Comedian Joan Rivers dead at 81
|
| FILE
- This Oct. 5, 2009 file photo shows Joan Rivers posing as she presents
"Comedy Roast with Joan Rivers " during the 25th MIPCOM (International
Film and Programme Market for TV, Video, Cable and Satellite) in Cannes,
southeastern France. Rivers, the raucous, acid-tongued comedian who
crashed the male-dominated realm of late-night talk shows and turned
Hollywood red carpets into danger zones for badly dressed celebrities,
died Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. She was 81. Rivers was hospitalized Aug.
28, after going into cardiac arrest at a doctor's office. |
Joan Rivers, the
raucous, acid-tongued comedian who crashed the male-dominated realm of
late-night talk shows and turned Hollywood red carpets into danger zones
for badly dressed celebrities, died Thursday.
She was 81.
Rivers
died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, surrounded by family and
close friends, daughter Melissa Rivers said. She was hospitalized Aug.
28 after going into cardiac arrest in a doctor's office following a
routine procedure. The New York state health department is investigating
the circumstances.
"My mother's greatest joy
in life was to make people laugh," Melissa Rivers said. "Although that
is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we
return to laughing soon."
Under the immobile,
plastic surgery-crafted veneer that became Joan Rivers' unapologetic
trademark as she aged, her wit remained as vibrantly raw and unruly as
when she first broke her way into a comedy world belonging largely to
men.
In a 2010 "Late Show" interview, David
Letterman broached the plastic surgery issue: "You don't look exactly
like the Joan Rivers I used to know." Rivers was unapologetic.
"Our
business is so youthful. ... You do little tweaks, and I think if a
woman wants to look good, or a man, do it," she said. "It's not about
anybody else."
Fashion and acting were the
early dreams of the woman who grew up as a self-described "fatty," but
it was humor that paid the bills and ultimately made Rivers a star. She
refused to cede the spotlight as the decades passed, working vigorously
until her death.
"I have never wanted to be a
day less than I am," she said in a 2013 interview with The Associated
Press.
"People say, `I wish I were 30 again.' Nahhh! I'm very happy
HERE. It's great. It gets better and better. And then, of course, we
die," she quipped.
Rivers was a scrapper,
rebuilding her career and life after a failed attempt to make it as a
late-night host was followed closely by her husband's suicide.
Rivers'
style was hard-driving from the start and her material only got
sharper. She was ready to slam anyone. A favored target was Elizabeth
Taylor's weight ("her favorite food is seconds"), but the comedian kept
current with verbal assaults on Miley Cyrus and other newcomers.
With
her raspy voice and brash New York accent, Rivers turned the red carpet
of the Oscars, Emmys and Golden Globes into a stalking ground for E!
Entertainment. Her familiar query - "Who are you wearing?" - would
quickly give way to such snarky commentary as her assessment of Adele's
Grammy outfit: The singer looked like she was sitting on a teapot.
The
barbs could turn inward as well, with Rivers mocking everything from
her proclaimed lack of sex appeal ("my best birth control now is just to
leave the lights on") to her own mortality.
In
2007, Rivers and her partner-in-slime, daughter Melissa, were dropped
by their new employer, the TV Guide Channel, and replaced by actress
Lisa Rinna. But the Rivers' women found new success on E! with "Fashion
Police," which Rivers hosted and her daughter produced.
Joan Rivers never relaxed, always looking for the next and better punchline.
"The
trouble with me is, I make jokes too often," she told the AP in 2013,
just days after the death of her older sister. "I was making jokes
yesterday at the funeral home. That's how I get through life. Life is SO
difficult - everybody's been through something! But you laugh at it, it
becomes smaller."
She had faced true crisis
in the mid-1980s. Edgar Rosenberg, her husband of 23 years, committed
suicide in 1987 after she was fired from her Fox talk show, which he
produced. The show's failure was a major factor, Rivers said.
Rosenberg's suicide also temporarily derailed her career.
"Nobody wants to see someone whose husband has killed himself do comedy four weeks later," she told The New York Times in 1990.
Rivers
had originally entered show business with the dream of being an
actress, but comedy was a way to pay the bills while she auditioned for
dramatic roles. "Somebody said, `You can make six dollars standing up in
a club,'" she told the AP, "and I said, `Here I go!' It was better than
typing all day."
In the early 1960s, comedy
was a man's game and the only women comics she could look to were Totie
Fields and Phyllis Diller. But she worked her way up from local clubs in
New York until, in 1965, she landed her big break on "The Tonight Show"
after numerous rejections. "God, you're funny. You're going to be a
star," host Johnny Carson told her after she had rocked the audience
with laughter.
Her nightclub career prospered
and by late that year she had recorded her first comedy album, "Joan
Rivers Presents Mr. Phyllis and Other Funny Stories." Her personal life
picked up as well: She met British producer Rosenberg and they married
after a four-day courtship.
Rivers hosted a
morning talk show on NBC in 1968 and, the next year, made her Las Vegas
debut with female comedians still a relative rarity.
"To
control an audience is a very masculine thing," Rivers told the Los
Angeles Times in 1977. "The minute a lady is in any form of power, they
(the public) totally strip away your femininity - which isn't so.
Catherine the Great had a great time."
In
1978, she wrote, directed and co-starred in the movie "Rabbit Test." It
had an intriguing premise - Billy Crystal as a man who gets pregnant -
but was poorly received. In 1983, though, she scored a coup when she was
named permanent guest host for Carson on "Tonight."
Although
she drew good ratings, NBC hesitated in renewing her contract three
years later. Fledgling network Fox jumped in with an offer of her own
late-night show.
She launched "The Late Show
Starring Joan Rivers" on Fox in 1986, but the venture lasted just a
season and came at a heavy price: Carson cut ties with her when she
surprised him by becoming a competitor.
Carson
kept publicly silent about her defection but referred obliquely to his
new rival in his monologue on the day her show debuted.
"There
are a lot of big confrontations this week," Carson said as the audience
giggled expectantly. "Reagan and Gorbachev, the Mets versus the Astros,
and me versus `The Honeymooners' lost episodes."
Her
show was gone in a year and she would declare that she had been "raped"
by Fox; three months later, her husband was found dead.
It
took two years to get her career going again, and then she didn't stop.
Rivers appeared at clubs and on TV shows including "Hollywood Squares."
She appeared on Broadway and released more comedy albums and books,
most recently "Diary of a Mad Diva."
She was
born Joan Molinsky in Brooklyn to Russian immigrants Meyer Molinsky, a
doctor, and Beatrice. Rivers had a privileged upbringing but struggled
with weight - she was a self-proclaimed "fatty" as a child - and
recalled using make-believe as an escape. After graduating from Barnard
College in 1954, she went to work as a department store fashion
coordinator before she turned to comedy clubs. She had a six-month
marriage to Jimmy Sanger.
In recent years,
Rivers was a familiar face on TV shopping channel QVC, hawking her line
of jewelry, and won the reality show "Celebrity Apprentice" by beating
out her bitter adversary, poker champ Annie Duke.
In 2010, she was
featured in the documentary "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work."
She
never let age, or anything, make her sentimental. Earlier in 2014, she
got inked: a half-inch-tall tattoo, "6M," on the inside of her arm
representing 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust. In 2013, she
brashly pledged to work "forever."
"You never
relax and say, `Well, here I am!'" she declared. "You always think, `Is
this gonna be OK?' I have never taken anything for granted."
Survivors include her daughter, Melissa and a grandson, Cooper.
