|
 Rivers, an outspoken advocate of the plastic surgery that
gave her a preternaturally preserved appearance, died after
suffering cardiac arrest during an outpatient procedure on her
vocal cords on Aug. 28 at a clinic in New York that had left her
on life support for several days.
"My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh.
Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final
wish would be that we return to laughing soon," Melissa Rivers
said in a statement announcing her passing.
Rivers found fame as a stand-up comedian and TV host before
becoming a regular on reality television in her later years as a
celebrity-bashing fashion pundit.
Onstage, Rivers came across as acidic and manic - sort of Don
Rickles in diamonds and a Chanel dress. "Can we talk?" she would
ask her audience in a husky New York accent before delivering a
brutal put-down line, such as, "Elizabeth Taylor's so fat she
puts mayonnaise on her aspirin."
When it came to getting a laugh or just being provocative, no
topic was taboo for Rivers.
"If you laugh at it, you can deal with it - and if you don't,
you can't deal with it," she told a TV interviewer in 2010. "And
don't start telling me that I shouldn't be saying it. ... I
would have been laughing at Auschwitz."
Rivers, who was Jewish, said she was only saying what everyone
else was thinking and if someone found it mean or inappropriate
- too bad.
She didn't always like criticism, however, and stormed out of a
CNN interview in July when asked how she could be an animal
rights activist and still pose in fur on the cover of her book
"Diary of a Mad Diva."
Rivers also drew fire when she said that relatives of the
victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks should have been thrilled
to get a financial settlement for their loss. She once singled
out model Heidi Klum by saying, "The last time a German looked
this hot was when they were pushing Jews into the ovens."
Despite complaints, Rivers steadfastly refused to apologize for
either comment.
Joan Alexandra Molinsky was born on June 8, 1933, in Brooklyn
and grew up there and in a nearby town, the daughter of a doctor
and a housewife. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard
College and had a six-month marriage that was annulled before
she began pursuing an entertainment career with the last name
Rivers, which she borrowed from her agent.
Rivers first wanted to be an actress but veered into comedy and
wrote sketches for Topo Gigio, a talking mouse character on "The
Ed Sullivan Show" in the 1960s after a friend turned down the
$500 job. "For $500, I'll write for Hitler," she said in an
interview with National Public Radio.
She also worked on the seminal reality TV show "Candid Camera"
as a writer and in sketches with unknowing members of the
public. She wrote jokes for comedians Phyllis Diller and Bob
Newhart before concentrating on her own stand-up act.
Rivers' peers in the comedy club scene of New York's Greenwich
Village at the time included Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Woody
Allen and George Carlin, but she said she never felt like she
was part of their clique.
Her career got a boost in 1965 when Johnny Carson - the
undisputed king of late-night TV in the United States - had
Rivers on his "Tonight" show and declared she was a star in the
making.
By the 1980s, she had well-paying stand-up work, regular TV
appearances, an Emmy-nominated album and a best-selling book,
"The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abramowitz," based on one of
her characters.
[to top of second column] |
 FALLING OUT WITH CARSON
Rivers reached a pinnacle in 1983 when Carson crowned her as his
regular guest host on the popular NBC television show. But their
relationship imploded three years later when she left to start
her own late-night talk show on the fledgling Fox network. The
two never spoke again and the move to Fox turned out to be the
start of a downward spiral for Rivers, both personally and
professionally.
The Fox show lasted only seven months. It was canceled amid low
ratings and much enmity between Rivers' husband-manager, Edgar
Rosenberg, and network executives. A few months later, Rosenberg
committed suicide.
Rivers fell into depression, fought bulimia and endured suicidal
thoughts. Her relationship with daughter Melissa fell apart at the
time because Melissa blamed her for Rosenberg's death.
Rivers had to pull out of a financial trough because Rosenberg's bad
investments left her several million dollars in debt. She accepted
an offer from a television shopping network to hawk her own line of
jewelry and it became a success.
From 1989 to 1993 she hosted "The Joan Rivers Show," which in 1990
won a Daytime Emmy for outstanding talk show.
As she aged, Rivers was a carefully constructed testament to her
belief that looks matter a great deal, especially to a woman in show
business. She was slim and always well dressed, her hair was
immaculately styled and her skin taut and seemingly wrinkle- free.
Rivers described herself to People magazine as the "plastic surgery
poster girl" and said strangers would stop her on the street to ask
for advice on cosmetic surgery.
"Looking good equals feeling good," Rivers said in her 2008 book
"Men Are Stupid ... And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman's Guide to
Beauty Through Plastic Surgery." "I'd rather look younger and feel
happy than look older and be depressed."
Rivers said she had undergone full face lifts, nose jobs, chin
tucks, liposuction, breast reduction, an eye job and botox
injections. One of her comedy albums mentioned her plastic surgeon
in the credits.
In recent years, Rivers found a career niche commenting on
celebrity fashion. She was seen along the red carpet at televised
award ceremonies asking stars "who are you wearing?" She also hosted
the cable TV show "Fashion Police" where she mercilessly skewered
celebrities' wardrobe choices.
Rivers was tough on herself, too. "I knew I was an unwanted baby
when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio," she said.
Rivers and Melissa also starred in "Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows
Best?" with Rivers living with her daughter.
She was the winner on Donald Trump's "The Celebrity Apprentice" show
in 2009. In addition to several best-selling books and writing and
directing the movie "Rabbit Test," Rivers wrote and starred in the
1994 Broadway play "Sally Marr ... and Her Escorts," which was based
on the life of comedian Lenny Bruce's mother and earned Rivers a
best actress Tony Award nomination.
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