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they’d been turned way down.
    “Here’s your dress,” Karen said.
    “Do you know what else this means?” Phyllis asked quietly as she stood up and stepped into the costume. “This means that I have to be ready half an hour early every night and sit around sweating, just in case he decides to quit.” I wondered how she’d ever be able to go onstage and be funny.
    She sighed. “We might as well go on down. I don’t want to have to race down those stairs again. One of these days I’m going to trip and break my neck.”
    When we got backstage, Phyllis stood in a corner by herself, absently returning smiles from the stage crew and obviously psyching herself.
    Warde finished—he did his whole act. The introduction played and Phyllis dashed onstage. A minute later she was telling “the truth” about her dress: “I used to be a lampshade in a whorehouse. Couldn’t get one of the good jobs. Listen, you think my legs are skinny? Colonel Sanders is crazy about them . . .” She laughed and cavorted, telling silly stories and having a wonderful time. The audience loved every minute.
       On the ride home, Warde was determined to make Phyllis understand what had compelled him to walk offstage. Phyllis kept saying, “We’ll talk about it when we get home,” but he insisted on explaining to her how bad the audience was, how they didn’t pay attention, didn’t appreciate talent, how somebody like him just couldn’t deal with it and on and on.
    “Warde, we will discuss this when we’re alone,” she repeated.
    Warde pretended to be startled, as if he hadn’t realized there were other people in the car. He tried hard to pretend that the hired help didn’t exist. He referred to this as having “class.” I came to find out he talked about it often, trying to convince somebody that he had some.
    If he weren’t such a nasty human being, I decided, I could almost have felt sorry for him. But he was, and I didn’t.
     

8
     
    O utside of the Big Fight, which they made up, there were two other incidents that week that stand out in my mind. Phyllis was scheduled to be the half-time entertainment for a football game in Three Rivers Stadium. At Phyllis’s request, Warde had been asked to sing the national anthem for the game’s opening. It turned into a mortifying embarrassment when halfway through The Star Spangled Banner he forgot the words. He ad-libbed something that at least rhymed and hoped nobody would notice. Afterward, he brushed it off, saying he hadn’t sung it for ages.
    The other incident occurred during a radio talk show, where people phoned in. Most of the callers said more or less the same thing—how much they liked Phyllis—or asked predictable questions, such as how did she get into show business? Or did she write her own material? One call, however, shook everyone up. A man said he wanted to talk to Phyllis Diller. Everything was on speaker phones so Phyllis and the DJ could be on at the same time and the caller’s voice could be heard by everyone in the studio.
    “I’m here,” chirped Phyllis.
    “I just wanted you to know,” the man said, “that I’m going to kill you.”
    Immediately the DJ pushed the disconnect button and announced it was time for a commercial break. It was a live show, so it had a ten-second delay and the call never went out over the air, but Phyllis had become ashen and visibly shaken.
    Although it shocked everyone, the DJ apparently had experienced that kind of thing before. He poured Phyllis a fresh glass of water and kept up a smooth flow of soothing chatter. The break ended quickly and in another ninety seconds they were back on the air. He thanked Phyllis for coming down to the studio and reminded the listeners that she would be at the Holiday House Supper Club for three more nights.
    As we left the studio, the staff was reassuring and thoughtful. One of them went downstairs and hailed us a cab. It was my first introduction to the pathetic losers who got their