Joan Rivers

Comedic style

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. 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.

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 felt was a pioneer female comedian.^[65]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."^[65] 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."

In early 1965, at the suggestion of comedian Bill Cosby, Johnny Carson gave Rivers, who he billed as a comedy writer, her debut appearance on his show. Cosby, who knew Rivers from their early stand-up days, described her as "an intelligent girl without being a weirdo ... a human being, not a kook." Sitting alongside Johnny after her monologue, she displayed an intimate, conversational style which he appreciated, and she was invited back eight more times that year.

Time magazine compared her humor to that of Woody Allen, by expressing "how to be neurotic about practically everything," but noting that "her style and femininity make her something special." Rivers also 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." The New York Times critic Charles L. Mee likewise compared her to Allen, explaining that her "style was personal, an autobiographical stream-of-consciousness."

Rivers' image contrasted starkly with Johnny Carson's stage demeanor, which was one of the reasons he made her co-host. CriticMichael Pollan compared their style of humor:

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.

Personal life

Rivers was a member of the Reform synagogue Temple Emanu-El in New York and stated publicly that she "love[d] Israel".

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.

Rivers married Edgar Rosenberg on July 15, 1965, Their only child, Melissa Warburg Rosenberg, who goes by Melissa Rivers, was born on January 20, 1968. 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? Rosenberg committed suicide in 1987, shortly after Rivers announced her intention to separate. Rivers would later describe her marriage to Rosenberg as a "total sham", complaining bitterly about his treatment of her during their 22-year marriage. In a 2012 interview with Howard Stern Rivers said she had several extramarital affairs when married to Rosenberg, including a one-night affair with actor Robert Mitchum in the 1960s and an affair with actor Gabriel Dell.

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. On January 28, 2014, during a conversation between Rivers and Reza Farahan of the Shahs of Sunset, Melissa Rivers interjected to clarify that she and her mother were "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" Republicans.

Rivers was open about her multiple cosmetic surgeries and was a patient of plastic surgeon Steven Hoefflin, beginning in 1983. She had her nose thinned while still at college; her next procedure, an eye lift, was performed in 1965 (when she was in her thirties) as an attempt to further her career. When promoting her book, Men Are Stupid ... And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman's Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery, described by The New York Times Magazine as "a detailed and mostly serious guide to eye lifts, tummy tucks and other forms of plastic surgery", she quipped: "I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware."

Philanthropy

Noted as an ardent philanthropist, Rivers supported causes including HIV/AIDS activism, and in May 1985, she appeared along with Nichols and May at a Comic Relief benefit for the new AIDS Medical Foundation in New York City, where tickets at the Shubert Theatre sold for as much as $500. She supported the Elton John AIDS Foundation and God's Love We Deliver, which delivers meals to HIV/AIDS patients in New York City. In 2008, she was commended by the City of San Diego, California for her philanthropic work regarding HIV/AIDS, where the HIV/AIDS community called her their "Joan of Arc."

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. She donated to Jewish charities, animal welfare efforts, and suicide prevention causes. Among the other non-profit organizations she helped were Rosie's Theater Kids,Habitat for Humanity, Human Rights Campaign, and the Boy Scouts of America.

Death

On August 28, 2014, Rivers experienced serious complications and stopped breathing during a routine throat procedure at a clinic inYorkville, Manhattan. She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and put into a medically induced coma after reportedly sufferingcardiac arrest. On August 30, she was put on life support.

On September 1, 2014, Rivers's physicians had reportedly begun trying to bring her out of the coma, and she was moved to a private room on September 3, still without a prognosis. The following day, September 4, Rivers died at 1:17 pm EDT.The exact cause of death was still undetermined after two days, while more tests had been ordered.

Her funeral took place on September 7, 2014 at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. he private ceremony was attended by numerous public figures. Talk show host Howard Stern delivered the eulogy. Stern 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."