Phyllis Diller

Further, a screenplay about Diller's early years in showbiz is in preproduction and actress Patricia Clarkson is slated to play Diller, for a film due in 2006. They write that Esmond's feelings of betrayal were genuine despite the unconventional nature of the marriage. In an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live talk show in December of 2004, Diller announced that an authorized biography of her life is in the works. The biographies describe the marriage as a relatively happy one, based on mutual respect and affection and their shared love of theatre. She has since officially retired from standup performance. Since the deaths of Esmond and Olivier, biographers have written that Olivier was bisexual for his entire life, and that his marriage with Esmond was convenient for both of them, as she was also bisexual. Most recently, Diller has suffered serious medical problems which culminated in her being pronounced clinically dead for three minutes. She did not remarry, and died in Wimbledon, London.

Diller is a proud grandmother several times over. In her later years, Esmond discussed the bitterness she still felt towards Olivier and her feeling that she had sacrificed her career so that he could further his own, only to find herself cruelly discarded. She has several children from her marriage to her first husband, on whom "Fang" was based. Her acting appearances grew more sporadic with the passage of time and she made her final film appearance in 1955. She was divorced twice and widowed once. She starred in the Broadway production of The Morning Star in 1942, a production noted for the acting debut of Gregory Peck. Phyllis Diller has been married three times. She returned briefly to acting and appeared in such popular films as Journey for Margaret, The Pied Piper and Random Harvest (all 1942) and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944).

Diller's efforts have drawn numerous awards and acknowledgments from plastic surgeons and medical organizations. Pressed by Olivier, who was anxious to marry Leigh, she eventually agreed and they were divorced in 1940. Diller has publicly discussed her plastic surgery, which changed her persona from being deliberately ugly to being chic and attractive for her age. Esmond withstood the publicity of Olivier's affair with Vivien Leigh and did not seek a divorce. She is an accomplished pianist as well as a painter. Her career continued to ascend while Olivier's own career languished, but when his career began to show promise after a couple of years, she began to refuse roles. Diller, a longtime resident of Brentwood, credits much of her success to the late Bob Hope, and keeps a framed portrait of Hope above her grand piano in the living room of her home. She also appeared in two Broadway productions with Olivier - Private Lives in 1931 with Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence, and The Green Bay Tree in 1933.

In 1998, Diller parlayed her unique cackle into the vocals for "The Queen" in Disney/Pixar's animated move, A Bug's Life. Returning to the United Kingdom she made her film debut with a starring role in an early Alfred Hitchcock film The Skin Game (1931), and over the next few years appeared in several British and Hollywood films, including Thirteen Women (1932). Diller also starred in two short-lived television series: The Pruitts of Southampton on ABC in 1966 and the variety show The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show on NBC in 1968. Olivier continued to follow Esmond, and after proposing to her several times, she agreed and the couple were married in 1930. Diller also appeared in more than a dozen, generally low-budget movies, including as herself in the children's animated cult classic from 1968, The Monster Mash, co-starring Boris Karloff. Esmond won rave reviews for her performance. Diller's film appearances include a scene-stealing cameo appearance as a wisecracking lounge act emcee in the 1961 Hollywood production of Splendor in the Grass, starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. Determined to be near Esmond he travelled to New York where he found work as an actor.

Her main claim to fame is her stand-up comedy act. When Bird in the Hand was being staged on Broadway, Esmond was chosen to join the American production - but Olivier was not. In her heydey, Diller achieved a record that still stands today in the Guinness Book of World Records for delivering 12 punchlines per minute, which is typical of her often outrageous, stacatto style of comedy. In his autobiography Olivier later wrote that he was smitten with Esmond, and that her cool indifference to him did nothing but further his ardour. It is here that Diller honed her act. In 1928 she appeared in the production of Bird in the Hand where she met fellow cast member Laurence Olivier for the first time. Later in the decade, her career took off after selling out 87 straight weeks at San Francisco's legendary Purple Onion nightclub. In 1925, she starred with her mother in a play Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, and after a few more successful roles, won critical praise for her part as a young suicide in Outward Bound.

A housewife, mother and advertising copywriter, she first came to public attention as a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show You Bet Your Life in the mid-1950s. After reassessing her future and coming to terms with her father's death she studied with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and returned to the West End stage in 1924. Phyllis Diller (born July 17, 1917) is an American comedian who created the stage character of a wild-haired, oddly-dressed housewife who was ugly but didn't realize it, and who spent her time cackling and waving a long cigarette holder while making jokes about a husband named "Fang." She is generally considered one of the pioneers of female stand-up comedy. When her father died suddenly in 1922 Esmond returned to school and at the time considered abandoning her ambition to act. She made her stage debut playing Wendy to Gladys Cooper's Peter Pan but her success was shortlived. While her parents toured with theatre companies, Esmond spent her childhood in boarding schools until she decided at the age of fourteen to become an actress.

Esmond and Eva Moore. Esmond was born in London, England, the daughter of stage actors Henry V. Jill Esmond (January 26, 1908 – July 28, 1990) was a British actress.