Phyllis Diller
Phyllis Diller was from the one-liner school (like Bob Hope and so many others of that era). She bragged she could deliver 12 punch lines a minute. She had little use for comics who told stories and wandered, saying by the time they got to the funny the audience was either bored, gone, or asleep. She was weird, but a breakthrough for solo female comics. 20 lines from her act:
1. My photographs don’t do me justice—they just look like me.
2. Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.
3. His finest hour lasted a minute and a half.
4. I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.
5. It’s a good thing that beauty is only skin deep, or I’d be rotten to the core.
6. A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.
7. Housework won’t kill you, but then again, why take the chance?
8. There’s a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what’s the problem?
9. If your house is really a mess and a stranger comes to the door, greet them with, “Who could have done this? We have no enemies.”
10. Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
11. Old age is when the liver spots show through your gloves.
12. Any time three New Yorkers get into a cab without an argument, a bank has just been robbed.
13. My 8-year-old bought a bicycle with the money he saved by not smoking.
14. Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age—as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
15. A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once.
16. The reason women don’t play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.
17. Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: eat out.
18. Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.
19. Our dog died from licking our wedding picture.
20. You know you’re old if they have discontinued your blood type.
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