Joan Rivers
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Joan Rivers, the blunt, tart-tongued celebrity and talk show host who reconstructed her career time and time again en route to becoming one of the most memorable female comics of all time, died Sept. 4 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She was 81.
Joan Rivers
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Rivers was rushed to the hospital on Aug. 28 and placed on life support after she suffered from respiratory and cardiac arrest during surgery on her vocal cords in a doctor's office.
Melissa Rivers
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images "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," daughter Melissa Rivers stated at the time of her mother's death.
Comedienne Extraordinaire
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Rivers, pictured here in 1965, started out as a gag writer. The Brooklyn native poked fun at her fondness for plastic surgery, never pulled a punch in a bid for a laugh and insulted just about everyone — no one was off-limits — to forge an impressive, and somewhat notorious, show business legacy.
Rising Star
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images She became interested in performing at age 11. After attending college and landing a play titled Seawood on Manhattan's Upper East Side, USO show Broadway USA and a gig with Chicago-based improvisational acting troupe Second City, she worked New York's comedy club scene, started a comedy tour with Jim Connell and Jake Holmes; and signed a long-term, solo performance deal with a club called The Duplex.
Pictured: Rivers applauded as first lady Nancy Reagan hugged by singer Pearl Bailey, alongside Carla Hills, Barbara Bush and U.S. treasurer Katherine Ortega during a reception in Dallas in 1984.
‘The Tonight Show’
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images In 1965, she landed a gig as a gag writer/participant on CBS’ Candid Camera and appeared for the first time on The Tonight Show, then hosted by Jack Paar (who is shown in the poster, given to her by the cast of National Lampoon's Class of '86).
‘The Tonight Show’
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Johnny Carson designated her as the first permanent guest host for The Tonight Show, and she stood in for him from 1983-86. Pictured: Rivers chats with Miss America Suzette Charles in 1984.
‘The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers’
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Pictured: Rivers with first lady Nancy Reagan (left) on Oct. 30, 1986. She signed with the then-fledgling Fox network to host The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers — a groundbreaking move for a woman, but had her go opposite Carson. He considered it an act of betrayal and refused to speak to her again. She did not return to The Tonight Show until February, for Jimmy Fallon’s debut.
Joan Rivers
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Her contemporaries when she was starting out included Woody Allen, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Rodney Dangerfield and Dick Cavett. “Everybody broke through ahead of me,” she told THR. “I was the last one in the group to break through, or to be allowed to break through. Looking back, I think it was because I was a woman. Because in those days, they would come down to the Village and look at you for Johnny Carson. I was the very last one of the group they put on the Carson show.”
Pictured: Rivers speaks during the Emmy Awards in 1986.
Instant Pudding Award
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Rivers was honored her with the Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals Woman of the Year award in 1984. She is shown here in 1986 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was given the first Instant Pudding Award for "a lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment."
Joan Rivers
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images In 1987, a few months after the end of The Late Show, her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, who managed her career and produced her Fox show, committed suicide. She made her first TV appearance after his death at the Emmys that year, and presented the award for best supporting actor in a comedy series to John Larroquette of NBC's Night Court.
Big and Small Screen
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images She voiced the baby in the John Travolta–Kirstie Alley box-office hit Look Who’s Talking (1989) and was heard in Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs (1987) as a character called Dot Matrix. She also appeared in such films as The Swimmer (1969), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), Serial Mom (1994), Goosed (1999) and Shrek 2 (2004) and on the TV series Suddenly Susan, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Simpsons and Hot in Cleveland.
Pictured: Rivers with rock 'n' roll legend Chuck Berry at the D.W. Griffith Awards in 1988.
On the Shelves
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images In 1984, she penned The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz, a New York Times best-seller based largely on her comic persona. Her other books included Men Are Stupid and They Like Big Boobs and Murder at the Academy Awards: A Red Carpet Murder Mystery.
Pictured: Rivers poses with her new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1989.
On the Charts
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images She released comedy albums, including the Grammy-nominated What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? in 1997.
Pictured: Rivers with entertainer RuPaul, who sang a number from his debut album Supermodel of the World in 1993.
On the Red Carpet
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images As a fashion critic and red-carpet doyenne, she began hosting E! Entertainment’s red carpet show for the Golden Globes in 1994.
On the Stage
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images For the stage, she co-wrote and starred in Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress at The Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. It later had successful runs in Edinburgh and London.
Pictured: Rivers prepares for her 1994 Broadway role in Sally Marr…and Her Escorts, the true story of the burlesque comic Sally Marr who was also the mother of controversial comedian Lenny Bruce.
‘Fashion Police’
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Rivers hosted the E! show Fashion Police with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne and stylist George Kotsiopoulos as they critique celebrity style choices.
Beyond Comedy
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Her ancillary endeavors were vast: She launched the Joan Rivers Classics Collection of Jewelry on QVC in 1990 and a line of beauty products in 2000, including her signature fragrance, Now and Forever. And the revealing 2010 documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work followed her around for 14 months, around the time she emerged victorious on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice.
Pictured: Rivers with Today's Katie Couric and Al Roker in 2006.
Joan Rivers
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Pictured: Rivers with Sarah Silverman at the 2011 Critics' Choice Movie Awards.
“If there is a secret to being a comedian, it’s just loving what you do,” she told THR in 2012. “It is my drug of choice. I don’t need real drugs. I don’t need liquor. It’s the joy that I get performing. That is my rush. I get it nowhere else."
Joan Rivers
Image Credit: Photo Credit: AP Images Pictured: Rivers and Robin Williams backstage at London's Wimbledon Theatre after a 2008 charity performance in aid of the Prince's Trust charity.
“What pleasure you feel when you’ve kept people happy for an hour and a half," she told THR in 2012. "They’ve forgotten their troubles. It’s great. There’s nothing like it in the world. When everybody’s laughing, it’s a party. And then you get a check at the end. That’s very nice.”
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