Joan Rivers Biography

Joan Alexandra Molinsky (born June 8, 1933), better known by her stage name Joan Rivers, is an American television personality, comedian, writer, film director, and actress. She is known for her ribald, deprecative style. Rivers' comic style relies heavily on her ability to poke fun at herself and other Hollywood celebrities. Her long career spanning 5 decades has led to her becoming known as a comedy legend and icon, often being referred to as 'The Queen Of Comedy'.

Early life

Joan Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman; January 6, 1906 – October 1975) and Meyer C. Molinsky (December 7, 1900 – January 1985). Her older sister Barbara died in 2013. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and her family later moved to Larchmont, in Westchester County, New York. She attended Connecticut College between 1950 and 1952 and graduated from Barnard College in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and anthropology. 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. During this period, agent Tony Rivers advised her to change her name, so she chose Joan Rivers as her stage name.

Career

Early career

During the late 1950s, Rivers appeared in a short-run play, Driftwood, playing a lesbian with a crush on a character played by a then-unknown Barbra Streisand. The play ran for six weeks. Rivers performed in numerous comedy clubs in the Greenwich Village area of New York City in the early 1960s, including The Bitter End and The Gaslight Cafe, before making her first appearances as a guest on the TV program The Tonight Show originating from New York, hosted at the time by Jack Paar.

By 1965, Rivers had a stint on Candid Camera as a gag writer and participant; she was "the bait" to lure people into ridiculous situations for the show. She also made her first appearance on The Tonight Show with new host Johnny Carson, on February 17, 1965. During the same decade, Rivers made other appearances on The Tonight Show as well as The Ed Sullivan Show, while hosting the first of several talk shows. She wrote material for the puppet Topo Gigio. She had a brief role in The Swimmer (1968), starring Burt Lancaster. A year later, she had a short-lived syndicated daytime talk show, That Show with Joan Rivers; Johnny Carson was her first guest. In the middle of the 1960s, she released at least two comedy albums, The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album and Rivers Presents Mr. Phyllis & Other Funny Stories.

By the 1970s, Rivers was appearing on various television comedy and variety shows, including The Carol Burnett Show and a semi-regular stint on Hollywood Squares. From 1972 to 1976, she narrated The Adventures of Letterman, an animated segment for The Electric Company. In 1973, Rivers wrote the TV movie The Girl Most Likely to..., a black comedy starring Stockard Channing. In 1978, Rivers wrote and directed the film Rabbit Test, starring her friend Billy Crystal. During the same decade, she was the opening act for singer Helen Reddy on the Las Vegas Strip.

1980s"1990s

Rivers has spoken of her primary Tonight Show life as having been Johnny Carson's daughter, a reference to his longtime mentoring of her and, during the 1980s, establishing her as his regular guest host by August 1983. It was not her only work, however. On April 9, 1983, she hosted Saturday Night Live. In the same period, she released a best-selling comedy album on Geffen Records, What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? The album reached No. 22 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.

Also 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. A television special based on the character, a mock tribute called Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abramowitz, was not successful with the public.

The decade was controversial for Rivers. She sued female impersonator Frank Marino for $5,000,000 in 1986, after discovering he was using her real stand-up material in the impersonation of her that he included in his popular Las Vegas act. The two comics reconciled, even appearing together on television in later years.

Also in 1986 came the move that cost Rivers her longtime friendship with Carson, who had first hired her as a Tonight Show writer. The soon-to-launch Fox Television Network announced that it was giving her a late night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. The new network planned to broadcast the show 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time, making her a Carson competitor. Carson claimed he learned of the show from Fox and not from Rivers herself.

Shortly after Carson's death in 2005, Rivers said that he never spoke to her again. In 2008, during an interview with Dr. Pamela Connolly on television's Shrink Rap, Rivers claimed she did call Carson, but he hung up on her at once and repeated the gesture when she called again.

The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers turned out to be flecked by tragedy. 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, three months later, Rosenberg committed suicide in Philadelphia; Rivers blamed the tragedy on his "humiliation" by Fox. Fox attempted to continue the show with a new name (The Late Show) and rotating guest hosts. A year after the Late Show debacle, Rivers was a guest on TV's Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special. By 1989, she tried another daytime TV talk show, The Joan Rivers Show, which ran for five years and won her an Emmy in 1990 for outstanding talk show host. In 1994, Rivers 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 City. Rivers also appeared as one of the center square occupants on the 1986-89 version of The Hollywood Squares, hosted by John Davidson.

2000"present

By 2003, Rivers had left her E! red-carpet show for a three-year contract (valued at $6"8 million) to cover award-show red-carpet shows for the TV Guide Channel.

Rivers appeared in three episodes of the TV show Nip/Tuck during its second, third and seventh season playing herself. Rivers appears regularly on television's The Shopping Channel (in Canada) and QVC (in both the United States and the UK), promoting her own line of jewelry under brand name "The Joan Rivers Collection". She was also a guest speaker at the opening of the American Operating Room Nurses' 2000 San Francisco Conference. Both Joan and Melissa Rivers are frequent guests on Howard Stern's radio show, and Joan Rivers often appears as a guest on UK panel show 8 out of 10 Cats.

Rivers was one of only four Americans invited to the Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla Parker Bowles on 9 April 2005. In 2006, Rivers was featured on the adult animated show, Drawn Together as Princess Clara's vagina that had received too much plastic surgery. Clara's 'vajoana' often repeated the phrase "who are you wearing, who are you wearing?". 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 performed in the Royal Variety Show 2007 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, England, with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip present. In January 2008, Rivers became one of 20 hijackers to take control of the Big Brother house in the UK for one day in spin-off TV show Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack. On June 24, 2008, Rivers appeared on NBC-TV's show Celebrity Family Feud and competed with her daughter, Melissa against Ice-T and Coco.

Rivers and daughter Melissa were contestants in 2009 on the second Celebrity Apprentice. Throughout the season, each celebrity raised money for a charity of his or her choice; Rivers selected God's Love We Deliver. After a falling out with poker player Annie Duke, following Melissa's on-air firing (elimination) by Donald Trump, Rivers left the green room telling Clint Black and Jesse James that she would not be in the next morning. Rivers later returned to the show and on May 3, 2009, she became a finalist in the series. The other finalist was Duke. On the season finale, which aired live on May 10, Rivers was announced the winner and hired to be the 2009 Celebrity Apprentice. In 2013, Joan Rivers will appear on an episode of The Celebrity Apprentice 6 as a guest advisor.

Rivers was featured on the show Z Rock as herself and was also a special so-called pink-carpet presenter for the 2009 broadcast of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. She was also roasted in a Comedy Central special, taped on July 26, 2009, and aired on August 9, 2009. From August 2009, Rivers began starring in the new reality TV series How'd You Get So Rich? on TV Land. A documentary film about Rivers, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre on May 6, 2010. In 2011, Rivers appeared in a commercial for Go Daddy, which debuted during the broadcast of Super Bowl XLV. To date, Joan has made two appearances on Live At The Apollo, once as a comedienne and once as a guest host.

Joan and her daughter Melissa Rivers premiered the new show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? on WE tv. The series follows Joan moving to California to be closer to her family. She moves in with daughter Melissa while searching for a home of her own. It was recently revealed that WE TV has ordered a new season consisting of 10 episodes premiering in January 2012. In 2011, Rivers was featured as herself in Season 2 of Louis C.K.'s self-titled show Louie, where she performed on-stage. Since September 10, 2010, Rivers has been co-hosting the E! show Fashion Police, along with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne and George Kotsiopoulos commenting on the do's and don'ts of celebrity fashion. The show started as a half-hour program, but expanded to one hour on March 9, 2012. On August 7, 2012, Rivers showed up in Burbank, California to protest that the warehouse-club Costco will not sell her New York Times bestselling book, I Hate Everyone ... Starting with Me. She handcuffed herself to someone's shopping cart and shouted through a megaphone. The police were called to the scene and she left without incident and no arrests were made. First airing on March 5, 2013 on YouTube, Joan launched a new online talk show called "In Bed with Joan," in which each week she has a different celebrity guest that "comes out of the closet" and they talk about various topics. The show takes place in Joan's bedroom, which is in Melissa's house in Malibu, California.

Personal life

Rivers' first marriage was in 1955 to James Sanger, the son of a Bond Clothing Stores merchandise manager. The marriage lasted six weeks 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 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. She has one grandson, Melissa's son Cooper (born Edgar Cooper Endicott on December 1, 2000) who is featured with his mother and grandmother in the WE tv series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?

In her book, Bouncing Back (1997), she described how she developed bulimia 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.

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 play, Fun City, in 1971, for which Rivers told Stern she "left Edgar over" for several weeks. Rivers is open about her multiple cosmetic surgeries, and has been a patient of plastic surgeon Steven Hoefflin since 1983. Her first procedure, an eye lift, was performed in 1965 as an attempt to further her career.

Books

• (Self-Help)
• (Self-Help/Humour)
• (Humour)
• (Autobiography)
• (Autobiography)
• (Non-Fiction)
• (Self-Help)
• (Fiction)
• (Humour)
• (Non-Fiction)

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Notes
1965	Once Upon a Coffee House
1968	The Swimmer	Movie
1978	Rabbit Test	also director and writer
1981	Uncle Scam
1987	The Muppets Take Manhattan
1987	Les Patterson Saves the World
1987	Spaceballs	Voice
1988	Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
1989	Look Who's Talking	Voice
1993	Public Enemy # 2
1994	Serial Mom
1995	Napoleon	Voice
1999	Goosed
2000	The Intern
2000	Whispers: An Elephant's Tale	Voice
2002	The Making and Meaning of 'We Are Family	documentary
2002	Hip! Edgy! Quirky!
2004	Shrek 2	Voice
2004	First Daughter
2007	The Last Guy on Earth
2010	Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work	Documentary - Herself
2010	Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps	Uncredited
2011	The Smurfs	Party Guest
2011	Tower Heist	uncredited
2013	Iron Man 3	Cameo

Television work

Year	Title	Notes
1968"69	That Show starring Joan Rivers	Syndicated daytime talk show
Cast member from 1972"1977	The Electric Company	voice
1973	Here's Lucy
1973	Needles and Pins	guest-starred as Eleanor Karp in episode "The Wife You Save May Be Your Own"
1984	An Audience with Joan Rivers
1986	Joan Rivers: Can We Talk?
Host from 1986"1987	The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers
Center square from 1988"1989	The New Hollywood Squares	hosted by John Davidson
1989"1993	The Joan Rivers Show'
1990	How to Murder a Millionaire'
1992	Lady Boss
1994	Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story
1995"present	Can We Shop?
Cast member in 1997	Another World
Cast member in 1997	E! True Hollywood Story: Joan Rivers	Parody episode of show aired April 1, 2001)
Cast member in 2004, guest host in 2007	Jack Dee Live at the Apollo
2004"2005"2010	Nip/Tuck
2004"2006	The Joan Rivers Position
2006	An Audience with Joan Rivers
2006"2007	8 out of 10 Cats
2006	Joan Rivers: Before Melissa Pulls the Plug
2006	Dawn French's Girls Who Do Comedy	In-depth interview BBC
2007	Straight Talk
2008	Shrink Rap	With Dr. Pamela Connolly " More4
2008	Celebrity Family Feud
2008	Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack	Celebrity Hijacker
2008	Loose Women
2008	Z Rock	Aunt Joan
2008	Spaceballs: The Animated Series	Voice
2008, 2010	Arthur	Voice " Bubby (Francine's Grandmother)
2009	Celebrity Apprentice 2	Herself
2009	How'd You Get So Rich?	Herself
2009	The Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers	Herself
2009	Celebrity Ghost Stories	Herself
2010	Celebrity Apprentice 3
2010 " present	Fashion Police
2011 " present	Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?
2011	Louie	Herself
2011	The Simpsons S23E08 " "The Ten-Per-Cent Solution"	Annie Dubinsky
2012	Joan Rivers: Don't Start With Me
2013" present	In Bed with Joan	Online Talk Show

Theater work

Year	Show	Notes
1972	Fun City	An original comedy, co-written with Lester Colodny and Edgar Rosenberg, Morosco Theatre
1988	Broadway Bound	By Neil Simon (replacement for Kate, 1988, Broadhurst Theatre)
1994	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.
2008	Joan Rivers: A Work In Progress By A Life In Progress	Geffen Playhouse
2008	Joan Rivers: A Work In Progress By A Life In Progress	Edinburgh Festival Fringe
2008	Joan Rivers: A Work In Progress By A Life In Progress	Leicester Square Theatre, London
2008	Joan Rivers: The Now or Never Tour	October 2012, UK Tour

Awards and nominations

Year	Nominated work	Award	Category	Result
1984	What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most?	Grammy Award	Best Comedy Album
1990	The Joan Rivers Show	Daytime Emmy	Outstanding Talk Show Host
1991	The Joan Rivers Show	Daytime Emmy	Outstanding Talk Show Host
1992	The Joan Rivers Show	Daytime Emmy	Outstanding Achievement in Writing
1992	The Joan Rivers Show	Daytime Emmy	Outstanding Talk Show Host
1993	The Joan Rivers Show	Daytime Emmy	Outstanding Achievement in Writing
1993	The Joan Rivers Show	Daytime Emmy	Outstanding Talk Show Host
1994	Sally Marr...and her escorts	Tony Award	Best Actress in a Play
2009	Arthur	Daytime Emmy	Outstanding Performer In An Animated Program

Note: Emmy nominations for Outstanding Achievement in Writing shared with Toem Perew and Hester Mundis.

Honours

• In 1990, a star in her name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.