Nobody had ever seen anything quite like Phyllis Diller.

Ms. Diller, who died Monday at the age of 95, created her own brand of female comedy and performed it on an equal footing with male comics of national stature.

Everett Collection

Phillis Diller, in the 1960s.

"Honey, I know lots of women are funny," she told the Baltimore Sun in 1964. "The only difference is they haven't got my kind of guts. I send out for a bucket of guts every morning."