Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Phyllis Diller

Actress-comedienne

Born - 17 July 1917, Lima, Ohio, USA
Died - 20 August 2012

Crow-voiced, firecracker funny girl with wild hair, hyena laugh and sharp-faced looks, popular for a while in films of the 1960s, but a major attraction on TV and in nightclubs, and much in demand for cartoon voiceovers. She played gleefully scatty characters called Camille Salamander, Mrs Wildebeest and Agatha Knabenshu, and wrote an autobiography entitled Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse. Beginning her career in her late thirties after raising a family of five, Diller - her first husband's name; she was born Phyllis Driver - made a low-key film debut in Splendor in the Grass (1961). Subsequently Hollywood tried her as a co-starring attraction in a few comedies, sometimes in harness with a fading Bob Hope: The Fat Spy (1965), Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966), Eight on the Run (1967), The Private Navy of Sergeant O'Farrell (1968), Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady (1968) and The Adding Machine (1969). She returned to club and TV work, although there were a few more films in wacky cameos: A Pleasure Doing Business (1979), Pink Motel (1982), Doctor Hackenstein (1988), Pucker Up and Bark Like a Dog (1990), The Boneyard (1990), The Perfect Man (1993), The Silence of the Hams (1994), a voice in A Bug's Life (1998), Everything's Jake (2000), The Last Place on Earth (2002), Motocross Kids (2004), (2006), Unbeatable Harold (2007) and the short Family Dinner (2009), her last.