go way back.

Fang gets the worst of it. Whiskey is his favorite medicine, and he cried for three days when they discovered penicillin. When she asks her psychiatrist how to get rid of Fang's split personality, the advice is short. "Get two divorces."

Nearly every line is aimed at herself or at Fang, and she wrote her own material. Much of it grew out of a homemaker's life. Then there was the laugh, the cackle that became her trademark.

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Her trademark laugh is what most people remember about her.

She saves the marriage for last. She knew it was in trouble on their first wedding anniversary, when Fang gave her luggage. "It was packed." Her mother, she adds, darn near suffocated.