B00C4I7LJE EBOK (2 page)

The lady introduced herself—Val, the housekeeper. Val assured me that Miss Diller would be along shortly. She was at lunch with Marc London, the head writer of
Laugh-In
, and seemed to be running a little late. Val showed me to a seat in the living room, which was filled with dozens of red roses. It featured a grand piano at one end and an almost life-size painting of Bob Hope at the other. Val offered me a drink, which I declined, then she excused herself, once again telling me that Miss Diller would be along shortly.

From where I sat I could see that the house was built around a formal courtyard with a fountain and wrought-iron love seat. I considered that there could hardly be a less ideal place for a courtship because nearly every room of the house seemed to look out onto the courtyard.

The appointment was for one o’clock, and by two o’clock I concluded Miss Diller would be more than a little late. Val popped in from time to time, offering refreshment and reassurances. The later it became, the more nervous Val became. The more nervous Val became, the calmer I became. By four o’clock, when Miss Diller returned home, I was starting to get slightly bored. Val was a wreck.

Miss Diller entered the room in a swirl of multicolored silk, smiled, and apologized for being late. She took my résumé, scanned it quickly, and right away told me she was impressed by my Foreign Service background, intrigued by my hyphenated name, and pleased to note that I was an experienced traveler. Although my initial apprehension had returned when I’d heard the front door open, I relaxed almost immediately. She seemed very nice and was as normal as any employer interviewing a prospective secretary.

“There’s a lot of traveling in this job,” she warned me. I tried to look serious, as if somehow this might be bad. “My last secretary couldn’t take the pressure,” she continued. “She left me stranded in New Orleans.”

(I found out later that Phyllis had indulged in hyperbole; she never traveled alone. In addition to the secretary, she usually had her husband, her wardrobe mistress, and occasionally one of her teenage children.)

We’d talked for about ten minutes when Phyllis’s husband, Warde, came in. He had been putting away his car—an Excalibur Roadster, an expensive sports car that looked like a 1929 Mercedes-Benz. A wedding present from Phyllis, I later found out.

He should have been handsome; he was tall and slim with stunning blue eyes in a well-shaped face, but it was distorted by a sneer. He looked rather outlandish, dressed in a stretch lace shirt, tight pants, and tightly curled gray hair. He radiated condescension, which I found surprising for someone who wore stretch lace shirts. He took my résumé from Phyllis and skimmed over it.

“Well,” he announced, “this looks very good, but you must realize that Madam (it turned out he always called her that in front of the help) has many people to interview. We’ll have to let you know.”

That startled me. I thought Phyllis and I were getting along quite well.

Phyllis also appeared taken aback. “Warde, please let me finish talking to this young lady.”

“Ada,” he said, “I need to talk to you.”

Who is Ada
, I wondered.

Phyllis went out into the hall with her husband and I overheard a ferocious battle being carried on in whispers. It wasn’t long before Warde returned to the living room to dismiss me. Phyllis was not with him.

“You must understand,” he told me, “Madam can’t just hire the first person who applies. This is a very specialized position. You can check with the agency and they’ll let you know.” He left the room and Val appeared to show me out. As she walked with me to the front door, I could hear Warde’s raised voice. Phrases like “you have to listen to me” and “you don’t know what you’re doing” floated down the hallway. I didn’t know if I wanted this job or not.

The lady at the employment agency called me the next day. “You’ve been offered the job with Miss Diller.”

I hesitated a moment as I remembered the sneer on Warde’s face and his high-handed manner, then I looked around the little windowless cubicle where I was sitting. I thought about my brand-new passport and traveling, doing something really different.

“Okay,” I said with perhaps less enthusiasm than she expected.

“I don’t have all the details,” she went on. “I’ll give you the phone number of Miss Diller’s attorney in New York.”

I asked my current boss if I could place a long-distance call, and he not only agreed, but said I could use his office for privacy.

When I reached the attorney, Mr. B, he named a pretty low salary. I thought a celebrity would pay more, but Mr. B explained that Miss Diller felt there were plenty of perks that came from working for her—the travel, the excitement, and the opportunity to do things that were out of the ordinary. Also, he added, there was a ten-dollar per diem for every day we traveled. That was to cover the cost of meals and other necessities, such as dry cleaning, when we were in hotels.

I guessed it was okay. I knew I didn’t want to keep working in a nine-to-five job, and working for Phyllis Diller seemed fun and adventurous. It would be different from anything I’d done before and different was good.

I asked Mr. B if there was insurance or other benefits. He snorted—or perhaps it was a laugh. Apparently, the glamour of working for Miss Diller was supposed to trump all other considerations. Still, it definitely appealed to me and seemed too good to pass up. I’d wanted something out of the ordinary and this certainly was that. I agreed to the salary and Mr. B told me to be at the house at 9:00 A.M. Monday.

3

M
onday morning I arrived full of anticipation and some trepidation.

“Phyllis and Warde left for London on Saturday,” Val told me as she ushered me in. “They took Karen with them. She’s Phyllis’s wardrobe mistress.”

I’d been looking forward to going back to London and had rushed through my passport renewal. (When I left the Department of State job, my Official Passport had been canceled, and I had to get a new one.) I swallowed my disappointment and told myself it was probably just as well that I’d have time to settle in before they got back. I later learned that Karen loathed London as much as I loved it.

Val took me upstairs to the back of the house to a little room with a slanted ceiling. “This is your office,” Val said and gestured toward an older woman seated at a desk. “This is Maria. She’s the home secretary.”

Maria stood and shook my hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said in a softly accented voice.

The room was tiny and I guessed it had been designed as a nursery. Two desks and four filing cabinets filled the entire space. Our desks were arranged back-to-back so we faced each other.

Over the next few days I learned Maria’s story, which was somewhat gothic. She came from a wealthy family who had a grand home in Mexico City. She had been raised a “lady,” so had no skills or trade, and after a disastrous reversal of fortune and a short, unhappy marriage, found herself on her own. She and her sister moved to the States, where they learned to type and got jobs as secretaries and occasionally translators. Maria ended up as the “home secretary” to Phyllis Diller. I felt that in true gothic-novel tradition, there should be a handsome son to rescue her, but although Phyllis’s son was quite handsome, he was still in his teens.

Val then took me downstairs to the kitchen, which was painted bright red and had red appliances. It sort of startled me.

“This is where we take our breaks,” she said, motioning to a small dinette. “You get here at nine and work till five, with an hour for lunch. We take breaks in the morning and afternoon.” Val went on to introduce me to Tina and Mary, the maids who worked under Val. Tina was Japanese and her husband was a monk—Buddhist, I think, but never found out for sure. Mary was English, and I had no idea how Phyllis found them or how long they had worked there, but I got the impression it had been quite a long time.

“So there’s six of us?” I asked Val.

“Seven.”

I counted quickly—Tina and Mary, Val, Karen the wardrobe mistress, Maria, and me.

“You haven’t met Ingrid. She’s a college student and works part time on Phyllis’s gag file.”

The morning and afternoon breaks were the highlight of the day. Maria and I kept everyone informed of the latest plans—the agent had just called with an offer of a week in Chicago—and they told us the household activities—the gardener let the dogs out again, or Phyllis is having a birthday party for Cyd Charisse next week.

That first week Maria explained how everything worked in the office. She showed me stacks of 8x10 publicity photographs, some black and white and some in color.

“You take these when Phyllis is on the road. She will autograph them individually for people who request them.” She then handed me a stack of postcards showing Phyllis in a short dress, with an elaborate feather headdress and holding a long cigarette holder. Later I found out that she didn’t smoke—never had—the cigarette holder was a prop. “These are to give to fans. Phyllis doesn’t autograph them.”

Maria opened the closet door behind her. It was crammed with every kind of office need imaginable.

“This is what you will take with you on the road,” she explained.

“All that?”

“No, of course not. I mean here is all that you will need to take in the office bag.” She then pulled two white, hard-sided suitcases from the corner. “These are your office bags.”

“A traveling office?” I wasn’t at all sure I liked the looks of that.

“You will also take some of these books,” Maria went on, gesturing to stacks of
Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints
and
Phyllis Diller’s Marriage Manual
. It seemed I was going to be taking an awful lot of stuff with me.

During the week, Maria showed me Phyllis’s joke file, and I met Ingrid, the college student. Maria explained that whenever Phyllis came up with a new joke, she, Maria, would type it on a 3x5 index card and Ingrid then filed it in whatever category Phyllis had indicated. Sometimes jokes overlapped and Maria typed the joke on several different cards, and Ingrid filed them accordingly. It was quite a remarkable setup. So remarkable, it ended up in the Smithsonian.

Maria also explained how Phyllis got her bookings through the William Morris Agency, whom at the agency Phyllis dealt with, and how to handle the various kinds of phone calls. Most calls were business, but occasionally a fan would get hold of Phyllis’s number. Those would be handled discreetly but firmly, Maria said.

Great
, I thought. Discreet I could be. Firm would be another matter.

Maria went on to tell me about requests from organizations seeking items for celebrity auctions. I’d never heard of a celebrity auction, but apparently they were all the rage. Schools and charities requested items to auction off for fund-raisers. Maria would get all the particulars and ask Phyllis what, if anything, she would donate. Phyllis had a supply of her trademark cigarette holders just for that purpose, and sometimes she gave something more personal, such as a pair of boots or gloves that had seen better days. She usually autographed the item to increase its value.

“If anyone calls with a request, be sure to get all the information before you take it to Phyllis,” Maria said.

I had this lesson driven home the following week when Phyllis’s publicist, Frank, called to say that the Milk Board would pay Phyllis $50,000 to do a commercial. When I told Phyllis about it, she said, “What kind of commercial? Is it a billboard? Newspaper? Television? How long will it run? What market will it show in?” When I said I didn’t know, she said, “You always need to get all the details.” I never made that mistake again.

At the beginning of my second week they returned from London and I met Karen, a petite Hawaiian girl, for the first time. She had a no-nonsense attitude with definite ideas of how things should be done, and she quickly set me straight on the protocol of the household.

“You call Phyllis, Phyllis. Warde is Mr. Donovan, never ever Mr. Diller. And some people think he’s ‘Fang,’ but he’s not.”

Phyllis insisted Fang was purely fictional, but the household gossip had it that the character closely resembled Phyllis’s first husband, Sherwood.

“If Warde tells you to do something, you check with Phyllis first,” Karen continued. “Warde likes to stir the pot and cause trouble. Be careful of him.”

“What about Phyllis?” I asked.

“You’ll be fine as long as you do everything right.”

Oh, swell
.

“No, really,” Karen went on. “Phyllis can be demanding. Her favorite word is ‘perfect,’ but you’ll do fine.”

I hoped she was right.

Karen, after explaining who was who, took me on a tour of the house. The place struck me as rather odd—one side had two stories, but the other side had only one. That wasn’t apparent from the outside, but I had to wonder what the architect was thinking. Phyllis and Warde’s bedroom was on the one-story side at the back of the house, which afforded absolute privacy—something Phyllis treasured.

Karen moved swiftly and with confidence as she showed me her domain—the wardrobe room right next to the bedroom. It was huge and meticulously arranged. “This side are the costumes. I hang them up by age, new ones in front. Phyllis’s friend Omar makes them all.”

 It turned out that Omar’s name was really Gloria, but Phyllis had dubbed her Omar the Tentmaker because of the A-line style of costumes Phyllis wore onstage. They could be said to vaguely resemble tents. Some of the costumes were outlandish while others were really beautiful. Of course, Phyllis always made them look outlandish when she added her jeweled dog collar, feathered headdress, and ankle-high boots.

“Phyllis designed the see-through hat boxes,” Karen said as she motioned to the shelves above, which were lined with hats and headdresses.

Karen showed me the shelves with boots, and shallow drawers of gloves, cigarette holders, and the sparkly dog-collar necklaces Phyllis always wore onstage. Feather boas were arranged by color on their own padded hangers.