Although these days she's known for fashion quips and myriad trips to the plastic surgeon, Rivers was a pioneering woman in stand-up comedy whose hilarious self-deprecating humor, biting one-liners and "Can we talk?" catchphrase got her bookings in Las Vegas and on
The Tonight Show, where Johnny Carson declared her a future star in 1965. The kooky comedian did indeed become a celebrity — primarily as a host, although she also appeared in a number of TV shows and movies (usually as herself or some version thereof). Carson provided a big career boost by booking her as guest host of his show, a regular gig that ended when Rivers angered the late-night king by launching her own short-lived show in 1986. She suffered a personal blow off screen as well when her longtime husband and producer, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide the next year. She bounced back in the '90s, hosting a number of daytime talk shows, appearing on Broadway, hawking her own jewelry line on QVC, playing herself in a TV-movie about her dramatic life, and finally signing on to E! Entertainment Television in 1995 (along with her only child, Melissa) to cohost fashion and pre-award-show programs from the red carpet. The duo jumped to the TV Guide Channel in 2005 but left two years later.
Joan Rivers Fast Facts:
- Collects Faberge eggs.
- Was billed early in her career as Pepper January, Comedy with Spice.
- Wrote for Candid Camera.
- In 1961, worked with Chicago's Second City improv group.
- Directed, cowrote and had a role in 1978's Rabbit Test, which starred Billy Crystal as a man who gets pregnant.
- Cowrote and appeared in two short-lived Broadway shows: Fun City (1972) and Sally Marr… and her escorts (1994). She also replaced Linda Lavin in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound in 1988.
- Won a Daytime Emmy in 1990 for Outstanding Talk Show Host for The Joan Rivers Show.
- Costarred with her daughter Melissa Rivers in the TV-movie Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story (1994), about how they coped with the 1987 suicide of her husband, Edgar Rosenberg.
- Has a lucrative side job pushing her own line of jewelry on QVC.
- Played herself in the second-season finale of Nip/Tuck.
- After ten years as a red-carpet fashion-bashin' pundit on E!, she and her daughter Melissa Rivers joined the TV Guide Channel in 2005.
- Joan Rivers Relationships:
- Melissa Rivers - Daughter
- Edgar Rosenberg - Husband (deceased)
- Barbara Molinsky - Sister
- Beatrice Molinsky - Mother
- James Sanger - Ex-husband
- Meyer C. Molinsky - Father
- College:
- Attended Connecticut College for Women, New London, CT; Barnard College, New York, NY (BA, 1954)
