Phyllis Diller - Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse

like a
lampshade
in a
whorehouse

Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

New York

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

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First trade paperback edition 2006

Copyright 2005 by Phyllis Diller and Richard Buskin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,
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Published simultaneously in Canada

All photographs in this book are reproduced courtesy of Phyllis Diller.

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The Library of Congress cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Diller, Phyllis.

Like a lampshade in a whorehouse: my life in comedy / by Phyllis Diller with Richard Buskin.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-61770-0

1. Diller, Phyllis. 2. ComediansUnited StatesBiography. I. Buskin, Richard. II. Title.

PN2287.D467A3 2005 2004058520

792.7028092dc22

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

BOOK DESIGN BY AMANDA DEWEY

To All Who Dream

You think Im overdressed? This is my slip.No, Im going to tell you the truth about what Im wearing. I used to work as a lampshade in a whorehouse. I couldnt get one of the good jobs.

It is not my intention to offend anyone, yet in the interests of truth I do, at times, overstep the bounds of good taste. For this I apologize, but if you smell, you smell.

Every person in this book, no matter how harshly treated, comes under my overall umbrella of love. Read it at your own risk.

T he time: 1958. The place: the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach, that fabulous 1,200-room playground to the stars. Many of them perform in its nightclub, La Ronde: Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hopethese are the crme de la crme, baby. After three years of clawing my way around the discovery club circuit Ive been hired to open for Big Band singer Don Cornell. It is, I feel sure, my big break; the catapult towards fame, money in the bank, peace of mind, being on everyones A-list. Instead its a big bust, the lowest point of my career. Im fired after the first show.

To start with, the microphone gives me hell, cutting in and out. And for another, I dont get a whole load of laughs, so Im in a state of sheer panic. Oh, Jesus. Normally, I wear a chic little Chanel suit that exposes my legs and enables me to adopt a gangly stance that matches my disjointed face: a bent cone for a nose, no upper lip when I smile, and teeth like crooked tombstones. Boy, am I ugly. In this case, however, taking my lead from the female singers whom Ive seen working hotel ballrooms, I buy a long gown and its a bad move. Here I am, joking about life as a lousy, unattractive housewife, and I look more like some ditzy society hostess. It blows my entire act.

You know what keeps me humble? Mirrors! I considered changing my name when I entered show business, but with a face like this, who cares? Just when I lost my baby fat, I got middle-age spread. I didnt have a good five minutes.

Unaware that the Fontainebleaus owner wants me out of there, I climb back into the Chanel suit and do a second show, but he never sees it. The next day Im on a plane back to New York, forced to reunite with a deranged, unemployable husband in a scuzzy Greenwich Village hotel room where I cook our meals on a hot plate and wash our dishes in the john. Forget all the dreams, all the hopes for a better future. With no home, no bookings, and zero cash to pay the $60 weekly rent for this stinking dump, I have to borrow from our eldest child who sweeps away cockroaches at an L.A. supermarket in order to finance his studies. Its just a pity he cant reach all the way to St. Louis, where cockroaches share an apartment with my in-laws and our four other kids, one of whom is schizophrenic.

Oh yeah, Im doomed. And the Miami firing feels like the end, yet it turns out to be an ill wind that actually blows me some good.

Ill never look back.

I n the fall of 1934, I arrived at Chicagos Sherwood Conservatory of Music to study piano, voice, harmony, and theory. Just seventeen years old, I was a model of wide-eyed naivet. Id be well into my seventies before that would change.

Residing in a North Side apartment that had a fine grand piano on which to practice, I earned my room and board by serving as the governess of a little fella named Herbie Loseff. Herbs mother, Bessie, was studying to be a pharmacist, while his father, Sam, who already was a pharmacist, had some woman knocked up and in the hospital. He and another guy had both been screwing herI suppose they were sharing the expensebut that evidently wasnt enough because the sonofabitch tried to rape me. He was a stumpy, revolting little bastard, and one morning as I was making the bed, he picked me up and began massaging my tits.

While he was titting me, I kept going on about his wife: Just wait until I see Mrs. Loseff! If you dont stop, Im going to tell her about this! Oh-ho, Mrs. Loseff wont like it! Sweating like the pig that he was, Stumpy Sam didnt say a word, but after about a minute of me trying to squirm loose he suddenly saw sense and gave up. That was a pretty terrifying experience. I was still a virgin and I was really shaken up. However, when I called my parents and asked what I should do, their response was that I should do nothing. Nothing. Otherwise Id have to talk to his wife and cause a whole upset.

Welcome to my world.

Right from the start my parents had left me to fend for myself. Apparently unaware that I was a kid, they invariably treated me like an adult, perhaps because they themselves were no spring chickens and perhaps because theyd never planned on having me in the first place. Indeed, when my mother missed a couple of periods and visited the Lima, Ohio, office of a Dr. Cavanaugh one icy-cold morning in November 1916, a cursory examination prompted the good doctor to conclude, You have a tumor. A few days later she visited Lima Hospital to have it removed, and my father went along to watchthis was before television, so he didnt have anything else to look at.