BY Chinenye Okoye
For more than five decades, she made the world laugh even at herself, but she perhaps laughing at the moment, at the sheer joy of reunion with her husband, Edgar Rosenburg, who committed suicide on August 14, 1987.
Described as the great love of her life, Edgar served as her manager for the majority of their marriage and also co-produced her late-night Fox talk show, The Late Show, starring Joan Rivers. Edgar committed suicide by overdosing himself on Valium in his Philadelphia hotel room in 1987, just a few months after Fox fired both him and Joan. The network executives initially wanted to dismiss only Edgar but when Joan fought back, both husband and wife were fired.
After nearly 30 years, Joan never really came to terms with her husband’s suicide, a source close to the late comic told HollywoodLife.com exclusively, adding: “Joan’s a happy woman now. I know she is. Because now she’s reunited with the love of her life, her precious Edgar.”
No doubt, Edgar would have been so proud of the groundbreaking career Joan went on to build. Just two years after his death, she found enormous success on another daytime talk show, The Joan Rivers Show, which ran for five years and earned her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host in 1990.
Joan thanked her late husband in her weepie acceptance speech:
“Two years ago I couldn’t get a job in this business. I could not get a job. My income dropped to one sixteenth of what it was before I was fired. And people said I wouldn’t work again. And my husband had a breakdown, and it’s so sad that he’s not here, because it was my husband Edgar Rosenberg who always said, ‘You can turn things around.’ And except for one terrible moment in a hotel room in Philadelphia when he forgot that. This is really for him. Because he was with me from the beginning. And I’m so sorry he’s not here today.”
Joan was a comic character in every sense of the word, as she would even mock her own characteristics often talking about her many cosmetic procedures and no topic was off limit to her. She even joked about her death.
Rivers blazed trails for other women in the comedic industry by bringing taboo topics like abortion to light onstage. Without her, there would be no Sarah Silverman or Chelsea Handler or Amy Schumer.
Here are just a few things to remember about Joan Rivers:
Though Rivers, especially as she aged, let jokes about her looks roll off her back, she says she was the first female comedian to refuse to try to be one of the men. The few female comedians working when Rivers began disguised their femininity behind frumpy outfits. Rivers, on the other hand, dressed undeniably like a woman with full hair and makeup. She once quipped: “Women should look good. Work on yourselves. Education? I spit on education. No man is ever going to put his hand up your dress looking for a library card.”
Some women resented Rivers’ obsession with looks and her conviction that women must present themselves as beautiful. But she opened new doors for women comics who can now decide to dress however they want during a set.
“I don’t think there’d be a Tina Fey now if I hadn’t tried to look good in the beginning,” she told NPR in 2010.
Rivers made it clear she didn’t do this for her fellow comedienne but in order to distinguish herself and her own career.
“But I think of opening doors not just for women comedians — I never think about women,” she continued. “I think just [that I’m] always trying to push for myself, push the boundaries [and] make them listen. Make them listen to the truth and laugh about it.”
Joan Rivers was perhaps the first comedian to joke about abortions. In one of her bits, she spoke about how friends of hers would leave the country to have “appendectomies” when everyone really knew it was an abortion.
“And by making jokes about it, you brought it into a position where you could look at it and deal with it. It was no longer something that you couldn’t discuss and had to whisper about,” she told NPR. “When you whisper about something, it’s too big and you can’t get it under control and take control of it.”
Abortion wasn’t the only secretive subject that Rivers brought to light: the comedienne also joked about being gay at a time when even talking about homosexuality was revolutionary. “My original record, not even a CD, that I played for my daughter, which was called Mr. Phyllis & Other Funny Stories — Mr. Phyllis was my hairdresser, and that was very shocking, that you dared to say your hairdresser was gay,” she told the A.V. Club in 2010, referring to the comedy album she put out in 1965. “I know it sounds so stupid.”
Rivers withstood lots of criticism throughout her career. In doing so, she demonstrated that women don’t always have to be appealing and likeable.
“When people hate me, that’s good,” she told the A.V. Club. “They know I’m there. You’re not a chorus kid. Remember in A Chorus Line, she’s having trouble and he keeps saying, ‘You’re standing out,’ and she’s trying not to? They hate me? That’s good.”
In her 2012 book, I Hate Everyone, Joan made known her burial preferences, which she directed to her daughter, Melissa saying:
“When I die, I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action…I want Craft services, I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I don’t want some rabbi rambling on.
“I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents. I don’t want a eulogy; I want Bobby Vinton to pick up my head and sing “Mr. Lonely.” I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag. And I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing just like Beyoncé’s.”
An undeniable 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 going 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.
Even as she prepped up for the surgery, she was seen in a video telling her daughter to be brave if anything happened because she had had an amazing life.
Joan’s funeral will take place on Sunday September 7th at the Temple Emanu-El in New York.
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