Last Girl Before Freeway

by Leslie Bennetts

  At the time, the Rosenbergs were increasingly unnerved by their dealings with NBC and Carson Productions. Rivers’s contracts had always paralleled Carson’s, but when he signed his latest two-year contract, Rivers was offered only a one-year deal. Rivers felt vulnerable, as well as taken for granted and implicitly disrespected by the men who controlled the decisions, both at NBC and in Carson’s personal empire.

  “Edgar started calling John Agoglia, the NBC executive vice president of business affairs, almost a year before they were to pick up Joan’s contract, asking for a deal,” explained Sue Cameron, whose résumé included a stint as a network executive at ABC in addition to her years as a columnist and TV editor for the Hollywood Reporter. “Month after month, John would make up some excuse, so Joan and Edgar were beginning to get very nervous.”

  Cameron believed they had ample reason to worry. “Joan’s ratings were consistently higher than Johnny Carson’s, and Johnny was feeling threatened, so Johnny ordered the network not to renew Joan’s contract,” she said. “John Agoglia knew the network was going to screw over Joan. It’s absolutely true; I had inside sources at every network, and I verified it with NBC. Johnny wanted Joan out. She was too popular.”

  So when Edgar suggested that he and Joan approach Fox to discuss alternative possibilities, Rivers told him to go ahead, expecting that nothing would come of such talks, but thinking they would keep her agitated husband busy for a while.

  Some of Carson’s associates blame Edgar for creating the whole problem. “The Fox show came about because Edgar went out looking for it,” said Shelly Schultz. “Why would anybody in their right mind do that—go up against a guy who loved her and fostered her career, who gave her every shot there was to get? You could give Edgar the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t know any better because he was a rank amateur, or you could say it’s because he was stupid.”

  But Schultz doesn’t absolve Rivers. “There’s an old mafioso saying: ‘The fish stinks from the head down,’” he said. “Why would Joan agree to do that? She knows firsthand how good Johnny is to her. Maybe she was under the spell of this Edgar; maybe he said, ‘This is my chance to be a big producer—and your chance to be a big star.’ Whatever it was, it was ill thought out. She should have told Edgar, ‘No, I can’t do this.’ She should never have had a show opposite Johnny Carson. She should never, ever have betrayed him like that, because his show was responsible for her career. She shouldn’t have let it get to the point where there was even an offer, but Edgar was stupid, and Joan went along with it because she wanted to satisfy Edgar’s need to be useful. Johnny would have been okay with her having her own show. As a matter of fact, it would have been a feather in his cap for somebody he mentored—just not in his time slot. That’s terrible. It’s kind of like your mate cheating on you; it’s the ultimate betrayal. She should have said no. But Edgar was in need of being very important, as opposed to being Mr. Joan Rivers. He was an opportunist, and he convinced her to do it.”

  When friends tried to warn them against the move, Edgar turned against them. “I said, ‘This is a terrible mistake. Do not make this deal,’” Arnold Stiefel recalled. “I didn’t think it was a good move, and I would have asked her to resist. But by then I was in the doghouse.”

  As the talks with Fox got serious, Rivers found herself confronted with a frightening choice between staying with Carson and leaving NBC to strike out on her own. Both courses of action would risk her future security, but in very different ways.

  At this pivotal moment, as in so many plots that feature a mysterious letter of possibly fraudulent origin, a fateful document suddenly appeared—one that Rivers mentions only in passing in her account of events but that looms far larger in light of later developments.

  Although Carson turned sixty in 1985, associates say he had no intention of retiring anytime soon. His advancing age inevitably inspired gossip about who would eventually succeed him, and there was no shortage of candidates. But Carson didn’t end up leaving The Tonight Show for seven more years, and his departure was not regarded as anything remotely close to imminent when Rivers started worrying about her own future with the show.

  As the sole permanent guest host and a ratings winner in her own right, she was justified in thinking she deserved to succeed him, even though no woman had ever commanded a late-night talk show in the entire history of television. But the Rosenbergs were unable to get any kind of reassurance from the Carson camp or from NBC executives, and what they perceived as stonewalling made them both feel increasingly insecure.

  “When Johnny is gone, so are you,” Edgar warned his wife, pointing out that NBC had never even bothered to make Rivers exclusive to the network.

  “They think nobody will ever want me,” she replied sadly.

  Some close friends believe that Edgar’s fears greatly exacerbated the problem. “He was totally devoted to keeping her in a state of ‘us against them’—totally paranoid,” said one.

  But in this case, Edgar wasn’t the only one fomenting trouble. In Still Talking, Rivers described the moment that sealed her doom this way: “Then a friend—a real friend, Jay Michelis—smuggled me a list prepared by NBC naming the ten successors if Johnny retired. My name was not on it. I almost died.”

  Jay Michelis was NBC’s West Coast vice president for corporate and media relations, and the list he showed the Rosenbergs seemed to provide incontrovertible evidence that NBC and Carson were planning to betray Rivers and reward her years of loyalty by choosing a man to take over The Tonight Show instead of her. The Rosenbergs took their suspicions to the network brass, who claimed they were unfounded—but those assurances failed to allay their fears. “When we confronted NBC, the president, Brandon Tartikoff, denied such a list ever existed. But we had seen it,” Rivers wrote. “Edgar said, ‘There’s no future for you here. You’ve been deluding yourself.’”

  Many of the men associated with the show scoff at the very idea of such a memo. “There was no reason for NBC to compile a list—none,” said Shelly Schultz.

  But other industry observers believe it’s entirely possible that gender bias—whether conscious or unconscious—really was the underlying explanation for why Rivers was overlooked as Carson’s successor. “I think the reason she wasn’t on the list was that she was a woman,” said Larry Ferber, who worked on the talk shows of Dinah Shore, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Mike Douglas, as well as on Rivers’s daytime program.

  Other experienced professionals saw additional reasons why Rivers might not have been a sure bet to succeed Carson. “One, they didn’t know if a woman could work every night,” said Sandy Gallin, Rivers’s manager during most of her time in California, although she fired him before she left The Tonight Show. “They thought she could hold the audience for one or two nights, and then a week at a time, but they didn’t know if her personality was too abrasive if she did it every single night. Two, was she controllable enough, or would she have done material they couldn’t control and didn’t approve of?”

  As 1986 began, the Rosenbergs kept reaching out to NBC and Carson executives to discuss their plans for renewing Rivers’s contract—only to be stonewalled. In Still Talking, Rivers reported that crucial calls were not returned, including those to Henry Bushkin and to John Agoglia. The apparent brush-off convinced them that Rivers’s humiliation was just a matter of time.

  The resulting atmosphere of fear and mistrust provided the perfect opportunity for Barry Diller to make an all-out pitch for Rivers to come to Fox, a move that seemed to serve the needs of both sides. “Rivers was looking for a safety net if she were to jump from The Tonight Show; Fox wanted a marquee name that would give their new network instant credibility,” Daniel Kimmel wrote in The Fourth Network. “It was a match made in television. Rivers would do a nightly, one-hour show from Los Angeles, mixing comedy, music, and interviews. In essence, Fox would clone The Tonight Show with one of its guest hosts behind the desk.”

  But Rivers was terrified of breaking her ties
with Carson, and she agonized endlessly about whether to take such a risk. “A show business career is like riding a shimmering soap bubble, beautiful almost because of its fragility,” she said. “If you are a television personality, the bubble is kept filled by visibility, reputation, freshness, currency, celebrity, excitement—what Carson provided. Without The Tonight Show, I would be floating free in show business, a world of knives. Even the biggest stars have no shield. We are all piece workers, always anxious and supersensitive, knowing that our only resources are talent and smarts.”

  Her insatiable drive was another factor in the equation: no matter how good things were, Rivers seemed constitutionally incapable of saying to herself, “This is great, and it’s enough.” For her, nothing was ever enough.

  “I thought she had the perfect setup with The Tonight Show: as much exposure as she needed to support Las Vegas, concerts all over the country, everything she wanted to do,” said Sandy Gallin. “But she was always pushing ahead, always striving to do better, always looking for the next thing, always looking to improve a deal, always looking to do something new, always writing, producing, directing, doing stand-up, always looking to improve and do better, become bigger—and never, ever satisfied with what was going on. She was unbelievably ambitious, she was climbing the ladder of success 24/7, and she was tireless in doing whatever work was necessary to do it. She never took a rest. She was obsessed with it.”

  Barry Diller, who was friendly with Carson as well as Sandy Gallin, did a masterful job of manipulating the Rosenbergs’ hopes and insecurities. He assured Rivers that Carson was getting old and tired and would leave his show within a year or two—but that Rivers would not be chosen as his replacement. He convinced Rivers that NBC was treating her badly but that he completely understood her and her needs and would make all her dreams come true.

  “He was charming beyond charm,” Rivers said. “I was completely taken in.”

  She wasn’t the only one. “Barry was the savior—Prince Charming,” said Dorothy Melvin, who worked for the Rosenbergs at the time. “When he was wooing them, they really felt very positive about it. Barry’s offer was lifesaving. They were starting a new network and Joan would be the queen of television. The reality was that she was already the queen of television.”

  That wasn’t the only mistaken perception. “Joan and Edgar felt this was what was going to save Joan’s career—which was never in trouble,” Melvin said. “That’s the horror of it. But Joan was the most insecure person I ever met. I think she never felt she was good enough, or that people took her seriously. She felt she was fat and ugly, so it was very easy to send Joan that memo and frighten her into thinking she was losing her position in television.”

  And so the Rosenbergs made the fateful decision that would ultimately destroy them both. On the surface, it looked like a dream come true. In exchange for bringing Rivers’s star power to Fox, the Rosenbergs demanded artistic control, a three-year contract giving them complete autonomy, and serious compensation—what Edgar called “fuck you money,” the kind of insurance policy for the future that would let Rivers go to Williamstown, Massachusetts, and do summer theater for $125 a week if she wanted.

  Diller responded by offering a deal that “gave us everything we wanted,” Rivers said. Her show would be given production resources equivalent to those of The Tonight Show, and the Rosenbergs would have approval rights on staffing, format, guests, and producer. Rivers would receive $5 million a year for three years, amounting to $7 million after taxes. Rivers had heard that Carson made more than $8 million a year, but he also owned his own show and received half the profits. Although Rivers’s deal with Fox was nowhere near as lucrative as Carson’s deal with NBC, it was enough to assuage her fears about her future security—and for Rivers, that was a deciding factor.

  “A girl who had lived with nothing but money problems from the time her eyes were open—had lived in a low-grade panic of escaping and getting by and then insecurity—was being told she didn’t have to worry about money anymore,” Rivers said. “There was no downside.”

  Famous last words. At the time, Rivers saw the move to Fox as an appropriate end to her years of apprenticeship, a well-deserved graduation that would mark the final step in ascending to the peak of her own independent career. But the Fox deal also brought a life-changing benefit for Edgar: he would be the executive producer of the new show.

  “If truth be told, this gave Edgar the chance to have a career of his own, so this was very enticing to Edgar as well,” Melvin said. “It was very hard for Edgar in Hollywood, and this was his chance to be important; he was finally going to get to be in charge. He was going to be a producer. Acceptance was so important to him, but as brilliant as Edgar was, he was someone who didn’t see the forest for the trees. He may have thought he was doing the best for Joan, but he was also doing the best for Edgar.”

  Did he realize how much his ulterior motives might have influenced his judgment about the wisdom of accepting the Fox offer? That decision made sense only if the incriminating NBC list was authentic, but Edgar’s hunger for a power position of his own may have prevented him from even considering that crucial question. Would Rivers have taken the risk of leaving NBC if her husband’s need for independent validation had not been a pressing concern? Without Edgar by her side, urging her to abandon Carson and reach for the brass ring, she might not have dared to jump on her own.

  But Edgar’s needs overrode other considerations, both at home and in the Rosenbergs’ calculations about The Career. A show for Joan that gave him the power and prestige he craved seemed like the magic solution to all their problems.

  “I believed that would save my marriage, would pull Edgar out of his unpredictable anger, level out his highs and lows, renew his mental acuity,” Rivers said in Still Talking. “Already he was beginning to be the old Edgar, happy to get up in the morning, happy to go to work, happy to go to all the meetings I thought were boring then. The possibility that the show would not work never crossed my mind.”

  Perhaps it should have; Rivers was already ignoring the warning signs of potential peril.

  The Rosenbergs believed that Rivers’s defection to Fox was a huge story that deserved a “gigantic press conference” with a lot of hoopla, but Diller disagreed. He wanted to break the news to selected reporters, along with other news about new stations and additional plans for the Fox network.

  In that dispute, Diller ended up letting the Rosenbergs do what they wanted, but he wasn’t happy about it. “Okay, make it a zoo—make it a circus,” he said. Although Rivers got her way, she later admitted that the contretemps might have poisoned her relationship with Diller from the start. His willingness to concede such decisions to the Rosenbergs would soon prove to be short-lived.

  Looking back, Rivers saw the disagreement about announcing the show as the first sign of many that Diller was inexperienced with station-level television. In her view, his success in the movie business had made him overconfident about his decision-making prowess, and he failed to recognize the areas where his lack of experience impaired his judgment in an unfamiliar arena. “He did not know what the affiliates wanted, was unrealistic about ratings, had no feel for the late-night audiences, and little understanding of the necessary staff,” she said. The Rosenbergs felt that their own intransigence was a reasonable reaction to a boss who didn’t fully understand the challenge they were facing.

  But Diller was used to being regarded by friends and foes as the smartest man they had ever met—and he was equally accustomed to receiving due deference. Charm and diplomacy were never Edgar’s strong suit, and his social skills were compromised by his years of ill health. Like two elks bashing each other’s antlers in a nature documentary about the rituals of male dominance, the two men found themselves in conflict almost immediately. Unfortunately, Edgar seemed to be the only one who failed to recognize who was the alpha male in the contest.

  His lack of judgment manifested itself immediately. At the contenti
ous meeting where they disagreed about how to introduce Rivers’s new show, Rivers said, “Edgar was treating Barry as an equal, challenging him. And nobody talks back and forth with Barry, except maybe Rupert Murdoch. Suddenly Diller lost his cool. ‘Shut up,’ he snapped at Edgar. Though Barry immediately apologized, he had done the unforgivable. It was awful. Winning Barry Diller’s respect was Edgar’s fantasy. To Edgar, Barry represented the Hollywood establishment that had denied us our breaks. Also, the show was Edgar’s ticket to being important to himself. So when Barry turned on him, particularly in front of me, the hurt and humiliation must have been unbearable. From that moment forward Edgar’s attitude was ‘I’ll show you.’ That ‘Shut up’ was a flash of Diller’s contempt for Edgar from the very beginning…To Barry, he was merely a star’s husband, superfluous, an unnecessary evil.”

  Edgar’s miscalculation was also obvious to others. “Edgar felt comfortable butting heads with Barry Diller, but you don’t butt heads with Barry Diller,” said Dorothy Melvin. “His name is on the paycheck, and he can pull that card anytime he wants. You have to know who you’re working for. It was hard for Edgar to accept that he wasn’t in charge. He had Joan as his wife, but Barry was the one in charge.”

  Rivers came to believe that her husband and her employer were quite similar, despite their apparent differences. “I think Barry and Edgar were destined to collide, partly because their natures were so alike,” she said. “I think both were unhappy men, insecure at center but very intelligent, and fighters who used fear to keep their antagonists off-balance. Both had to be right, both had to be important, had to win—and everybody should know they had won. Both were control and detail freaks. When events were out of their control, both of these perfectionists were deeply disturbed.”