Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl. – Joan Rivers

Without Phyllis Diller and her, there would be no Sarah Silverman, Rita Rudner, Judy Tenuta, Maria Bamford, Roseanne Barr, Elayne Boosler, Margaret Cho, Janeane Garafalo, Paula Poundstone, Ellen DeGeneres, or Tina Fey. In an era when women did not grow up dreaming of being doctors and lawyers, and standup comedians had to break their comedy teeth in shaker bars, Elk’s lodges, and coffee houses, Joan Alexandra Molinsky, better known by her stage name Joan Rivers, was a trailblazer. She knocked down barriers and maintained a career that is entering its seventh decade, and if you believe her claims, she is still one of the funniest people in the room.

I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw my bath toys were a toaster and a radio. Joan is the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. Like many after World War II, they fled to the suburbs, the town of Larchmont, New York. Joan appeared to be just another middle class young woman. Graduating from Barnard College with a degree in English literature and anthropology, she held various jobs that young people hold, including being a proofreader at an advertising agency, a tour guide at Rockefeller Center, and a fashion consultant in a clothing store. She even entered into an ill-fated marriage that lasted only six months to one of the manager’s sons of the latter business.

My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I'd scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus - that way, I'd visit him every day. It was during this hard time that Joan decided to enter show business. Like many children with ethic last names, the agent she found, Tony Rivers, told her she would need to change it if she was going to be a success. Playfully, she took his last name as hers and the rest is history. . .Well, not so fast. She spent the next decade performing in small clubs in Greenwich Village, and her big break occurred when she got a bit role in a short-lived play, Seawood, about lesbians. It appeared to be a flop at the time. She became friends with the star of the show, a young and yet to be discovered Barbra Streisand. She even appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar, more as a novelty, a female standup, than as a step up the ladder of success.

My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on. Nineteen sixty-five was a big year for her. Not only did she marry her husband Edgar Rosenberg, but she got a job as a writer and on-air personality on “Candid Camera” and was invited to appear on “The Tonight Show” by the new host, Johnny Carson. Unknown to everyone involved, this appearance with Carson was the beginning of a love/hate relationship that would make her one of the hottest comedians in the business and nearly destroy her when they turned on each other.

Elizabeth Taylor has more chins than the Chinese telephone directory. Carson invited her back again and again to do his show. Appearances on “The Tonight Show” led to Ed Sullivan inviting her to do his show and a small role in a Burt Lancaster movie, The Swimmer. In 1968, with the help of Johnny, she got her first chance to be a talk show host on her own short-lived syndicated daytime talk show. Johnny, who usually resisted public interviews agreed to be her first guest. Her growing fame also allowed her to release two comedy albums, The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album and Joan Rivers Presents Mr. Phyllis & Other Funny Stories, during this time.

The one thing women don't want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband. Her career shifted into overdrive in the 1970s when she became a talk show regular and a frequent guest on a myriad of variety shows that populated the television landscape. She even made regular appearances over the course of four years on the children’s television show “The Electric Company.” Her bread and butter were appearances in Las Vegas which gave her large paydays and a chance to work on new material. Carson was always there for her, first hiring her as a writer, and then inviting her to sit in the coveted guest-host seat on his show when he took a day off. By the summer of 1983, she had become the regular guest host. In interviews she spoke of their mentoring relationship as akin to a father and his daughter.

Her idea of a perfect childbirth experience: Knock me out with the first pain, and wake me up when the hairdresser arrives. Nineteen eighty-six brought a move that caused Carson to turn on her. Joan had always assumed that she would be the natural replacement for Johnny, but a leaked memo from NBC executives listed ten possible replacements for him if he thought about retiring on his 25^th anniversary of taking over hosting duties and she was not on the list. This caused her to turn to the newly formed Fox Television Network looking for programming to fill their late night slots. They offered Joan her own talk show to go against “The Tonight Show.” Although Joan disputes the claim, Johnny seemed particularly bent out of shape by the fact that Rivers did not bother to call him to ask him if it was okay to take the show. Instead, he learned of the newly formed talk show from Fox’s public announcement. Johnny had a long history of competitors such as Pat Sajak, Alan Thicke, Joey Biship, and David Brenner on his show to wish them luck and afterwards when their shows got cancelled; but Joan’s move became personal, and she never appeared on the show again. Privately, they never spoke to each other again. “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers” never produced the ratings Fox hoped for, and she and her husband quickly clashed with the network. When executives told her she needed to fire her husband, she refused. In retaliation, the network fired both of them after only a handful of months. Edgar, who had a long history of manic depression, killed himself three months later. Joan blamed her husband’s act on Fox’s “humiliation” of them.

I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, "Get the hell off my property." After retreating from the public for a year after her husband’s death, Joan Rivers made her comeback and has rarely been out of the public eye since. For five years in the early 1990s, she had her own daytime talk show. She followed this up with years of red carpet programs on E! Entertainment Television and later The TV Guide Network in which she dished the dirt and criticized the clothing of stars on at the Oscars and Emmys. She had also sold products on The Shopping Network, had her own radio show, and appeared on several reality shows. Now in her 77th year of life, she shows no appearance of slowing down. As Joan notes, “The only thing that's saving me is my age. Because I don't care. I've been up; I've been down. I've been fired; I've been hired. I've been broke. What are you gonna to do me? Not like me? I don't give a damn.” This documentary follows her around and tries to understand why she has been such a success.

Verdict: An Okay Documentary