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Joan Rivers

1933–2014 · 81 years

The first woman given her own late-night show, and what it cost

Portrait of Joan Rivers — Roy Silver — 1967-05-14 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Her father was a Brooklyn doctor, her parents Russian Jewish immigrants, and the family moved up and out to Larchmont while she was still a girl. Joan Alexandra Molinsky spent two years at Connecticut College, transferred to Barnard, and took a degree in English literature and anthropology in 1954. For years she said she had graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Biographers later found that neither was true. She guided tours at Rockefeller Center, proofread advertising copy, sold clothes at Bond. An agent named Tony Rivers told her to change her name and she took his. Then came a decade of Greenwich Village basements and Catskills resorts, and one revue at Second City that she said made her a comedian.

She auditioned for The Tonight Show seven times over three years. On February 17, 1965, Johnny Carson put her on, told her that she was going to be a star, and she was. What followed ran 49 years: a Daytime Emmy for her own syndicated talk show, a Grammy nomination, a Tony nomination for playing Lenny Bruce's mother on Broadway, 12 books, a jewelry business, and the red carpet, which she and her daughter Melissa turned into a show of its own. The record is easy to list. The interesting part is what sat in the middle of it.

Carson made her. By August 1983 she was his first permanent guest host, and she described her role there as being Johnny Carson's daughter. In 1986 the new Fox network offered her a late-night hour opposite him and she took it, becoming the first woman to host a late-night network talk show at a time when television held it settled that audiences would not accept one. Carson learned of it from Fox, not from her. He hung up on her, never spoke to her again, and she was banned from The Tonight Show for the rest of his tenure and, in deference to him, by his next two successors. The show premiered that October. Fox fired her and her husband and manager Edgar Rosenberg, its producer, on May 15, 1987. On August 14 Rosenberg died by suicide in Philadelphia.

The act was cruel and never softened: appearance, ageing, sex, aimed at women and hardest at herself. She was criticised for jokes about the Holocaust and the Cleveland kidnapping victims and refused to apologise for either, holding that a satirist cannot be part of the party. Her standing moved anyway. She joined QVC in 1990 because the work had dried up and sold more than a billion dollars of jewelry. The 2010 documentary A Piece of Work showed the labour behind the act and reset her reputation. She stopped breathing during a throat procedure at a Manhattan clinic on August 28, 2014, and died in hospital on September 4. Melissa sued, and in 2016 the doctors accepted responsibility and settled.

Lifespan

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Joan Rivers's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Rabbit Test film
She wrote and directed it — Billy Crystal in his first film role 1978
Enter Talking book
Memoir of the climb, written with Richard Meryman 1986
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers television
Fox — the first late-night network talk show hosted by a woman 1986
The Joan Rivers Show television
Syndicated daytime talk show, five seasons and a Daytime Emmy in 1990 1989
Still Talking book
On the Fox cancellation and her husband's death 1991
Fashion Police television
The E! red carpet panel she co-hosted until weeks before her death 2010

Life in brief

with age at each point

1954 aged ~21 Graduates from Barnard College Then tour guide, proofreader and shop assistant while auditioning at night.
1961 aged ~28 Joins the cast at Second City in Chicago She later said she was born as a comedian there and owed it her career.
February 17, 1965 aged 31 First appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson Her seventh audition in three years. Carson told her on air that she was going to be a star.
July 15, 1965 aged 32 Marries Edgar Rosenberg He became her manager and producer. Their daughter Melissa was born in 1968.
1983 aged ~50 Carson makes her the first permanent guest host of The Tonight Show
October 9, 1986 aged 53 The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers premieres on the new Fox network Carson heard about the job from Fox rather than from her and never spoke to her again.
May 15, 1987 aged 53 Fox fires Rivers and Rosenberg Seven months after the premiere. She had fought the network over its plan to remove him as producer.
August 14, 1987 aged 54 Edgar Rosenberg dies by suicide in Philadelphia Rivers blamed his humiliation by the network.
February 17, 2014 aged 80 Returns to The Tonight Show for Jimmy Fallon's first episode 49 years to the day after Carson first put her on.