Finally in 1994 ABC built a sitcom around her called Ellen, about a neurotic LA bookstore owner, that also featured a pre-Entourage Jeremy Piven.

First came the headlining club gigs, then coveted spots on high-profile TV comedy specials, then cameos in Coneheads and other slapstick films. I found out later I’d been working a factory for two years.”) After her five-minute set, host Johnny Carson waved her over to the open seat next to him, the ultimate stamp of approval, and told her she was welcome back any time.Īfter that anointing, DeGeneres’s career followed the classic star-making blueprint of that decade. “I remember, I was coming home from kindergarten … Well, they told me it was kindergarten. (“My parents were extremely cruel to me,” she joked. In her maiden appearance on the Tonight Show in 1986 a mulleted DeGeneres cracked up the crowd with family stories delivered with the most efficient language, in the driest tone. In the 1980s, you would have been hard pressed to name another female comic besides Roseanne Barr who had as much heat as the Louisiana-born DeGeneres, whose personable, observational style had many calling her the “female Seinfeld”. The end of the Ellen show leaves a hole in the daytime lineup.