When Ms. Carroll came to prominence, no woman was expected to sustain a comedy act by herself; traditionally (think of George Burns and Gracie Allen), a woman had a straight man beside her as a counterweight. Nor was she supposed to be hugely attractive: The combination of feminine wit and beauty seemed too potent a cocktail to foist on the American public. Many 20th-century female comics, like Ms. Diller, Lucille Ball and Totie Fields, cultivated public personas that were variously frazzled, madcap or disarmingly dowdy. What was more, they often used their looks as the butt of self-deprecating jokes.

Ms. Carroll did none of these things. Extremely attractive, she appeared alone onstage in a shimmering evening dress, dripping diamonds and mink. That in itself was subversive, as were her monologues about being driven crazy by spouse and children, a time-honored staple of male comics. As appropriated by Ms. Carroll, however, the subject discombobulated some audience members.

“I used to do that routine about my daughter being a hippie with the dirty sneakers and dirty blue jeans, but why a beard?” Ms. Carroll said in an interview in “Funny Women: American Comediennes, 1860-1985” (McFarland, 1987), by Mary Unterbrink. “And you know, people would actually come to me and say, ‘Does your daughter really have a beard?’ I’d say, ‘No, I made her shave it, but I let her keep the mustache.’ ”

Ms. Carroll was born Celine Zeigman in Paris on Jan. 7, 1911, and came to the United States with her family at 18 months. Reared in the Bronx, she began her career in her early teens after a talent agent spotted her dancing in an amateur show. Soon after, she joined the vaudeville circuit as part of a two-boy, two-girl dance act. A natural verbal clown, she later joined the act of the comedian Marty May.

In the early 1930s, Ms. Carroll met Buddy Howe, an acrobatic dancer. Joining forces as Carroll and Howe, they toured the country with a dance act punctuated by humorous patter written by Ms. Carroll. The couple married in 1936 and spent the next three years touring Britain. After the United States entered World War II and Mr. Howe was drafted, Ms. Carroll continued as a solo comic, to wide acclaim. On his discharge from the Army, Mr. Howe was prudent enough to realize that the act was better without him and became a talent agent instead.

Mr. Howe, who became chairman of the Creative Management Agency, died in 1981. Ms. Carroll, who was known in private life as Celine Howe, is survived by Ms. Tunick of Carmel, N.Y., and two granddaughters, Susan Hamilton of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., and Andrea Ramos of Carmel.