Phyllis Ada Driver was born on 17th July 1917, in Lima, Ohio USA, and was a famed stand-up comedian, actress and voice actress, recognized for her eccentric performance on stage, and for her one-and-only appearance style, with wild hair and clothes. She passed away in 2012.
Have you ever wondered how rich Phyllis Diller was, at the time of her death? According to authoritative sources, it has been estimated that Diller`s net worth was as high as $15 million, earned through her successful career in the entertainment industry; apart from being an accomplished stand-up comedian, Phyllis appeared in more than 80 film and TV titles, which also improved her net worth.
Phyllis Diller Net Worth $15 Million
Phyllis was the only child of Perry Marcus Driver and his wife Frances Ada, of Irish and German ancestry, and was raised as Methodist, however, she declared herself as atheist along the way. She went to Central High School in Lima, where she discovered that she had a talent for humor, and nurtured outside school, amusing friends. After high school, she enrolled at Columbia College Chicago, where she studied piano, however she transferred to Bluffton College to study literature, psychology and history, but never graduated, as she married Sherwood Diller, and became a housewife and a mother, taking care of their five children.
It was in the 1950s that she got her first job, when she was hired as a broadcaster for KROW radio in Oakland, California, and was also a copywriter for KSFO radio in San Francisco. She didn’t make her first appearance as a stand-up comedian until the age 37, in a club called The Purple Onion, and soon reached star status, as she performed there for the next 89 weeks. From that point, her career went only upwards, and so did her net worth, until her death in 2012. Her first television appearance happened in the quiz show “You Bet Your Life”, and then she started appearing in comedy shows – including “Jack Parr Tonight Show”, “The Ed Sullivan Show” – which led to meeting and collaborating with Bob Hope. Her net worth was certainly rising.
She made her acting debut in the Oscar-awarded film “Splendor in the Grass” (1961), starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, and then featured in “The Fat Spy” (1966), and the same year worked with Bob Hope on the film “Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!”. The two worked on several films along the way, including “Eight on the Lam” (1967) and “The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell” (1968), among others, all of which increased her net worth. In 1966, Phyllis also got her own “The Phyllis Diller Show”, in which she posed as Phyllis Pruitt, but after 30 episodes it was canceled, and she finished the decade with a role in the film “The Adding Machine” (1969).
Throughout her career Phyllis made numerous appearances in TV shows, such as “The Hollywood Squares” (1967-1980), “The Merv Griffin Show” (1963-1980), “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (1963-1985), and “Larry King Live” (2001-2005), among others, which only increased her net worth.
To get back to her acting career, during the `70s, Phyllis made several notable appearances, including in TV series and films such as “Love, American Style” (1969-1973), “Swing Out, Sweet Land” (1970) starring John Wayne and Ann-Margret, and “A Pleasure Doing Business” (1979), among others. Although focused on other things, even in the 1980s, Phyllis made a number of notable appearances, in such productions as “Pink Motel” (1982), “Jonathan Winters: On the Ledge” (1987), and “Doctor Hackenstein” (1988). She continued to act all through the 1990s, and until her death, appearing in such productions as “The Boneyard” (1991), “The Bold and the Beautiful” (1997-2012), “The Last Place on Earth” (2002), “West from North Goes South” (2004), “Forget About It” (2006), with Burt Reynolds, and “Everything`s Jake” (2006), among many others.
She also had a successful career as a voice actress, lending her voice to characters from such films and TV series as “Alice Through the Looking Glass” (1987), “The Nutcracker Prince” (1990), “Casper’s Scare School” (2006), “Family Guy” (2006-2007), and “Light of Olympia” (2008), all of which also increased her net worth.
Phyllis received several prestigious nominations and awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy from the American Comedy Awards, and a Golden Globe nomination. Furthermore, she received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1975.
Regarding her personal life, Phyllis was married to Sherwood Diller from 1939 until 1965; the couple had six children, one of whom died in infancy, and two more before her. Her second husband was Warde Donovan; the couple married in 1965 and divorced in 1975. She also was in a relationship with Robert P. Hastings, from 1985 until his passing in 1996.
Phyllis died at the age 95, on 20th August 2012 from natural causes, although since her 80th birthday her health had begun to decline, which led to a pacemaker and partial paralysis, but she held through for several more years, still making people laugh. She left the world as one of the greatest stand-up comedians, paving the way for future stars such as Joan Rivers, Ellen DeGeneres, Roseanne Barr and many many others.
