The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation

by Melissa Rivers

  When my case came up on the docket and my name was called, my mother stopped being Joan Rivers or Joan Rosenberg and turned into Hangin’ Judge Joan. The judge read the complaint against me and said, “How do you plead?” Before I could say, “Guilty,” “Not guilty,” or “Guilty with explanation,” my mother cut me off and barked, “She’s one hundred percent guilty and needs to go to traffic school!” The judge concurred, and that was that.

  On our silent ride home, she managed to run a Stop sign, make an illegal U-turn, and clip a curb while making a left. I recognized the irony of this but thought better of saying anything. I also thought she would have been a great judge at the Salem Witch Trials.

  Around six o’clock that evening the ice between my mother and me began to thaw. Shockingly, this coincided with my father’s car coming up the driveway. Thanks, Dad! I owe you one.

  A House Divided

  My parents handled problems differently, as you’ll see in these two notes I found while researching this book. They were written to me by my father and mother, in response to some horrible teenage behavior I must have displayed. (I don’t remember what the incident was—there were so many.) My mother liked to deal with problems head-on; my father liked to deal with them with his head in the sand.

  * * *

  “Your father didn’t care if I went to bed mad. He cared if I went to Bergdorf mad.”

  Mirror, Mirror

  My mother was a looksist, which is an actual word, not a term I made up, the way many notable writers do. For example, Edgar Allan Poe coined the word tintinnabulation, for his classic poem “The Bells”; John Milton came up with pandemonium for Paradise Lost; and the legendary auteur Justin Bieber coined the universal catchword belieber. (I know Anne Frank would have been a belieber!) According to Wiktionary, a looksist is “someone who forms prejudices based on a person’s physical appearance.” My mother did that, in spades, and unabashedly.

  As everyone reading this must know, appearances mattered to my mother, a lot, even more than money, if you can believe it. I’ll never forget the time we were sitting in a synagogue in New Jersey (Temple B’nai Something or Other), for the funeral of some distant uncle, and the rabbi was droning on and on and on. My mother was dozing off, her eyes half open, sitting straight up. (She could actually do this; I have pictures to prove it—and no, I’m not putting them in the book. I’m going to meet up with her again someday, and all that Pavlovian training about “what happens in Malibu stays in Malibu” has paid off.) After being nudged awake for the third time, she leaned over and whispered to me, “This asshole is killing me. Let’s play a game of ‘Marry, Fuck, or Kill?’ Your three choices are George Clooney, Howard Hughes, and Joey Buttafuoco. Go!” I thought about it, and waited to make sure the rabbi wasn’t looking at us during the Kaddish, and said, “I’d marry George Clooney, I’d kill Joey Buttafuoco, and I’d fuck Howard Hughes.” She looked horrified. She said, “You’d fuck Howard Hughes?! Are you crazy? He’s filthy!” I said, “Yeah; filthy rich! Think about that.” She said, “I did; that’s why you don’t fuck him, you marry him. Then you don’t have to fuck him; his girlfriends will; and when he dies, you get the money and you didn’t have to boil your lips or bathe in Purell.” Even in mourning, she shared her wisdom.

  I think the cause of her obsession with appearances was that for most of her life she was never happy with how she looked, which fed into her sense of being “less than.” Growing up, her sister was the pretty one and the smart one; my mother felt second best. All her early self-deprecating material came from an honest place. And sadly, I inherited that gene—and what she believed was her original nose. Thanks, Mom. Appreciate it!

  This is reflected in some of her early stand-up material. If you Google some of her first appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show or The Tonight Show, you’ll see that in a lot of her jokes she was putting herself down, and most of those jokes were about her looks. “On my wedding night, Edgar said, ‘Why don’t you undo your buttons?’ I said, ‘I’m already naked!’ ” Great joke, but my mother was not flat-chested. Yet, based on her self-perception as the ugly duckling, that joke was born of truth. (Interestingly enough, later in her career, while she was still poking fun at herself, she also started taking on celebrities and telling the truth about them. One of the reasons she got away with it was because she told the truth about herself first. After she died, a lot of people in the media mentioned that one of the reasons she was beloved was because she “said the things everyone else was really thinking.”)

  Last summer, on a day off between tapings of Fashion Police and In Bed With Joan, my mother and I were having lunch in Santa Monica with Joe F., one of her overly spiritually evolved AA friends. In the middle of an intense conversation about which were the correct shoes to wear with burkas, Joe F. blurted out, for no apparent reason, “What other people think of me is none of my business.” Chalking up his off-point non sequitur to too much twelve-step work, my mother quietly smiled and replied, “Yes, it is! Especially if I’m one of those people.” Two glasses of wine later, she was still rambling on. “Joe, … can I call you F? F, you … are an idiot. If you’re on death row, headin’ down the hall to Ole’ Sparky, you think what the governor thinks of you doesn’t matter? I rest my case.” Sadly, after this lunch, Joe F. had only “one day back.” Apparently she not only rested her case, but she also made Joe reconsider his sobriety and the point of living.

  As a person who had changed her own physical appearance more than three hundred forty-eight times, my mother believed she had a moral and civic obligation to help make the rest of the world a prettier place. This was not some new, self-righteous, post–plastic surgery philosophy; she’d always felt this way. Way back in her early stand-up career in the 1960s, she had a joke that went “Lady Byrd Johnson wants to beautify America. She ought to start by keeping her daughters inside the house.”

  My mother understood DNA. She didn’t blame the genetically homely. She knew that if a girl had her father’s snout and her mother’s tail, it wasn’t her fault. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t make an effort. My mother didn’t like people who didn’t try to do the best with what they had. This is one of the reasons she had little patience for movie stars who had the money and the means to look like movie stars, but didn’t.

  I’m not talking about great leading ladies and leading men1 like Meryl Streep or Helen Mirren or Denzel Washington (who are perfectly fine looking). I’m talking about Cary Grant and Rita Hayworth and Vivien Leigh et al. They were all good actors, but according to my mother, audiences didn’t go to see their movies because they were masters of the Stanislavski method or the Meisner technique; they went because they were gorgeous. One night we were having a girls’ dinner at my house,2 and over dessert my mother asked, “Ladies, show of hands. Would you rather spend twenty bucks to see Ian McKellen in Richard III or Channing Tatum in a Speedo?” It was unanimous.

  She never understood today’s generation of celebrities who say, “I just want to look like myself.” She’d say, “Really? What if myself is hideous? If you’re George Clooney or Angelina Jolie, then by all means, ‘look like yourself,’ but if you’re anyone else, take a shower, put on some blush, and demand backlighting, even if you’re going to the supermarket!”

  I always wondered what it would be like to be Heidi Klum or Angelina Jolie and look in the mirror and see that kind of beauty reflected back at you. Do they see what we see? Does Heidi see a Teutonic goddess whose smile lights up a room? Does Angelina see the thousands of teenage boys happily going blind because of her? In his book Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob Lowe acknowledges that he knew he was good looking, but then he talked about how tough it was being pretty. Fuck that. I’ll take pretty over personality any day.

  Clearly my mother felt the same way.

  When Cooper was younger, the running joke was that he called my mother “Nana New Face,” because every time he saw her, she had a new face. She changed noses the way Taylor Swift changes boyfr
iends—every few weeks. Ba-rum-bum.

  Actually, she didn’t have as much work done as people think she had. On a scale of one to Michael Jackson, she was a six. For example, she didn’t change her race or gender, just her chin and eyes. She went from being a young, attractive woman with low self-esteem to an old, attractive woman with better self-esteem. Michael Jackson went from being a small black man to a thin white woman (who eerily looked like a cross between Elizabeth Taylor and Brooke Shields, with just a touch of Diana Ross).

  My mother took this beauty thing very seriously. In fact, she spent a lot of time doing research to support her case. “Melissa, go back to the Bible. You’ve seen the pictures of Adam and Eve. Were they dogs? No. They were very attractive—and surprisingly pale considering how much time they spent in the sun. Granted, those pictures were an artist’s rendering, but let me tell you, that artist was a maestro with a grease pencil.”3

  When I was in eleventh grade we went on a family vacation to Italy and France. When we were in Paris my mother spent the first five days pointing out all the places where French people had been rude to her. Then we hit the museums. When we were in Florence, Italy, we saw Michelangelo’s statue of David. I told my mother how handsome he was. My mother replied, “You know that’s not his original nose.” And then she said, “You’re right, Missy, he is handsome. People like beauty. But look—he’s not Jewish. Ucch.” (FYI, she had something to say about all of the great works. “Mona Lisa didn’t smile because she had rotten teeth. They had no fluoridation in her town, plus she smoked like a chimney. Venus de Milo? Played the handicapped card for all it was worth. Parked anywhere she wanted. I give her credit; she saved a fortune on gloves.”)

  The great thing about my mother was that, toward the end of her life, I think she had gotten to a place where she knew she looked good. Her whole thing was “Life is hard enough; you might as well do what you need to do to make yourself feel better.” I find comfort in knowing that for all the plastic surgery jokes she made about herself—and that were made by others at her expense—she did what she needed to do to feel better. On her eightieth birthday she said to me, “You know what? For eighty, I don’t look so bad.” Better late than never, the swan appeared.

  1 A “leading man” or “leading lady” is usually granted that moniker because of their unique beauty and their ability to light up a screen—and pack a house. “Character actor” means not pretty enough to carry a movie but so talented that you don’t realize that the pretty one can’t act. (This also applies to singers, like Mariah, one of the great voices of all time. If you ever watch her dancers, you’ll notice they always dance around her, so you don’t notice she can’t do more than shuffle back and forth and from side to side.)

  2 A couple of times a year, my mother and I would host a “girls’ dinner,” attended by only our closest female friends and a handful of fabulous gay men. (They bring much better gifts than straight women or lesbians.)

  3 He was the world’s first police sketch artist. If not for him, they never would have caught Cain for killing Abel.

  My mother at two. Even then she lied about her age and tried to pass herself off as one and a half.

  Yes, that’s cousin Alan, and yes, he looks frightened because she’s holding a knife.

  My parents’ version of beachwear.

  The only time I was allowed to burp without saying, “Excuse me.”

  My father told my mother he did his best work while sleeping, so she left him alone. I’m so proud of my dad; he outmanipulated The Manipulator!

  Before the Kardashians.

  My mother took me everywhere, whether I wanted to go or not.

  My first horse show in 1974. My mother was so proud and had so much fun that day.

  Her enthusiasm was infectious.

  The big time! Headlining in Las Vegas.

  Here I am at age four, in Las Vegas, with my mother’s BFFs Bambi, Trixie, Roxie, Bubbles, Kitten, and Bang-Bang.

  Proudly displaying the job she loved most.

  “Melissa, I know I baked it, but there are photographers here; pretend you like it. You can throw it up later.”

  With Cooper, her pride and joy—you can see by the way she’s holding him there’s no plan to let him go anytime soon.

  Sign on my mother’s dressing-room door, on her birthday last year.

  No, we didn’t get to keep the wardrobe or jewelry.

  A pic my mother took of me when we stumbled upon an actual crime scene on our way to a shoot at Hollywood Park Racetrack.

  Three of these people are dressed appropriately for a baseball game. One of them is not. Guess who’s who?!

  Bogey & Bacall

  In Hollywood, more so than anywhere else in the country, looks matter. (If you think I’m kidding, when is the last time you heard a movie star say, “You have got to go to my Botox guy. He’s in Bismarck, South Dakota”?) There are more original ideas in Hollywood than faces, and there are almost zero original ideas in this city. Don’t believe me? Check out the top five shows on television: NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, NCIS New Orleans, NCIS Cleveland, NCIS Levittown, and NCIS in a Pittsburgh Suburb. (I hear there’s another spinoff coming: NCIS Corpus Christi. Three Jewish cops spend twenty-six episodes trying to find a good corned beef and pastrami on rye. Spoiler alert! They fail.)

  The media refer to Hollywood stars as the beautiful people, and that’s because most of them are. Movie stars are movie stars for a reason, and talent isn’t always the main one. Some of them are just so damned good-looking that people will pay to see them. Name one other profession, other than prostitution, where looks trump all other skills? (In the past, actress was often used as a euphemism for prostitute, and knowing what women in the entertainment business have to do these days to get equal pay, it’s not that far from the truth.) Seriously, do you really care what your dermatologist looks like? Unless his face looks like a dartboard, you’re not paying him for his killer eyes; you’re paying him for what he can do with the wrinkles around your eyes.

  My mom believed that as she got older, in order to stay in front of the TV cameras, she couldn’t look like she was going to crack the lens. She also believed that it was more important for women to look good in Hollywood than for men. She was a realist, one who had an understanding of show business and its history. Truth be told, she was wildly irritated that we lived in a world where we needed a feminist movement. I think that’s because when my mother started out in comedy, it never dawned on her that she might be at a disadvantage because she was a woman. It was so obvious to her that she just had to be funnier than everyone else, regardless of gender. It didn’t matter what they had in their pants; it mattered what they had in their acts. When I told her that in one of my college textbooks she was referred to as a feminist icon, she said, “Oh, don’t be silly, Melissa. Feminists are just lesbians who can’t play golf.” I said, “Is Gloria Steinem a lesbian?” She said, “I don’t know, I’ve never slept with her. But I do know she hasn’t broken par since 1987.” (When I asked her if she ever burned her bra, she replied, “No; my boobs were never perky enough to go braless.”)

  My mother used to cite famous couples to prove her point that looks were more important for women than for men.

  She sat me down one day over a chicken salad and Botox lunch, to make sure I knew what she was talking about. She had drawn up a flow chart to get her point across. (At one point early in my life, my parents were told I was a visual learner, whatever that means.) Bogey and Bacall were her number one case study. “Lauren Bacall was a knockout. Lauren was tall, sexy, and had a smoky voice and killer eyes. Humphrey Bogart was short and swarthy, and he had buckteeth, a lisp, and he dragged a leg. Yet he was the bigger star and the sex symbol.” Next up on her Hit Parade: Jackie Kennedy and Ari Onassis. “Melissa, JFK looked better on his way to Parkland Hospital than Ari did on his way to get on his private plane to fly to his private island to get on his private yacht. He was physically repulsive, yet he managed to snag the most sought
-after woman in the world. And trust me, it wasn’t his way with words that lured her to his bed; it was his way with his wallet.”

  Finally she brought the hammer down: Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. “Yes, Melissa, now she’s with Brad Pitt, but he’s really just a trophy. She wanted someone that her kids, Maddox, Jimmy, Stevie, and Mogumbo, could look up to. Angelina Jolie is an absolute perfect ten, and Billy Bob looks like the kind of guy who isn’t allowed within ten feet of a schoolyard. Honestly, if he weren’t a movie star, and were just the guy living in the trailer next door, would you let him babysit? I rest my case.”

  I’d write more about this, but I’m running late. I’m going to have my legs waxed, my ears pinned, my eyes lifted, and my lips plumped. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.

  * * *

  “Melissa, better to have a new you coming out of an old car than an old you coming out of a new car.”

  I grew up my whole life hearing my mother tell me that if I (or she) didn’t like a certain part of me, “don’t worry; we’ll have that fixed.” On one hand it was an incredibly destructive thing for a young girl to hear, but on the other hand, at some point I realized that she was coming from a place of wanting me to be my best; even if “my best,” in her opinion, was found in some doctor’s office. There were times when it felt critical and mean, but sometimes I just have to admit that the old bitch was right. I do look better rested and more relaxed when I’m chock-full of Botox and fillers. Thanks, Mom.