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Phyllis Diller's Gag File
PhyllisDiller
"When I go to the beauty parlor, it makes about as much sense as an ash tray on a motorcycle." Phyllis Diller

Origin

Phyllis Diller

Type

Steel Cabinet and Drawer Expansion with Index Cards

Effects

Summons a flock of flying index cards

Downsides

Compels one-liners

Activation

Opening

Collected by

Warehouse 13

Section

Thalia-171J

Aisle

501934-7762

Shelf

269451-37123-099

Date of Collection

22 October 2003

[Source]


Origin[]

Phyllis Diller (July 17, 1917 – August 20, 2012) was an American actress and comedienne, known for her eccentric stage appearance and cackling laughter. Diller was one of the first female comics to become a household name, beginning her comedy career in 1955, and only taking three years to earn national recognition due to an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. She would go on to have a comedy career of nearly 50 years, and participate in several movies and television programs, including her own program, The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, as well as a guest stint as Dolly Levi during the original run of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway. She eventually retired from the stage in 2002, but would continue to be active in television and film for several years before her death in 2012.

As one of the very few female comics of her day, Diller cultivated a stage persona of an inept housewife with garish, baggy dresses, clown-like hair, and a cigarette holder. Her humor was fast, quick one liners, usually self-deprecating, and she wrote most of her own material, occasionally accepting jokes from fans and other writers - all of which she would store in her Gag File, a large steel cabinet with every joke she'd ever used printed out on index cards. It contains over 50,000 jokes.

Effects[]

Diller's Gag File, imbued with her razor wit and thoughtful cataloguing of her jokes, will release a flock of animated index cards from within the steel cabinet, which will swarm and pester anyone nearby by compelling them to utter the jokes on the cards in Diller's inflection. Coralling all the cards back into the file necessitates someone to contribute a new (good) joke to the collection, at which point a new index card is created and ushers every other card into the cabinet.

Collection[]

Collected by Agent Nielson in 2003 from the Smithsonian, after Diller donated it into the museum but before it wreaked too much havoc in the stacks.

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