Phyllis and the games

Actress and comic Phyllis Diller has died at age 95. While I was never a big fan of her ugly-girl act, her IMDb page reads like a game show hall of fame. The linked obit from NBC News notes how she appeared as a contestant on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life in 1958:

Diller, asked if she was married: "Yes, I've worn a wedding ring for 18 years." Marx: "Really? Well, two more payments and it'll be all yours."

That began a game show career which stretched to GSN's remake of I've Got a Secret in 2006. In between came most every version of Hollywood Squares (including the combo with Match Game), Super Password, Blackout, Body Language, Hot Potato, Family Feud, Tattletales, Gong Show, the original I've Got a Secret, What's My Line, and Match Game when it was a straight panel effort in the 1960s. And I'm probably missing a bunch of shows along that nearly 50-year trip.

Game shows were a natural for Phyllis because she was always playing herself...the homely girl who couldn't get a date or even a look. She wasn't really that homely, of course, but it was just part of the act. Born Phyllis Ada Driver in Lima, Ohio in 1917, she didn't get into comedy until the 1950s under the prodding of her first husband, Sherwood Diller. She parlayed her looks and all-purpose zaniness into a career which lasted into the new millennium.

She also managed to raise five children and undergo enough plastic surgery to keep a hospital's worth of surgeons occupied. R.I.P.