Over the course of her five-decade-plus career, comedienne Phyllis Diller, who died Monday at age 95 in Brentwood, California, was famous for many things: an eccentric wardrobe, an acid voice, and a rapid-fire stream of one-liners that made her both a success in her own right and an inspiration to the female comics who followed her into the spotlight.
Less well known: Diller’s connection to the legal community via her longtime relationship with Paul Hastings founding name partner Robert Hastings.
As The New York Times noted in its Diller obituary (without mentioning Hastings’s firm affiliation), the couple dated from the mid-1980s until Hastings died in 1996. In her 2005 memoir, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, Diller is effusive when describing Hastings, calling him “the love of my life” and remarking on how compatible they were despite coming from very different backgrounds. According to Diller’s book, they were introduced by a mutual friend, Jeffie Pike (the daughter of artist Marion Pike), who told the comedienne, ” ‘Boy, do I have a guy for you.’ ” Diller ‘s response: “ And was she ever right.”
When Diller and Hastings met, she was 68 with two divorces behind her. He was a 75-year-old widower whose wife had died four years before. He “was the most fabulous gentleman,” Diller writes. “[A] refined, immaculately dressed bon viveur who knocked me out from the moment we first set eyes on each other.”
