Modified On October 31, 2004
Ben Fong-Torres penned a two-page profile of Ellen DeGeneres for Parade magazine. It’s in your Sunday paper today. But, oddly, Parade’s website won’t run the article here for another week! So, click it and bookmark it if your local paper doesn’t carry Parade.
Ellen found attention as a standup comic in 1982 after Showtime named her “The Funniest Person in America” following a series of regional competitions. But DeGeneres, then 24, didn’t have it easy on the road. “I was sandwiched between comedians who were doing the exact kind of humor that I am totally against,” she recalls. “Everything’s negative and everything’s mean-spirited, and I just didn’t fit in.”