People: She’s a bit long in the … fang?
At the age of 89, Phyllis Diller is saying good night but not goodbye.
Diller, the subject of a new DVD that celebrates her life and documents her final stand-up performance in 2002, says she simply got too old to keep traveling from city to city.
But, hey, if you’ve got a movie role in mind, give her a call.
“Look, if it’s a little old lady, I get the role,” she says, breaking into that famous Diller laugh – the one that sounds something like AHHH! AHHH! AHHH AHHH!
“I’ve just done a couple movies where I died and they loved it. Because without my wig I look dead! AHHH! AHHH! AHHH AHHH!”
Still, she has had to turn down some roles because they were too big and required more work than she could handle.
“I have energy, but I don’t have lasting energy,” says Diller, who had a pacemaker installed after a near-fatal heart attack in 1999.
“I could do maybe two hours, but beyond that I can’t. And you have to know your limitations.”
Funny thing is, Diller never seemed to accept any limitations when, against the odds, she became one of the most famous comedians of her time. Her lighthearted routines about married suburban life as a living hell were making her husband, “Fang,” a household name when Roseanne Barr was barely out of diapers.
“The very first female comedian that I ever heard of,” Bonnie Hunt says in the affectionate new documentary “Goodnight, We Love You.”
“There weren’t any,” Diller replies when asked to name the other female comics working the stand-up circuit when she broke in at San Francisco’s Purple Onion in 1956.
Stand-up comedy was, she says, something she was born to do, although only her first husband, Sherwood Diller, seemed to know it at the time. He found his wife so funny that he nagged her for two years to quit her job as an advertising copywriter and become a comic.
“We had five kids at the time. I don’t how he thought we’d handle that,” Diller says seriously.
She finally took the plunge at age 38, appearing in small clubs in Ohio and Illinois and, to her delight, getting encouragement from many of the leading male comics of the day. One of them, Don Rickles, appears in the documentary to poke good-natured fun at her.
Along the way, she became wealthy, moved to a mansion in Brentwood and put together an impressive collection of antique cars, including a 1927 Mercedes Excaliber Phaeton. She’s since sold all the cars but one, having become too old to drive them.
The youngest of her children, Perry, 55, appears briefly in the documentary with her.
“He really takes care of me,” she says.
“I have lost some children,” Diller adds softly. “But we don’t talk about that.”
The secret of her longevity? “Be happy and smile and laugh and get enough sleep and drink your eight glasses of water a day. And be honest and truthful. And save your money.
“You know the best way to double your money? Fold it and put it in your pocket.”
The birthday bunch
Actor Roger Smith is 74. Guitarist Keith Richards (the Rolling Stones) is 63. Director Steven Spielberg is 60. Actor Ray Liotta is 51. Actor Brad Pitt is 43. Country singer Tracy Byrd is 40. Actress Rachel Griffiths is 38. Rapper DMX is 36. Actress Katie Holmes is 28. Singer Christina Aguilera is 26.