Joan Rivers: A life lived at full volume
There will be funeral services in New York today for comedian Joan Rivers. And while authorities look into the cause of her death, her fans in and out of show business are focusing on her legacy of laughter. Richard Schlesinger reports:
"I had a hot flash yesterday so bad it melted my IUD."
In Joan Rivers' eyes, there were no limits, there were no boundaries. Everything was fair game.
"People treat you terrible when you're old. I was on the 'Today' show and Al Roker said, 'Here's Joan Rivers and she's 77 years young.' I should have said, 'Here's Al Roker, and he's 320 pounds thin.'"
She took a little getting used to. Most of the stuff that came out of her mouth was not in the best taste.
"My sex life is so bad my G-spot has been declared an historical landmark."
For a woman who left nothing unsaid, there are few details of her passing.
We do know the 81-year-old comic reportedly went into cardiac arrest August 28 during a routine medical procedure, and was rushed to New York's Mt. Sinai Hospital, where she died Thursday.
She's survived by a daughter, Melissa, who said in a statement, "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."
It was a quiet end to a life lived at full volume.
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"When I was 21 my mother said, 'Only a doctor for you.' When I was 22 she said, 'All right, a lawyer.' When I was 24, 'You should grab a dentist.' Twenty-six, she said, 'Anything.'"
Onstage, she was brutally honest -- merciless, even.
"That woman is a tramp! Her towels say 'His' and 'Herpes.'"
And her favorite target was often herself. Her age, her sex life, and of course, her face. Rivers once said that she'd had so much plastic surgery that when she died, they'd donate her body to Tupperware.
"When I die and get to Heaven, God won't recognize me."
She was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky, in Brooklyn, and raised in the New York suburbs.
And she was no dummy. She was an honors grad from Barnard College with a degree in literature. At home she had an extensive library.
But she told Schlesinger in 2010 she never wanted to be anywhere but on the stage.
"It's like a nun's calling. This is what I want. This is where I want. This is what I'm supposed to do. That sounds so stupid! [But] this is what I'm supposed to do."
Rivers had little success until February 1965, when Johnny Carson saw her and gave her a shot on his show. She was 31 and unknown . . . but not for much longer.
Rivers became a fixture on "The Tonight Show" for the next 20 years. But she and Johnny Carson were never close.
"Ice-cold off camera," she said.
"Mean, or just cold?" asked Schlesinger.
"Cold. Only mean to me at the end. Maybe mean, but I never was friendly with him. Not warm. I worked on that show 20 years. I was never invited to the Christmas party. I never was included in the Carson family. But it didn't matter. It gave me my whole -- my God, what he gave me! He gave me the world."
CARSON: "Don't you think men really like intelligence in girls more, when you come right down to it?"
RIVERS: "Ah, please! No man has ever put his hand up a woman's dress looking for a library card."
A few weeks after this show, Rivers launched her own late night program on the Fox network -- and Johnny Carson never spoke to her again.
But there was worse to come: Joan was fired from her talk show, and barely three months after that, her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, killed himself.
She was widowed, unemployed, and practically banned from late-night TV, so Joan Rivers needed to remake herself . . . and she did.
She made a fortune hawking her own line of jewelry and handbags on TV. But as she told Tracy Smith in 2007, she got into the business because she had nowhere else to go.
"I was desperate," Rivers said, "desperate for something to do. My husband committed suicide, my Vegas contract was gone, I had been fired from Fox, publicly. I had to find something fast."
"So here, this career of last resort ends up turning into this?" asked Smith.
"I go through every door. You never know!"
Of course, her favorite door was always the stage door. And before long she was back under the lights. She was good in the retail business, but she was great at the funny business.
Up until last week, Rivers kept a schedule most younger comics could only dream of. She was too busy to retire -- and much too driven to stop.
Rivers would talk freely about her own death, and she told Mo Rocca earlier this year, death didn't scare her . . . it was dying.
ROCCA: "How do you think actual death will compare with dying on stage?"
RIVERS: "I think actual death will be a lot easier than dying on stage. 'Cause, you know, if you do it right, you can go looking good and maybe with a little quip. 'I loved everybody.' But dying on stage? Oh, God!"
In standup comic terms, Joan Rivers killed more than she ever died. And maybe that makes her death a little tough to take, because you just know she would have had something perfect to say about all this.
"I think life is great," she told Schlesinger in 2010. "And boy oh boy, when I die they're gonna say, 'She had a good time.'"