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Joy Behar Remembers Visiting Phyllis Diller’s Home With Lily Tomlin: ‘She Was the Greatest’
Joy Behar’s got a lot of famous friends, but nothing quite compared to her admiration for Phyllis Diller. The View cohost remembered visiting the star in her later years at her California home.
“Lily Tomlin and I went to her house together in Beverly Hills,” Joy, 81, shared during an episode of The View’s “Behind the Table” podcast on March 27. “I don’t exactly know how that got arranged but it did. And Phyllis was so charming and delightful I just thought she was the greatest.”
“She told me that when she was in her 80s, I think she gave up standup. She tried writing and it didn’t work so she tried painting,” the TV host recalled. “So all over her house were paintings that she had done and every one of the paintings had a price tag on it just in case you wanted to buy something and she gave me one and I still treasure it.”
Diller, known for her charisma on stage, died in August 2012 at age 95 after a decades-long career as a musician, actress, comedian and author. Joy once revealed how Diller inspired her standup career before she became a cohost on The View.
“Phyllis Diller once explained this,” she reflected. “She said it’s like a piece of sculpture. You have more or less an hour and a half for a show, really, and you keep molding. You add and subtract, add and subtract. You have certain things you know are going to work wherever you go. And it’s a little bit of acting, and some of it is extemporaneous. It’s not really a strict script — not the way I do it, anyway.”
Also during the podcast episode, Joy chatted about her failed Saturday Night Live audition.
“There was a period where I was, I tried to get on because I had this funny character that I did,” Joy explained to listeners. “I had auditioned for Lorne Michaels, and he never laughed, and after I was done, he said, ‘That was funny,’ and I said, ‘You didn’t laugh,’ and he said, ‘I don’t want to laugh because then you’ll think you have a job.’” I said, ‘That’s OK, don’t worry about it.’”
She also opened up about her lasting friendship with Alan Alda, who is currently battling Parkinson’s disease. She became buddies with Alan, 88, after working together on the film Manhattan Murder Mystery.
“First of all, I just adore Alan Alda,” she shared. “You know he’s suffering right now with Parkinson’s disease but even with that, he’s hysterical laughing and stuff.”
