After her first appearance on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” in 1965, Carson declared on-air to Joan Rivers, “God, you’re funny! You’re going to be a star!” By the next day, she was. The difficulties of holding her own in a male-dominated industry, battling against people who had told her that she wasn’t good enough, vanished. The raspy-voiced, no-holds-barred comedian would experience an epic rise, a devastating fall, and a remarkable comeback.
Before her life-changing appearance on “The Tonight Show,” Rivers performed in several comedy clubs in Greenwich Village, where she befriended fellow comedians Woody Allen and George Carlin.
In addition to appearing regularly on “The Tonight Show” for several years as a guest, Rivers became a household name in the 1970s with stints on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Mike Douglas Show,” and “The Dick Cavett Show.” By 1983, she was headlining Las Vegas and had a Grammy Award-nominated comedy album and two best-selling books. In 1986, she began hosting her own show, “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers.”
Then, the hammer fell. 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. Audiences turned their back on her and she became a social pariah. Her husband, unable to live with his failure as her manager, died by suicide. Rivers then discovered that she was $37 million in debt due to bad investments on her husband’s part. Struggling to cope with her grief and rage, she credited her Yorkshire terrier as being the only thing to keep her from killing herself because there would be no one to take care of him.
Gutsy, determined, and with nothing else to lose, Rivers reinvented herself. She became a writer, producer, and entrepreneur, marketing a line of jewelry and apparel on the QVC shopping channel. She hosted her own Daytime Emmy-winning talk show, “The Joan Rivers Show,” and became a fixture on the E! Entertainment Network, interviewing celebrities on the red carpet and starring in “Fashion Police” and “Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best?”
Rivers died on September 4, 2014 from brain damage caused by lack of oxygen during a medical procedure on her larynx.