Age, Biography, and Wiki
Joan Rivers was renowned for her sharp wit and trailblazing career, breaking barriers for women in comedy and television. She started her career in the late 1950s with roles such as her Off-Broadway debut opposite Barbra Streisand in "Driftwood". Rivers became a household name through stand-up comedy and her long-running television hosting and commentary, notably on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" and "Fashion Police."
| Occupation | Soap Opera Actress |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 8 June 1933 |
| Age | 92 Years |
| Birth Place | Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Gemini |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 4 September, 2014 |
| Died Place | Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
Height, Weight, & Measurements
While Joan Rivers never publicly released official measurements, her height was considered to be about 5 feet 2 inches (157 cm). Details about her weight and body measurements have not been widely documented.
During her 55-year career as a comedian, her tough-talking style of satirical humor was both praised and criticized as truthful, yet too personal, too gossipy, and very often abrasive. Nonetheless, with her ability to "tell it like it is", she became a pioneer of contemporary stand-up comedy. Commenting about her style, she told biographer Gerald Nachman, "Maybe I started it. We're a very gossipy culture. All we want to know now is private lives." However, her style of humor, which often relied on making jokes about her own life and satirizing the lives of celebrities and public figures, was sometimes criticized as insensitive. Her jokes about Elizabeth Taylor and Adele's weight, for instance, were often commented on, although Rivers would never apologize for her humor.
| Height | 5 feet 2 inches |
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Dating & Relationship Status
- Romantic Status at Time of Death: Single
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers premiered on October 9, 1986, but Rivers' tenure was short-lived. When Rivers challenged Fox executives, who wanted to fire her husband Edgar Rosenberg as the show's producer, the network fired them both on May 15, 1987.
On August 14, 1987, Rosenberg committed suicide in Philadelphia; Rivers blamed the tragedy on his "humiliation" by Fox. Shortly after Rosenberg's suicide the magazine GQ published what was purported to be an interview with Rivers, written by "Bert Hacker". The piece quoted Rivers saying terrible things about her dead spouse. One quote was "Listen, when I think of the way he makes me crazy, I really wonder if they didn't execute the wrong Rosenbergs." In fact, Bert Hacker was a pseudonym used by former Nixon speechwriter and sometime comic Ben Stein, who had never met Rivers and simply made up the entire account. Rivers sued Stein for libel and won an undisclosed amount which was distributed to charities she designated. Rivers credited Nancy Reagan with helping her after her husband's suicide.
In addition to winning the Emmy for The Joan Rivers Show, Rivers starred in the made-for-television comedy How to Murder a Millionaire, which premiered in May 1990 on CBS. In the film, co-starring Alex Rocco and Telma Hopkins, she took on the role of a Beverly Hills matron possessed with the idea her husband is trying to kill her. Also in 1990, she started to design jewelry, clothing and beauty products for the shopping channel QVC. On this professional endeavor, Rivers said: "In those days, only dead celebrities went on [QVC]. My career was over. I had bills to pay. ... It also intrigued me at the beginning". The sales of Rivers' products exceeded $1 billion by 2014, making her one of the network's top sellers. In 1991, she wrote her next book, Still Talking, which described the cancellation of her late-night show and her husband's suicide. Until 1993, she received five additional Emmy nominations for her daytime talk-show The Joan Rivers Show — two for Outstanding Writing – Special Class and three for Outstanding Talk Show Host.
Influenced by the stand-up comedy of Lenny Bruce, Rivers co-wrote and starred in a play about Bruce's mother Sally Marr, who was also a comic and influenced her son's development as a comic. After 27 previews, Sally Marr ... and Her Escorts, a play "suggested by the life of Sally Marr" ran on Broadway for 50 performances in May and June 1994. The production received mixed reviews, but her performance was applauded by critics. The Chicago Sun Times found Rivers to be "compelling" as an actress while The New York Times wrote: "... [S]he is exuberant, fearless and inexhaustible. If you admire performers for taking risks, then you can't help but applaud her efforts". Rivers was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actress in a Play and a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Marr. Beginning in March 1997, Rivers hosted her own radio show on WOR in New York City for several years, and wrote three self-help books: Bouncing Back: I've Survived Everything ... and I Mean Everything ... and You Can Too! in 1997, From Mother to Daughter: Thoughts and Advice on Life, Love and Marriage in 1998, and Don't Count the Candles: Just Keep the Fire Lit!, in 1999.
Rivers, who was Jewish, was also criticized for making jokes about the Holocaust and later explained, "This is the way I remind people about the Holocaust. I do it through humor", adding, "my husband lost his entire family in the Holocaust." Her joke about the victims of the Ariel Castro kidnappings similarly came under criticism, but she again refused to apologize, stating, "I know what those girls went through. It was a little stupid joke." She received multiple death threats throughout her career. Rivers accepted such criticism as the price of using social satire as a form of humor: "I've learned to have absolutely no regrets about any jokes I've ever done ... You can tune me out, you can click me off, it's OK. I am not going to bow to political correctness. But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can't be part of the party."
Rivers married Edgar Rosenberg on July 15, 1965. Joan Rivers had one grandson, Cooper, born Edgar Cooper Endicott in 2000. Along with his mother and grandmother, Cooper was featured in the We TV series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? Rivers was married to Rosenberg until his suicide in 1987, four days after she asked him for a separation.
In a 2012 interview with Howard Stern, Rivers said she had several extramarital affairs when married to Rosenberg, including a one-night stand with actor Robert Mitchum in the 1960s and an affair with actor Gabriel Dell. In the 1990s, she was in an eight-year relationship with the commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks and Recreation, disabled World War II veteran Orin Lehman of the Lehman family.
In her book Bouncing Back, Rivers described how she developed bulimia nervosa after Rosenberg's 1987 suicide, and the subsequent death of her psychologist, with whom she had developed a close friendship, of an AIDS related illness. Additionally, Rivers' relationship with her daughter had been strained at the time, as Melissa blamed her for her father's death. According to Rivers, the confluence of events resulted in her contemplating suicide in her California home. "I got the gun out, the whole thing," she recalled in a 2008 interview. "And [then] my dog came and sat in my lap...and that was a big turning point in my life. My little, stupid dog, a Yorkie, who I adored, literally came and sat on my lap. ...and literally, he saved my life. Truly saved my life." Rivers eventually recovered with counseling and the support of her family.
In a 2002 ITV biography, Rivers reveals that she is the great niece (on her mother's side) of singer Happy Fanny Fields. She says that, "(Fanny) was the star of the family; she came over to the United States and married very, very rich and became very grand. But, she was the one person Noël Coward wanted to meet when he hit the United States."
On September 7, after the cremation of Rivers' body at Garden State Crematory in North Bergen, New Jersey, a private memorial service took place at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. The service was attended by an estimated 1,500 people. The guest list included Rivers' many celebrity friends and public figures such as Howard Stern, Louis C.K., Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Joy Behar, Michael Kors, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rosie O'Donnell, Bernadette Peters, Kathy Griffin, and Donald Trump. The musical performances included Hugh Jackman singing "Quiet Please, There's a Lady On Stage", as well as the New York City Gay Men's Chorus singing show tunes. Talk show host Howard Stern, who delivered the eulogy, described Rivers as "brassy in public [and] classy in private ... a troublemaker, trail blazer, pioneer for comics everywhere, ... [who] fought the stereotypes that women can't be funny." Daughter Melissa read a comedic note to her mother as part of her eulogy. Some of Rivers' ashes were scattered by her daughter in Wyoming.
On January 26, 2015, Melissa Rivers filed a malpractice lawsuit against the clinic and the doctors who performed surgery on her mother. The suit was settled for an undisclosed amount in May 2016, with the doctors accepting responsibility for Rivers' death.
Political figures giving tribute to Rivers included former First Lady Nancy Reagan, who said she was one of the "funniest people I ever knew". Upon hearing of her death, Charles, Prince of Wales and his wife Camilla said she was "utterly irreplaceable". Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted that besides bringing laughter to millions of people around the world, she was "proud of her Jewish heritage". Donald Trump attended her funeral and tweeted that she "was an amazing woman and a great friend". After her mother's death, Melissa Rivers said she received a letter from President Barack Obama in which he wrote, despite being a frequent target of Rivers' jokes: "not only did she make us laugh, she made us think".
In a subsequent interview with The Huffington Post, Melissa Rivers cited Courtney Love's public tribute to her mother as her favorite, adding: "I loved seeing that outpouring from these women, especially the ones who took the heat on Fashion Police, because it meant they got it. It meant they loved her. It meant they saw the humor."
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| Husband | James Sanger (m. 1955-1955) Edgar Rosenberg (m. July 15, 1965-August 14, 1987) |
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Net Worth and Salary
Joan Rivers was active on social media during her later years and used platforms like Twitter to engage with fans and promote her brand. Her accounts are now managed in commemoration by her family and estate.
As an unknown stand-up comedian out of college, she struggled for many years before finding her comic style. She did stints in the Catskills and found that she disliked the older style of comedy at the time, such as Phyllis Diller's, who she nevertheless felt was a pioneer female comedian. Her breakthrough came at The Second City in Chicago in 1961, where she was dubbed "the best girl since Elaine May", who also got her start there. But May became her and fellow comedian Treva Silverman's role model, as Rivers saw her as "an assertive woman with a marvelous, fast mind and, at the same time, pretty and feminine". It was also there that she learned "self reliance", she said, "that I didn't have to talk down in my humor" and could still earn an income by making intelligent people laugh. "I was really born as a comedian at Second City. I owe it my career."
Career, Business, and Investments
- Philanthropy: Supported animal rescue organizations and left bequests to friends and charities in her will.
Rivers started her career in comedy clubs in Greenwich Village alongside her peers George Carlin, Woody Allen, and Richard Pryor. She then rose to prominence in 1965 as a guest on The Tonight Show. Hosted by her mentor, Johnny Carson, the show established Rivers's comedic style. In 1986, with her own rival program, The Late Show with Joan Rivers, Rivers became the first woman to host a late night network television talk show. She subsequently hosted The Joan Rivers Show (1989–1993), winning a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host. From the mid-1990s, she became known for her comedic red carpet awards show celebrity interviews. Rivers co-hosted the E! celebrity fashion show Fashion Police from 2010 to 2014 and starred in the reality series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? (2011–2014) with daughter Melissa Rivers.
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 a fashion consultant at Bond Clothing Stores. During this period, agent Tony Rivers (not the singer) advised her to change her name, so she chose Joan Rivers as her stage name. She stated that he stopped sending her to audition because of this.
By the 1970s, Rivers continued to be a prominent fixture on television. Along with her other guest-spots on the late-night circuit, she also made appearances on The Carol Burnett Show, had a semi-regular stint on Hollywood Squares and guest-starred on Here's Lucy. Rivers made her Broadway debut in the play Fun City, which opened on January 2, 1972, and co-starred Gabriel Dell, Rose Marie and Paul Ford. It ran for only nine performances amid a negative critical reception. Though a New York Times reviewer criticized the production as "frenetic to the point of being frazzled," he praised Rivers as "a deft comedy writer" and "a very funny lady". From 1972 to 1976, she narrated The Adventures of Letterman, an animated segment for The Electric Company.
In 1986, the move came that ended Rivers' longtime friendship with Johnny Carson. The soon-to-launch Fox Television Network announced that it was giving her a late night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, making Rivers the first woman to have her own late-night talk show on a major network. The new network planned to broadcast the show 11 p.m. to midnight Eastern Time, making her a Carson competitor. Carson learned of the show from Fox and not from Rivers. In the documentary Johnny Carson: King of Late Night, Rivers said that she only called Carson to discuss the matter after learning that he may have already heard about it and that he immediately hung up on her. "And he never spoke to me again. He took it as a complete betrayal," said Joan. In the same interview, she said that she later came to believe that maybe she should have asked for his blessing before taking the job. Rivers was banned from ever appearing on The Tonight Show for the rest of Carson's tenure and the entire runs of Carson's first two successors Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien out of respect for Carson. Rivers did not appear on The Tonight Show again until February 17, 2014, at the age of 80, when she made a brief appearance on new host Jimmy Fallon's first episode. On March 27, 2014, Rivers returned to the show for an interview.
During the airing of her late-night show, Rivers made the voice-over role of Dot Matrix in the science-fiction comedy Spaceballs (1987), a parody based (mainly) on Star Wars. The film, directed and co-starring Mel Brooks, was a critical and commercial success, later becoming a "cult classic". After the Fox controversy, her career went into hiatus. Rivers subsequently appeared on various television shows, including the Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special in December 1989. She also appeared as one of the center square occupants on the 1986–89 version of The Hollywood Squares, hosted by John Davidson. On September 5, 1989, The Joan Rivers Show, her daytime television program, premiered in broadcast syndication. The show, which ran for five seasons, was a success and earned Rivers the Daytime Emmy in 1990 for Outstanding Talk Show Host. Entertainment Weekly, in a September 1990 article, asserted: "The Joan Rivers Show is a better showcase for her funny edginess than her doomed 1988 Fox nighttime program was. The best thing about her daytime talker is that Rivers' stream-of-consciousness chattiness is allowed to guide the show — you never know where the conversation is going to go."
A documentary film about Rivers, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2010. The film follows Rivers for 14 months, mostly during the 76th year of her life, and made an effort to "[peel] away the mask" and expose the "struggles, sacrifices and joy of living life as a ground breaking female performer". The film was released in a limited release on June 11, 2010, and was acclaimed by critics for providing "an honest, behind-the-scenes look at [Rivers]' career — and at show business in general". Beginning on September 10, 2010, Rivers co-hosted the E! show Fashion Police, along with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne, and George Kotsiopoulos, commenting on celebrity fashion. The show started as a half-hour program but due to its success with viewers, it was expanded to one hour on March 9, 2012. The August 26, 2014 episode of Fashion Police, about the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards and the 2014 MTV Movie Awards, was her last television appearance before her death.
In 2011, Rivers appeared in a commercial for Go Daddy, which debuted during the broadcast of Super Bowl XLV, and was featured as herself in the season two episode of Louis C.K.'s self-titled show Louie entitled "Joan", where she performed on stage and gave C.K. comedy advice. The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin described the episode as a "funny and deeply moving exploration of the existential dilemma of the stand-up comic and a valentine to the artform." Also in 2011, Rivers and her daughter starred in the reality show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?, which premiered on We TV. The series follows her moving in with her daughter to California to be closer to her family. The show ran for four seasons until 2014. On the December 4, 2011 episode of The Simpsons, "The Ten-Per-Cent Solution", Rivers took on the role of Annie Dubinsky, an agent trying to revive Krusty's career. Hayden Childs of The A.V. Club praised the choice of having Rivers guest star since she was able to "employ her trademark humor within the world of The Simpsons without hijacking the plot or satire". In 2012, she guest-starred in two episodes of two series: Drop Dead Diva and Hot in Cleveland.
Upon Rivers' death, friends, fans, family and celebrities paid tribute. Numerous comedians recognized Rivers' influence on their career, including Kathy Griffin, who considered Rivers her "mentor", noting, "She brought a fearlessness and a brand of humor into our homes that we really need." Chris Rock said "she was the hippest comedian from the time she started to the day she died". Describing her as a force in comedy, he added, "No man ever said, 'Yeah, I want to go on after Joan.' No, Joan Rivers closed the show every night." Other comedians recalled working with her on stage and television decades earlier: stand-up performer Don Rickles said "working with her and enjoying the fun times of life with her was special". Carol Burnett called Rivers "the poster child for the Energizer Bunny".
Numerous talk show hosts, including David Muir, Graham Norton, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Oprah Winfrey, Sally Jessy Raphael, Wendy Williams, Geraldo Rivera, Regis Philbin, Arsenio Hall, Ellen DeGeneres, and David Letterman, paid tribute to Rivers, often including video clips of her appearances. Letterman called her a "real pioneer for other women looking for careers in stand-up comedy. And talk about guts." Conan O'Brien discussed Rivers' legacy with fellow comedian and lifelong friend Chris Hardwick on Conan, while Seth Meyers recalled Rivers' appearance on his talk show, saying, "I have not sat next to anyone who told more jokes faster than Joan Rivers did when she was here." On The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart noted her contributions to comedy: "There are very few people in my business that you can say are, or were, actually groundbreaking talents. Joan Rivers was one of them."
In the 1960s and 1970s, Rivers was in a comedy circuit with Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Dick Cavett. Though she counted them as peers and friends, she never felt included due to sexist practices within the industry.
* In a Netflix special released in May 2022, The Hall: Honoring the Greats of Stand-Up inducted Joan Rivers into the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY. In June 2023, Melissa Rivers announced that a Joan Rivers career archive (including the joke file featured in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work) would be housed at the center, premiering in 2025.
Education
- Degree: Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Anthropology
Molinsky, a doctor. She had an elder sister named Barbara Waxler. Rivers spent her early life in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. At the age of eight, she created her first alter ego, J. Sondra Meredith. She attended the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture School, a progressive and now-defunct school, and Adelphi Academy of Brooklyn, a college preparatory day school, where she was co-chair of her school, due to her past experiences in theatrical activities. Within two years, she performed in the School Cavalcades, and in 1949, aged 16, she was vice president of the Dramatic Club. She graduated from the Adelphi Academy of Brooklyn, in 1951, at 18. In her adolescence, Rivers relocated with her family to Larchmont, north of New York City.
Rivers matriculated at Connecticut College; it was a family legacy to attend the institution, as her sister had done. Rivers has stated in interviews that she was overweight throughout her childhood, adolescence and in college, and that it had a profound impact on her body image, which she struggled with throughout her life. After two years, she transferred to Barnard College, where she graduated in 1954 with a B.A. in English literature and anthropology.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Rivers served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute. A friend of Nancy Reagan, Rivers attended a state dinner in 1983, and later performed at a luncheon at the 1984 Republican National Convention. In 1984, Rivers published a best-selling humor book, The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abramowitz, a mock memoir of her brassy, loose comedy character, which was mostly jokes about promiscuity – of a type that would have been considered unacceptable even in burlesque a generation earlier. A television special based on the character, a mock tribute called Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abramowitz: Tramp of the Century, later aired on Showtime. She later wrote her next book, Enter Talking, which was released in 1986, and described her rise to stardom and the evolution of her comedic persona.
In 2008, Rivers was invited to take part in a comedy event celebrating Prince Charles' 60th birthday titled, We Are Most Amused. She was the only American alongside Robin Williams invited to take part in the event. Other comedians included John Cleese, who served as the master of ceremonies, Eric Idle, Rowan Atkinson, and Bill Bailey. Those in attendance included Prince Charles, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Harry.
