adminComedian Joan Rivers, whose mastery of the acid one-liner never wavered in a career that spanned five decades and many more cosmetic procedures, died on Thursday, aged 81.
“It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my mother, Joan Rivers,” her daughter, Melissa Rivers, said in a statement. “She passed peacefully at 1.17pm surrounded by family and close friends.”
Rivers suffered a cardiac arrest during throat surgery on her vocal cords at an outpatient clinic in New York on 28 August. She was rushed to Mount Sinai hospital on the Upper East Side, and was moved from its intensive care unit into a private room on Wednesday. She never regained consciousness.
In the almost 50 years since she burst onto the scene on “The Tonight Show” Starring Johnny Carson, Rivers ascended to the pinnacle of American show business — even as she skewered its excesses with her scathing wit.
A workaholic, Rivers had been hosting an online weekly talk show called “In Bed with Joan”, and had just filmed a special award-show episode of “E!’s Fashion Police” before being taken ill. She was frequently performing live stand-up, and had finished the fourth season of Joan & Melissa: “Joan Knows Best”, the reality show in which she starred with her daughter.
“If there’s a secret to being a comedian, it’s just loving what you do,” Rivers said in 2012. “It’s my drug of choice. I don’t need real drugs. I don’t need liquor. It’s the joy that I get performing. That’s my rush. I get it nowhere else.”
Rivers never made a secret of the surgical procedures that significantly altered her looks. Instead, they became a source of material for her act. “I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they’ll donate my body to Tupperware,” she once said.
Melissa Rivers travelled to New York from Los Angeles with her son Cooper after her mother fell ill. “Cooper and I have found ourselves humbled by the outpouring of love, support and prayers we have received from around the world. They have been heard and appreciated,” she said in a statement.
“My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh. Although that’s difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon.”
The New York city department of health is investigating the circumstances that led to the cardiac arrest suffered by Rivers last Thursday. She was undergoing a minor throat procedure at Yorkville Endoscopy, which was established in 2013 and describes itself as a “state-of-the-art” facility. The health department investigation is said to be routine.
Born in Brooklyn in 1933, Rivers worked the New York comedy scene alongside Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Carlin and Woody Allen. Her big break came with an appearance on “The Tonight Show” Starring Johnny Carson in 1965, where she quickly became an audience favourite.
Live on air after her first appearance, Carson said: “You’re gonna be a star,” and he became her close friend and mentor. She went on to appear on a galaxy of other TV shows, including “The Carol Burnett Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show”, as well as performing live in New York and Las Vegas, and recording several comedy albums.
At the same time, she was also a prolific humour writer; she wrote the films “The Girl Most Likely To . . .” and “Rabbit Test”.
In 1974, she released “Having a Baby Can Be A Scream”, the first of 12 books including the best-selling “The Life and Hard Times” of Heidi Abramowitz.
In 1983, she became the first female comedian to perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall, where she was billed as a “semi-legend”.
One of her most on-target jokes, a student reviewer for the Columbia Daily Spectator reported earnestly, was a description of Mick Jagger as a man whose “child-bearing lips can French-kiss a moose”. —hollyowoodshowbuzz.
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