BY SANDY COHEN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES -- Phyllis Diller, the housewife turned humorist who aimed some of her sharpest barbs at herself, punctuating her jokes with her trademark cackle, died Monday morning in Los Angeles at age 95.
"She died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face," her longtime manager, Milton Suchin, told The Associated Press.
Diller suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1999. The cause of her death has not been released.
She was a staple of nightclubs and television from the 1950s - when female comics were rare indeed - until her retirement in 2002. Diller built her stand-up act around the persona of the corner-cutting housewife ("I bury a lot of my ironing in the back yard") with bizarre looks, a wardrobe to match (by "Omar of Omaha") and a husband named "Fang."
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