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Iconic Celebrity #7: Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers
Comedian Joan Rivers speaks to reporters at the awards ceremony for the 11th Annual Mark Twain Prize on November 10, 2008 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

Rarely has a celebrity so captured the heart of New Yorkers. Joan Rivers' family, life and career has had New Yorkers rooting, laughing and sometimes crying for decades. Her classic, Brooklyn-girl-makes-good story had lots of bumps along the way. Think you know the real Joan Rivers? This is her story.
 

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A Legacy of Funny

 
Joan Rivers, born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in 1933, was the daughter of Russian immigrant parents. A family that prized education, Rivers' father was a doctor, whose sense of humor was said to put patients at ease, making him very popular and highly successful. The family moved out of the boroughs to the elegant New York suburb, Larchmont, and Rivers, an excellent student, became a Phi Beta Kappa sorority girl at Barnard College.

Rivers started toying with the idea of performing in college, and tried her hand at a number of on-campus productions. Despite her budding love of the stage, after graduation she opted for a real job in New York's garment center as a fashion buyer, fell in love with the owner's son, and got married. For many women, that would have been the start of a pretty typical trajectory, but even then there was nothing typical about Joan Rivers.


 

An Unconvincing Actor

 
Rivers' first marriage was a wash-up, ending after six months. Looking for an alternate passion, she went back to acting, but the smattering of roles she landed were even less sustainable than her marriage had proved to be. Even a six-week stint playing a lesbian couple opposite a then-unknown Barbra Streisand could not elevate her lukewarm acting ability. Rivers was, like her father, naturally funny. She spent the next seven years perfecting her particular, self-deprecating brand of humor by performing in smoky, noisy clubs like the Bitter End and Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. She also did a few stints in upstate New York's Borscht Belt hotels. Rivers was getting really good at her craft, but was tiring of the life when everything changed.


 

Can We Talk?

 
Rivers became a guest, and then a fixture, on "The Tonight Show" with new host, Johnny Carson, in 1965. It's here that her famous catchphrase, "Can we talk?" became an almost unconscious part of her act. People started referring to her as the female Woody Allen, but Rivers' bawdy and bold brand of comedy was unlike any other. Willing to say what others were thinking but wouldn't dare whisper, Rivers' fan base started to grow at hilarious leaps and bounds.

Rivers was writing comedy for the popular "Ed Sullivan Show" when another unlikely break came her way. Sullivan always ended his show by announcing the next week's lineup, but instead of announcing the singer Johnny Rivers, he slipped and said Joan Rivers instead. The producers were forced to let her go on. Her bold humor was refreshing and astonishing, all the more so because she was that rarity – a female comic. Women stand-up comedians were unheard of on television at the time. Rivers may have simply been trying to move her own career forward, but unbeknownst to her, she was also breaking ground and paving the way for many, many women who would follow in her footsteps.


 

A Break Gone Bad

 
Rivers appeared on many television shows during the next decade, and even had a short stint as a host of her own, syndicated day time talk show, "That Show With Joan Rivers." She became a regular guest host on "The Tonight Show" and considered Johnny Carson her most powerful ally and mentor in the business. All that changed when Rivers agreed to host her own late-night talk show on the new Fox network. She was the first woman in history to be offered a late night seat and accepted the job, despite its competing time slot with "The Tonight Show." Furious, Carson cut her out of his life completely and never made mention of her on his own show again.

Despite its promise, the move to Fox was not an auspicious one for Rivers, who was fired from the network along with her second husband and manager, Edgar Rosenberg, about a year after the show aired. Rosenberg, who had lovingly been the brunt of many of Joan's on-air jokes, committed suicide shortly thereafter.


 

Who Are You Wearing?

 
Rivers reinvented herself as an entertainment commentator for the E! network on shows like "Live From the Red Carpet" and "The Fashion Police." She often shared the acerbic limelight with her daughter, Melissa. Able to turn anyone's fashion gaffe into tomorrow's water cooler conversation, no star was safe from Rivers' hysterically-barbed fashion commentaries.


 

A Fond Farewell

 
A routine surgery on Rivers' vocal cords went awry in 2014, and she stopped breathing during the procedure. She died at 81 years of age from cardiac arrest, surrounded by family and friends. Rivers' funeral was a star-studded affair at New York's Temple Emanu-El filled with unending tributes lovingly given to a friend and colleague gone too soon.


 

Corey Whelan is a freelance writer in New York. Her work can be found at Examiner.com.

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