|
Light a Candle
Joan Rivers, known by her stage name Joan Rivers, was an American actress, comedian, writer, producer, and television host, best known for her stand-up comedy, the raucous comedian who crashed the male-dominated realm of late-night talk shows and turned Hollywood red carpets into danger zones for badly dressed celebrities, died. She was 81. Rivers was hospitalized last week after she went into cardiac arrest at a Manhattan doctor's office following a routine procedure. Daughter Melissa Rivers said she died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, surrounded by family and close friends. Rivers — who made "Can we talk?" a trademark of her routines — never mellowed during her half-century-long career. She had insults ready for all races, genders and creeds. She moved from longtime targets such as the weight problems of Elizabeth Taylor, of whom she said "her favorite food is seconds," to newer foes such as Miley Cyrus, and continued to appear on stage and on TV into her 80s. During her 55-year career as a comedian, her tough-talking style of satirical humor was both praised and criticized as being 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. 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." Rivers accepted such criticism as part of her 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 states that seeing Lenny Bruce perform at a local club while she was in college influenced her developing style: He was an epiphany. Lenny told the truth. It was a total affirmation for me that I was on the right track long before anyone said it to me. He supplied the revelation that personal truth can be the foundation of comedy, that outrageousness can be cleansing and healthy. It went off inside me like an enormous flash. Comedian Bill Cosby, who was credited with first suggesting to Johnny Carson that he make her a co-host, described Rivers as “an intelligent girl without being a weirdo . . . a human being, not a kook.”[48]:596 Others, including Time magazine, once compared her humor to Woody Allen's style, of “how to be neurotic about practically everything,” while noting that “her style and femininity make her something special.” Rivers likewise compared herself to Allen, stating: “He was a writer, which I basically was . . . and talking about things that affected our generation that nobody else talked about.” Her style of comedy was also compared to Johnny Carson's, as being in many ways starkly contrasting, and one of the reasons he made her co-host. Critic Michael Pollan compared their style: Where Carson is scrupulously polite, Rivers is bitchy; where he is low-key, she is overheated; where he is Midwest, Waspy and proper, she is urban, ethnic and gossipy. Carson conducts interviews as if he were at the country club; Rivers does hers at the kitchen table. In her personal life, however, fewer of those neurotic or intense character traits which viewers see on screen, are displayed. Ralph Schoenstein, who dated her and worked with her on her humor books, states, “She has no airs. She doesn't stand on ceremony. The woman has absolutely no pretense. She'll tell you everything immediately. Joan isn't cool—she's completely open. It's all grist. It's her old thing--'Can we talk?'” According to biographer Victoria Price, Rivers' humor was notable for taking aim at and overturning what had been considered acceptable female behavior. By her bravura, she broke through long-standing taboos in humor, which paved the way for other women, including Roseanne Barr, Ellen DeGeneres, and Rosie O'Donnell. Rivers' first marriage was in 1955 to James Sanger, the son of a Bond Clothing Stores merchandise manager.The marriage lasted six months and was annulled on the basis that Sanger did not want children and had not informed Rivers before the wedding. Her second marriage was on July 15, 1965,[61] to Edgar Rosenberg, who committed suicide in 1987. Their only child, Melissa Warburg Rosenberg (now known as Melissa Rivers), was born on January 20, 1968. Joan had one grandson, Melissa's son Cooper (born Edgar Cooper Endicott in 2000),who was featured with his mother and grandmother in the WE tv series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? In her book Bouncing Back (1997) Rivers described how she developed bulimia nervosa and contemplated suicide. Eventually, she recovered with counseling and the support of her family. In 2002, Rivers told the Montreal Mirror that she was a Republican. However, on a 2013 episode of Celebrity Wife Swap, Rivers stated that she was a Democrat. Then, on January 28, 2014, during a conversation with Reza Farahan, she announced that she was in fact a Republican. Rivers was also a philanthropist and HIV/AIDS activist. She donated to Jewish charities, animal welfare efforts, and suicide prevention causes.She was a supporter of God's Love We Deliver, a non-profit organization which delivers meals to HIV/AIDS patients in New York City. She also supported the AIDS Health Foundation. In 2008, she was commended by the City of San Diego, California for her philanthropic work regarding HIV/AIDS.[68] Additionally, she served as an Honorary Director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. She also supported Guide Dogs for the Blind, a non-profit organization which provides guide dogs to blind people. In a June 5, 2012, interview with Howard Stern, Rivers said she had several extramarital affairs when married to Rosenberg. According to Rivers, she had a one-night sexual encounter with actor Robert Mitchum in the 1960s after an appearance together on The Tonight Show. She also had an extended affair with actor Gabriel Dell during the out-of-town and Broadway productions of her 1971 play Fun City, for which Rivers told Stern she "left Edgar over" for several weeks. Rivers was open about her multiple cosmetic surgeries and was a patient of plastic surgeon Steven Hoefflin, beginning in 1983. Her first procedure, an eye lift, was performed in 1965 as an attempt to further her career. Illness and death On August 28, 2014, Rivers experienced serious complications and stopped breathing during a procedure on her vocal cords, at a clinic in Yorkville, Manhattan. She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and was put into a medically induced coma after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest. On August 29, her daughter, Melissa, publicly stated that Joan was "resting comfortably" in the hospital.[74] On August 30, it was reported that Rivers had been put on life support. Reports initially stated that Rivers' family might face ending her life support if her condition did not improve. However, on September 1, 2014, an unnamed source told Entertainment Tonight that Rivers' physicians at Mount Sinai Hospital had started the process of trying to bring her out of the coma the previous day. Prior to that, there had been no further medical updates beyond her daughter's statement. On September 3, Melissa issued a brief statement that Rivers had been moved from Mount Sinai Hospital's intensive care unit into a private room, without any comment concerning Rivers's condition or prognosis. The following day, she announced via another statement that Rivers had died at 13:17 EDT. On September 5, New York City medical examiner's office spokeswoman Julie Bolcer advised media that an autopsy had been completed, but that it had failed to conclusively identify the cause of Rivers' death. More testing had been ordered.
