Joan Rivers, who broke barriers for women in comedy and on television, has died.
Rivers, 81, died Sept. 4 a week after being rushed to Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital after her heart stopped during throat surgery at a clinic. Doctors at the hospital put her in an induced coma from which she never awoke.
“My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh,” her daughter, Melissa, said in a statement on the Joan Rivers website. “Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon.”
Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, N.Y., the younger daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Rivers graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College in 1954 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and anthropology. She launched her career in the 1950s, becoming one of a handful of female standup comics – Phyllis Diller was another – whose raunchy and blisteringly honest takes on married life broke barriers in the 1960s.
Her gossipy trademark line, “Can we talk?,” was an invitation to truth-telling about the high and mighty, but also no-holds-barred self-deprecation.
She was one of Johnny Carson’s favored guest hosts on “The Tonight Show” until she launched a failed attempt to compete with him in the 1980s, after which she was banned from the show until Jimmy Fallon took over earlier this year.
The notion that a woman could carry 90 minutes by herself paved the way for others in the TV business.
Rivers was a pioneer in reality programming, first in red-carpet fashion commentary at Hollywood events and then in a reality series about her loving but fraught relationship with her daughter. She hosted the show “Fashion Police” on the E! network.
She was proudly Jewish all along, joining JDate in 2004 and, earlier this year, getting a small “6M” tattooed on her arm, in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
She was never afraid to speak her mind. When a social media campaign to help an Israeli gay couple have a child went viral, Rivers posted her own photo of herself holding a sign in Hebrew displaying her support for the couple.
In recent months, she drew attention for her robust defense of Israel during the summer’s Gaza War and her takedowns of celebrities who criticized Israel.
“Let me just tell you, if New Jersey were firing rockets into New York, we would wipe them out. If we heard they were digging tunnels from New Jersey to New York, we would get rid of Jersey. … Don’t put your God damn things in private homes, don’t put your weapon stashes in private homes,” she said in a TMZ video interview, blasting Hamas terrorists.
“Joan Rivers was not only an iconic comedian, she was an ardent supporter of Israel who vociferously and unabashedly expressed her opinions in support of the Jewish homeland, including during the recent Operation Protective Edge,” Shawn Evenhaim, chairman of the Israeli-American Council, said in a statement after her death was announced. “We’re sure all Israelis in the U.S. today share in the sadness of the passing of this exceptional woman.”