The Gag File

This steel cabinet, which Phyllis Diller calls her Gag File, has fortyeight file drawers containing more than 50,000 3-by-5-inch index cards, each bearing a typewritten joke or gag that Diller used in her stand-up comedy act. Each drawer is arranged alphabetically by subject. Many of the topics listed on the front of the drawers suit Diller’s self-deprecating persona of harried wife, mother, and homemaker. They offer comic twists on subjects such as appliances, the beauty shop, cooking, housekeeping, and family. Two files are devoted to jokes about her mythical husband, Fang. The index cards reveal the framework that Diller used to construct her jokes, a pattern she describes as “a setup, pause, [and] payoff.”

Although Diller generated a lot of her own material, she elicited some gags from other writers. One of her top contributors was Mary MacBride, a Wisconsin housewife with five children. A joke obtained from another writer includes the contributor’s name on the index card with the gag. Other comedians have maintained their material in joke files, among them Bob Hope, whose file is in the collections at the Library of Congress.