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Joan Rivers (born Joan Alexandra Molinsky; June 8, 1933) is an American comedian, actress, talk show host, and businesswoman. She is known for her brash manner and loud, raspy voice with a heavy metropolitan New York accent. Like her peer Phyllis Diller, Rivers' comedy act relies heavily on poking fun at herself.
rs was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman) and Meyer C.
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Quotations
I am pimping it out for you at the Academy Awards.
I knew I was unwanted when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and radio.
My daughter refuses to call me mother in public; my little grandson calls me Spongeslob Squarebottom, and nobody else ever calls me at all.
My first sexual experience was rape. No don't give me sympathy, I was lucky he didn't press charges.
Tonight I'll be interviewing Ken Watanabe, Keisha Castle Hughes, Benecio Del Toro and Djimon Honsou - and yes, those are actors, not caterers.
People are arguing whether Mel Gibson's.
assion of the Christ" is anti-semitic. Well, whether it is or it isn't, it doesn't matter, because I've been in touch with his accounting firm, Rosencrantz, Levy and Stern, and they're screwing him out of his profits.
Encyclopedia
Joan Rivers (born Joan Alexandra Molinsky; June 8, 1933) is an American comedian, actress, talk show host, and businesswoman. She is known for her brash manner and loud, raspy voice with a heavy metropolitan New York accent. Like her peer Phyllis Diller, Rivers' comedy act relies heavily on poking fun at herself.
Biography
Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman) and Meyer C. Molinsky, who was a doctor . She was raised in Brooklyn, New York and her family later moved to Larchmont in Westchester County, NY. She attended Connecticut College between 1950 and 1952, and graduated from Barnard College in 1954 with a B.A. in English Literatur e and anthropology. During college, a friend took her to see Lenny Bruce do stand-up comedy, and, as Joan describes it, "it was an epiphany".
Before entering show business, Rivers worked at various jobs such as a tour guide at Rockefeller Center , a writer/proofreader at an advertising agency, and as a fashion consultant at Bond Clothing Stores .
Personal life
Her first marriage was in 1955 to James Sanger the son of Bond Stores' merchandise manager. The marriage lasted six months and it was annulled on the basis that Sanger did not want children and had not told her before the wedding .
Her second marriage was on July 15, 1965 to Edgar Rosenberg. Their daughter Melissa Warburg Rosenberg (now known as Melissa Rivers) was born January 20, 1968.
On August 14, 1987, Rivers was devastated when Edgar Rosenberg, who had been a producer on The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers in 1986-1987, committed suicide by an overdose of prescription drugs in a hotel room in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After this she was estranged briefly from her only daugher. Shortly thereafter, an article appeared in GQ magazine by an author using the pseudonym "Bert Hacker" claiming that Rivers had called her late husband Edgar Rosenberg a "low life freeloader" who had tried to drive her insane before his death. According to the article, Rivers had said:
- "...I think things are just about finished with Edgar" and referred to her former boss at Fox as "Barry (expletive) Diller ".
River maintains that "Bert Hacker" had fabricated the story with "vicious lies" and offered a $5,000 bounty to anyone who could reveal his true identity. She later filed a $50 million libel suit against the person identified as the author and GQ's publisher Condé Nast Publications.
Rivers is a grandmother to Edgar Cooper Endicott. He was born 1 Dec 2000 during her daughter Melissa's marriage (1998–2003) to horse breeder John Endicott.
Joan Rivers is a supporter of animal rights and an active member of PETA .
Joan had a cat, Edgar (named after her deceased husband Edgar Rosenberg); after the cat had died, Joan had it stuffed and kept in the foyer of her apartment for three years.
Rivers is an avid and unapologetic user of plastic surgery to enhance her looks, however this has occasionally resulted in ridicule and self-deprecation. This was played up in a Geico television commercial in which she delivers the lines "Am I smiling? I can't tell!" and "I can't feel my face!"
Career
Early show business career, 1950s and 1960s
Some time in the late 1950s, she appeared in a short-lived Off-Off Broadway play called Seawood, in which she played a lesbian with a crush on a character played by Barbra Streisand. The play ran for only six weeks .
She performed in numerous comedy clubs in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, including The Bitter End and The Gaslight Cafe . In the early 1960s, she appeared several times as a guest on The Tonight Show, which at the time originated from New York and was hosted by Jack Paar.
In 1965, she had a stint on TV's Candid Camera as a gag writer and participant as "the bait" to lure people into ridiculous situations for the show. On Feb. 17, 1965 she got a big break by making her first appearance on The Tonight Show with its new host Johnny Carson. The appearance on Carson's enormously popular version of The Tonight Show was a tremendous career boost.
In the 1960s, Rivers made other television appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, as well as hosting the first of her several talk shows. Later in that decade she made a brief but notable appearance opposite Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer, a 1968 film.
In 1969, she had a short-lived syndicated daytime talk show, and her first guest was Johnny Carson .
In the mid 1960s, she released at least two comedy albums, The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album and Joan Rivers Presents Mr. Phyllis & Other Funny Stories .
1970s
In the 1970s, Joan Rivers appeared often as a guest on various television comedy and variety shows. One notable appearance on The Carol Burnett Show had her spoofing Valerie Harper in Rhoda (Rivers' character was named "Rhonda"), to the delight of the audience. From 1972 to 1976, she was the narrator for The Adventures of Letterman, an animated segment for The Electric Company.
In 1978, Rivers directed and wrote the film Rabbit Test starring her friend Billy Crystal, an avant garde movie about a man who gets pregnant, but it was a critical and commercial disappointment.
Rivers was the opening act for singer Helen Reddy on the Las Vegas Strip during the 1970s. She would eventually become a headliner in her own right to standing-room crowds continuing into the 1980s.
1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s, Rivers had a resurgence of popularity and continued to gain acclaim on television, frequently substituting for Johnny Carson as guest host on The Tonight Show. On April 9, 1983, she hosted Saturday Night Live at about the same time she released a best-selling comedy album on Geffen Records, What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? The recording reached number 22 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Recording . In August 1983, she was named the first and only permanent guest host on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson .
In spring 1986, the then-fledgling Fox Television Network announced that it was giving Rivers her own late night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers . It would be one of the launch shows for the new network, and The Late Show would air from 11:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time, partially during the same time slot as The Tonight Show, which aired 11:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m. in most markets, making Rivers a competitor of Johnny Carson. By Rivers' account, Carson was so upset by her decision to leave The Tonight Show without consulting him that he banned her from his show. Rivers also claimed she tried to personally telephone Carson after the Fox deal was announced, but he hung up on her.
In October 1986 , The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers premiered on Fox TV with a barrage of publicity, but by May 15, 1987 , Rivers was fired from the show. The title was shortened to The Late Show , and it featured a rotating series of guest hosts, the most memorable of whom was Arsenio Hall . Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson never reconciled before his death in 2005.
In 1988, Rivers guest-starred on the Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, along with other stars, which included Oprah Winfrey, Charo, and Cher. In some sense, it was Rivers' way of repaying Paul Reubens (creator of the character Pee-Wee Herman, and the show) who was the very first guest on The Late show when it premiered in 1986.
In her book, Bouncing Back, she describes how she developed bulimia and contemplated suicide. Eventually she recovered with counseling and the support of her family. Eventually she returned to television with her own daytime talk show, The Joan Rivers Show which ran from 1989 until 1994. Her enormous stock of bored husband jokes could no longer be used. A Rivers favorite had been: " When Edgar and I were first married, we'd play 'catch me, catch me!' and we'd run around the house. We still play 'catch me, catch me!' but now we walk ". As Edgar had committed suicide two years earlier, the joker were painful to tell .
In 1994, she and daughter Melissa first hosted the E! Entertainment Television pre-awards show for the Golden Globe Awards . Beginning in 1995, they hosted the annual E! Entertainment Television pre-awards show for the Academy Awards .
Beginning in 1997, Rivers hosted her own radio show on WOR in New York. In 2003, Rivers and the station mutually decided to part ways.
2000s
From 2005–2007, Rivers was a host for the TV Guide channel, often co-hosting red carpet specials before awards shows with her daughter, Melissa Rivers. She was replaced by Lisa Rinna starting with the 2007 Emmy Awards telecast . TV Guide chiefs decided they wanted a friendlier face greeting the stars and asked TV actress Lisa Rinna to take over the show .
In the movie Shrek 2, she cameoed as a computer-generated version of herself, hosting the parody ME! Medieval Entertainment Television channel.
Rivers is the National Chairwoman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and is a board member of God's Love We Deliver.
In 2004, she appeared as a guest on the first episode of the BBC One stand-up comedy programme Jack Dee Live at the Apollo. She would eventually guest host the fifth episode in the 2007 season.
When in New York, where she lives, Rivers appears weekly in workshop productions at the small venue The Cutting Room. She donates proceeds to the charities God's Love We Deliver (for which she is a board member) and Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Rivers appeared in two episodes of the show Nip/Tuck during its second and third seasons. During her first appearance, she wanted to find out what she would look like without all the plastic surgery she has had and was horrified by the result. During her second appearance, she wanted to invest in a post-surgical health spa.
She is also an avid collector of jewelry. Rivers also appears regularly on television's The Shopping Channel (in Canada), and QVC (in both the U.S. and the U.K.), selling her own line of jewellery under the brand name "The Joan Rivers Collection", which in fact is one of that network's best-selling lines. Rivers was a guest speaker at the opening of the American Operating Room Nurses' 2000 San Francisco Conference.
While touring in the UK, Rivers appeared on BBC Radio 4's Midweek programme and became involved in a heated on-air argument over the issue of race with broadcaster Darcus Howe .
Together with Melissa, Rivers appeared in a special feature on the season one DVD set of The Golden Girls, commenting on the sometimes-odd fashion styles worn by the characters in the sitcom.
Both Joan and her daughter Melissa are frequent guests on Howard Stern's radio show. Joan frequently appears as a panelist on UK game show 8 Out Of 10 Cats.
During an interview with Celebrity Week in October 2006, Rivers remarked that Mel Gibson "is an anti-Semitic son of a bitch. He should (expletive) die!” .
She has also insulted Chris Burney, the guitarist in the band Bowling for Soup, calling him "fatso" and renaming his band "Bowling for Crap". Later that year she voted Bowling for Soup the worst-dressed musicians.
On The Simpsons episode "Make Room for Lisa", Homer Simpson asks an employee at Kharma-Ceutric, an alternative medicine shop, "What's keeping Joan Rivers alive?" to which she replies, "Fetal Grindings". Rivers was satirized in three other episodes as well.
On August 16, 2007, Rivers began a two-week workshop of her new play, with the working title "The Joan Rivers Theatre Project", at The Magic Theatre in San Francisco .
On December 3, 2007, Rivers featured before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh in the Royal Variety Show 2007 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre.
In January 2008, Rivers became one of 20 hijackers to take control of the Big Brother house in the UK, in a spin-off show entitled Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack. She did so for one day, bringing her usual sniping wit with her.
On June 17, 2008, Joan Rivers was removed from the set of the British ITV lunchtime talk show, Loose Women after swearing live on air. She described actor Russell Crowe as a piece of "f***in' shit". She made an error, not realizing the program aired live, without a delay. She was removed from the set during a break. A spokesperson for the show stated, "Guests are always briefed that it is a live daytime show and are reminded not to swear or use inappropriate language. An editorial decision was taken that Joan Rivers should not appear in the final part of the programme. We would like to apologise to Loose Women viewers for the inappropriate language used on today's show." Joan noted that this was the first time she had been removed from a TV show in 40 years and she was "thrilled" .
On June 24, 2008 Rivers appeared on NBC’s show Celebrity Family Feud. She competed with her daughter, Melissa, against Ice-T and Coco. She was asked if her face was a cross between OJ Simpson and Al Unser Jr. Rivers immediately left the set.
Rivers will appear as a contestant alongside her daughter Melissa on Celebrity Apprentice. Throughout the season, each celebrity will be raising money for a charity of their choice; Rivers has selected the charity "God's Love We Deliver" .
Rivers was also a special pink carpet presenter for the 2009 broadcast of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade.
Cameos and parodies
Rivers had a cameo in the film Shrek 2 (though for the UK version she was dubbed by Kate Thornton) . She also appeared in the Simpsons episode Viva Ned Flanders as a desperate infomercial host and in the Futurama episode "That's Lobstertainment!" as a talking head. She appears in Drawn Together as Clara's talking vagina, called a "Vajoana", as the result of Clara getting too much plastic surgery. She appears in the season finale in season 2 and in season 3 of Nip/Tuck as herself. She lent her voice to the Mel Brooks film Spaceballs as Dot Matrix. She has also appeared in a GEICO Insurance commercial making satirical comments about her many plastic surgeries. She also appeared as herself in a parody of her career on E! True Hollywood Story on April 1, 2001 .
Charity
Rivers has agreed to be a Honorary Chair of the Imperial Court of New York's Annual Charity Coronation Ball, Night of A Thousand Gowns on March 21, 2009. Other Honorary Chairs for the evening's charity event include Sir Elton John CBE, Patti LuPone, John Cameron Mitchell, Idina Menzel and Dame Robin Strasser.
Awards
Joan Rivers was awarded the 1975 Georgie Award by American Guild of Variety Artists as "Best Comedienne", the Clio Award for "Best Performance in a TV Commercial" in 1976 and 1982, and the 1990 Daytime Emmy Award as "Outstanding Talk/Service Show Host."
In 1983, she was awarded the Sour Apple Award, one of the Golden Apple Awards.
In 1984, she was awarded Woman of the Year by Hasty Pudding Theatricals.
In 1989, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7030 Hollywood Blvd.
In 1994, she was nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Leading Actress in a Play for Sally Marr and Her Escorts, which she wrote with Erin Ladd Sanders and Lonny Price.
In a 2005 BBC Channel 4 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, she was voted 40 amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
Rivers co-hosted a segment of the Australian 2006 Logie Awards. She was given a specially commissioned pink Logie award, threw it over her shoulder and remarked "It's the ugliest award I have ever seen." Months later (in June), footage of the spectacle featured in an episode of Web Junk 20 and on YouTube.
Books
- Having a Baby Can Be a Scream (1974, self-help/humor book)
- The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abramowitz (1984, humor book)
- Enter Talking (1986, autobiography)
- Still Talking (1991, autobiography)
- Jewelry by Joan Rivers (1995)
- Bouncing Back: I've Survived Everything ... and I Mean Everything ... and You Can Too! (1997, autobiography/self-help)
- From Mother to Daughter: Thoughts and Advice on Life, Love and Marriage (1998)
- Don’t Count the Candles: Just keep the Fire Lit! (1999)
- Men Are Stupid . . . And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman's Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery (2008)
- Murder at the Academy Awards (R): A Red Carpet Murder Mystery (2009)
Filmography
Television work
Theater work
(Selected list)
- Broadway Bound by Neil Simon (replacement for Kate, 1988, Broadhurst Theatre)
- Sally Marr and Her Escorts, a play suggested by the life of Lenny Bruce's mother (co-written with Erin Ladd Sanders and Lonny Price), May 1994, Helen Hayes Theatre, Broadway.
- Joan Rivers: A Work In Progress By A Life In Progress (February 2008, Geffen Playhouse)
- Joan Rivers: A Work In Progress By A Life In Progress (August 2008, Underbelly, Edinburgh Comedy Festival)
- Joan Rivers: A Work In Progress By A Life In Progress (September 2008, Leicester Square Theatre, London)
Rivers stated in her March 2009 "Celebrity Apprentice" appearence that she was the author of at least three broadway plays. This statement is unsubstantiated and is yet to be verified.
External links
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