Word: diller
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Culture Clash. Touches of Little Italy and Chinatown. The Beat-era City Lights Bookshop, where Jack Kerouac gave drunken poetry readings, and the Purple Onion, the takeoff nightspot for Phyllis Diller and the Kingston Trio. Iced Campari among jet-setters at Enrico's Sidewalk Cafe, and hamburgers among Oriental teen-agers at Clown Alley. White-shod tourists and Mohawked punks. Saints and sinners bathed in the garish glow of strip joints. This is the cultural clashpoint known as North Beach. Here, on a three-block stretch of Broadway, the barkers compete hoarsely for the business of the leery...
...cheers everyone up by saying, "Never mind the mess here, honey, let me tell you about world-class squalidness." And then yarns away, maybe, about babies so wet that their diapers give off rainbows (a Phyllis Diller line she loves to steal). Or about her husband, the football watcher, who sits in front of the tube "like a dead sponge surrounded by bottle caps" until "the sound of his deep, labored breathing puts the cork on another confetti-filled evening." About her schoolboy son who flunked lunch. About her washing machine, which eats one sock in every pair; her kids...
...refrigeration). The revolving racks favored by most closetologists are adapted from those used by dry-cleaning shops. They can be oblong, E-, U-or L-shaped, any length space permits, and expensive. The Robbins' system cost $3,500 plus labor. A simpler approach was taken by Comedian Phyllis Diller, who took over a 23-ft. by 14-ft. guest bedroom and filled it with movable racks like those used in the garment industry. The closet looks like a secondhand clothing store but has room for Diller's private wardrobe, every costume she has worn in every move...
...known as Phyllis Oilier, 65. The idea to crash the party came from the loudmouthed comedian's boyfriend, Howard Rose, an architect and dues-paying Friar, and she began working on her disguise a month ago. "I thought they would have a sense of humor about it," says Diller. But the club's brass, which may reprimand Rose, found the stunt a drag in every way. Club Director Jean-Pierre Trebot vows to "increase security." How? Well, he concedes, "we're not about to frisk everybody...
...years to research and write The Winds of War, and its sequel, War and Remembrance, and he jealously guarded the results of his labor. For years he had no trouble resisting the persistent blandishments of film and TV executives. Finally, in 1977, under the ministrations of Barry Diller, a former ABC executive who had become chairman of Paramount, an extraordinary offer won him over. ABC paid Wouk an estimated $1.5 million, gave him approval of director and producer and, to meet his desire for a high-toned context, allowed him some say over commercials (he wanted none for such things...