But then Wendy left town on a trip. “I went to Santa Fe to do some casting at a foundry,” she said. “When I got back, on the bed was a New Yorker magazine and an envelope that size. It had a note from Joan saying, ‘I saw this cute article about bats and thought you’d like it.’ You know how that goes. They probably had a discussion about bats. She was coming after him.”
Soon after that, Wendy told Orin she wanted a divorce. “I had been saying that when our two daughters go off to college, I’m going to be out of here, but I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t tell him that and hurt his feelings; it just seemed mean. I didn’t want to be mean. I just didn’t want to be there anymore.”
Wendy found Orin’s attraction to Rivers as understandable as it was distressing. “Here he was, seventy-five then, and things were falling apart, and she was offering a cozy armchair, so to speak,” Wendy said. “She was funny, and Orin always had a fun time. Where it bothered his friends is that his friends thought she was not up to par with him, intellectually and in terms of manners. I’m sure he had a very nice time, but it bothered me a lot because it embarrassed my children. Joan and Orin were getting their picture taken all the time. He was living with me and going out with Joan and being photographed. I knew Joan, and I sort of thought, ‘We girls stick together,’ and she should have said, ‘If you want to move into a hotel or something…’ I felt he should have respected me and respected the children much more. Our daughter was at Vassar, and people would cut out pictures of Joan and scotch-tape them to her door.
“She was on Howard Stern talking about being in bed with Orin—you just don’t do that. She could have been nicer to the children and me without making it look like she’s trying to get publicity, or like we’re fools.”
Wendy had anticipated a less public and more amicable transition, but the embarrassment quickly soured any chance of that. “It’s hard to hang out at 21 with someone if they’re not behaving toward you in a respectful way,” she said.
Rivers told a different story, presenting herself as having been “very sensitive to the fact that his divorce was not final,” as an unnamed friend of hers told People magazine in 1996.
Her new romance astonished her family as much as it did his. “I was mad about Orin,” Rivers told New York magazine in 2010. “Love of my life. Adored him. People would say, ‘Orin Lehman? Blech.’ Melissa never got what I liked about him. But he was amazing. A gentleman. He was elegant. He got everything. He was so brave. I loved the bravery. That this man walked! He willed himself to walk. I know it sounds strange, but he was very sexy.”
Because Lehman was disabled as well as a dozen years Rivers’s senior, some of her gay friends made fun of him as a feeble old man. “Joan had walkers who were incredible social climbers, and when she wasn’t seeing someone, they were the ones who would go to the opening at the Met,” Dorothy Melvin explained. “They were always saying negative things about Orin: ‘He’s too old for you! He can’t keep up!’ But she and Orin had an incredible relationship. Joan had so much fun with him that some people were jealous. They never stopped laughing. Even with one leg, he was incredibly handsome and so quick—and he was hilarious. One night I went to pick him up for something and he got in the limo and I said, ‘Orin, your zipper is undone.’ Without missing a beat, he said, ‘Well, you know, I don’t tip the maids.’”
“Oh my God, she loved that man,” said Sabrina Lott Miller, Joan’s executive assistant. “They had so much fun together, and he would just make her laugh. One day I picked them up, and we were at Budget Rent A Car, and they were making paper airplanes and flying them in the lobby. I’m like, ‘If you don’t stop, I’m going to put you in the car.’ They were like little kids together. She was seriously smitten.”
His pedigree was a significant part of the appeal. “She was very proud of the fact that Orin was descended from this great, prominent family,” said Pete Hathaway. “That was a great feather in Joan’s cap. Orin was one of the very few Jewish men who was accepted in WASP society.”
Rivers had always been a divided character, torn between the values of her striving mother and those of a vulgar comedian, and Lehman appealed to the half of her that coveted class. “Joan wanted to date a fancy old distinguished guy,” said Mark Simone. “She’d go to Le Cirque with Orin, and the next day she was on Howard Stern talking about her sex life.”
To some extent, the unlikely couple may simply have been a case of opposites attracting. “I think she challenged him, in a way,” said Higdon. “He was beyond pompous, and he wasn’t used to banter; he tried to be very grand, and he spoke with that aristocratic accent she wanted to hear. But Orin and I would banter. I would say in front of people, ‘The only reason they’re together is because I thought he was an asshole!’ But she kept building him up. She put out pictures of him when he was twenty-five years old.”
Rivers often invoked Lehman’s heroism during the war and the medals he had won for his service. “When I watch him hit a golf ball as he balances on one leg, I tingle with the thought that the human spirit is unconquerable,” she wrote in Bouncing Back.
Generous as well as solicitous, she delighted in buying him costly presents. “All his suits were by Anderson & Sheppard,” said Dangle, referring to the bespoke clothing of the Savile Row haberdashery in London. “She would go order him some more suits.”
But her intimates were disturbed by the contrast between her loyalty and her swain’s apparent lack of appreciation. “She always used to charter a big motor yacht, the Big Eagle, and we’d do boat trips together, but Orin was not easy,” said Blaine Trump. “He was difficult and kind of grumpy, but she worked so hard to make sure everything was perfect for him. We would say, ‘He has not said one word this whole dinner,’ but she just loved taking care of him.”
As time passed, however, Rivers’s friends began to worry that she was harboring unfulfilled hopes about an imagined future in which Lehman finally reciprocated her devotion. “I think she wanted someone to protect her,” Higdon said. “I think she thought Orin would say, ‘Let me take care of you.’ But he never did. She took care of him. She dressed him, and she served him breakfast every morning. Orin did not live the way Joan lived, and Orin loved that; he wasn’t used to it. Joan ran a brilliant house, but I think he took it for granted. This was an arrogant, pompous ass. He tried to act like, ‘You’re not from an old established family—you’re like a showgirl!’ But the showgirl is serving him breakfast on a silver tray every morning. What made all of us so angry was that he was so ungrateful.”
Exhilarated by her opulent new lifestyle, Rivers adopted the full range of jet-set diversions, from safaris in Africa to cruises on a yacht in the Mediterranean. She was always ready for any challenge. “She was no sissy, that’s for sure,” said Higdon. “One summer we were in Greece and we both got in the water and something was nipping at our legs. She was such a sport about it; she’d think nothing of it. We were in this horrific storm in Greece, and I was in my cabin, and I couldn’t even stay in my bed, so I got down on the floor and crawled down the stairs to get Joan. I have a life preserver around my neck—and she’s lying on the bed flipping through a magazine, and Melissa is in the shower shaving her legs.”
No matter how adverse the conditions, Rivers’s intrepid behavior never devolved into divahood. “She wasn’t spoiled and grand that way,” said Higdon.
But it was clear to friends that her hunger for luxury was deeply rooted in her childhood anxieties. “I think the way she lived fulfilled her dreams,” Higdon said. “As a little girl, she saw something that was pretty, and she wanted it. When she first did her apartment, she didn’t have it gilded—and then we went to St. Petersburg. She came home and gilded the columns, the trimmings, the panels on the walls. It looked better, to be honest; it was a grand apartment, and it really gave it that oomph.”
And as an adult, Rivers, unlike her ever-frustrated mother, could afford to turn her dreams into realities—except when they involved people who
couldn’t be bought. As her nine-year relationship with Orin Lehman continued, they took obvious pleasure in each other’s company. “Joan was great with Orin, and they certainly seemed to have fun together,” said Kip Forbes, the son of Malcolm Forbes.
“One time we were staying at the Ritz in Chicago, and when I came to their suite they were singing old World War II songs and laughing and laughing and laughing,” Dorothy Melvin reported.
When Rivers turned sixty-three, Lehman gave her a twenty-carat emerald-cut sapphire ring flanked by two 2.5-carat diamonds as a present. “That ring was major,” said Dangle. “It was a giant sapphire, a terrific stone, with major diamonds.”
Rivers promptly announced that they were engaged, and she advertised her new status as Lehman’s fiancée with a gala event. “She had her engagement party on my father’s boat, The Highlander, at Chelsea Piers,” reported Kip Forbes.
Despite the fate of Rivers’s previous marriages, her interest in landing Lehman didn’t surprise anyone who knew her. “It was very important to her to be married,” said Melvin. “She was a Jewish girl, and that’s what we do. In that generation, everyone gets married, and you’re looked on as odd if you don’t. She wanted to be married again.”
Lehman’s family took a more cynical view. “Joan was trying to get him to marry her, but Orin was very stubborn—luckily, I guess,” Wendy Lehman said. “I think she said to Orin, ‘I would like a cocktail ring; it will be a friendship ring.’ I think she was trying to put pressure on him so people would say, ‘When’s the happy day?’ So he bought a ring of colored stones, a cluster of stuff, but nothing ever happened.”
Although Rivers kept referring to Lehman as “my fiancé,” few of their friends expected to see an actual wedding. “He wouldn’t commit to anything,” said Robert Higdon.
Rivers later claimed she felt no need to make it official. “We didn’t want to marry,” she said.
But her intimates didn’t believe her. “I think she absolutely wanted to marry him,” said Dangle. “She would have been Mrs. Lehman in a heartbeat.”
Rivers’s view of marriage still included traditional gender roles. “I’m from the old school,” she said. “When a man marries, he takes care of you. Women should be taken care of.”
“Her idea was to have Mr. Astor come in and take care of everything,” said Higdon.
But if Mr. Astor wouldn’t take care of her, Rivers had the means to take care of herself. Having developed a taste for luxury boat trips, she established her own new tradition by chartering a yacht for annual holiday cruises with family and friends, usually in the Caribbean. Her favorite boat was the Big Eagle, a 172-foot custom motor yacht with a crew of ten and six cabins that accommodated a dozen guests.
“Joan would take the boat for two weeks, and it was summer camp for grown-ups,” said Pete Hathaway.
Rivers enjoyed being able to spend huge sums on such extravagances, but she never stopped worrying about financial security. “Money was always a very big concern,” said Dangle. “It’s hard to get to where you think, ‘I’m going to have enough.’ I don’t think she ever got there.”
Despite such ostentation, Rivers rarely displayed the sense of entitlement that typically develops over decades of stardom and wealth—but there were times when it got the best of her. In 1999, the late Lynn Grefe was national director of the Republican Pro-Choice Political Action Committee, whose board members included the actress Dina Merrill, the heiress daughter of Marjorie Merriweather Post and Edward Hutton. “We had to do a fund-raiser every year, and Dina said, ‘Joan Rivers is a pro-choice Republican—maybe we can get her to speak at our annual benefit,’” Grefe recalled. “So she takes me to Joan Rivers’s apartment, and I have this umbrella with me that I got at a consignment store. Instead of saying, ‘Hi—nice to meet you,’ Joan grabs my umbrella and says, ‘I love this umbrella! Can I have it?’ I laughed, and she said, ‘No, I’m not kidding—I like it.’”
The umbrella was unusual and irreplaceable. “It was a brown umbrella with a scalloped edge, and it had an etched silver handle with a red stone that looked like a ruby on the end,” Grefe said. “It was made in the 1920s, and I probably paid ten bucks for it at the consignment store. I was a newly divorced single mother in my forties, and at first I thought, ‘She’s just kidding, don’t take it seriously,’ but it didn’t come off as funny. I think she just felt I would fall into place and give her the umbrella, but I dug my heels in and said no. Joan says, ‘I’m really serious about this. I want this umbrella. Don’t you think you should give me this umbrella?’” When Grefe refused, Rivers was not pleased, and she made it clear that she was doing the benefit solely because of Merrill.
To many observers, Rivers’s support for reproductive freedom seemed as paradoxical as her social life, whose components ranged from Nancy Reagan to drag queens. But her predilection for incongruous combinations reached some kind of apotheosis in her supremely unlikely relationship with the British royals.
No matter how successful she became, Rivers always remained a striver who brought a starstruck fan’s sense of idol worship to the ultimate embodiment of Anglo-Saxon privilege. “If Joan could have been anything at all in her dreams, she would have wanted to be part of England’s royal family,” said Sue Cameron. “She decorated like that, lived like that—it was very important to her. I think people revere the royal family as the chicest people in the world, and in Joan’s mind, that was what she wanted to be.”
Rivers spent years making jokes about Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth, saying that she had been canceled from a command performance because the Queen “heard what I said about her thighs.”
“I’m the only one who ever said to the Queen of England, ‘Shave your toes!’” she claimed.
Rivers’s jokes about the royals could be as bawdy as her riffs on other celebrities, as in this bit about Queen Elizabeth’s less demure sister, Princess Margaret: “Princess Diana and the Queen are driving down the lane when their car is forced off the road by masked thieves. ‘Out of the car and hand over your jewels!’ After the thieves rob them and steal their car, Diana begins to put her earrings, necklace, and rings back on. ‘Wherever did you hide those?’ demanded the Queen. ‘Where do you think?’ asked Diana. ‘Pity Margaret wasn’t here,’ said the Queen. ‘We could have saved the Bentley.’”
Despite such cracks, Rivers revered all the royals. “When Princess Diana was killed, she was the first person I called, and she was up and crying, absolutely devastated,” said Cameron. “It was like she’d lost a member of her family.”
But an actual friendship with any of the royals seemed completely out of reach. Many emblems of success can be bought; all it takes to charter a yacht is a large amount of money. Wealth certainly facilitated Rivers’s entrée into New York society, where it can buy seats on boards and access to charitably inclined social sets.
But money can’t buy noble birth or intimate contact with the monarchy, and Rivers astonished virtually everyone, including herself, by developing a real friendship with Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. “Joan wanted to be Jackie Kennedy, and what better way for the ‘last girl before the freeway’ than to be friends with the next king of England?” said Cameron.
Rivers and Prince Charles were reportedly introduced in 2003 while on a painting holiday in the South of France, where they hit it off. “We sat next to each other at a dinner party and got friendly,” Rivers said. “He’s darling.”
Prince Charles was “a big fan” of Rivers, according to Sir Tom Shebbeare, the former chief executive of the Prince’s Trust. “He found her very irreverent, antiestablishment—and her being like that around the epitome of the establishment such as the royal family was daring.”
“Charles and Camilla have a great sense of humor,” Rivers said. “He is so charming and so humorous.”
In another apparent case of opposites attracting, the royals seemed titillated by Rivers’s propensity for violating traditional notions of propri
ety.
“Many people are so correct around them, and Joan was so incorrect,” said Blaine Trump. “She made them laugh. Joan loved the pomp and circumstance of the traditions of the royal family, and Prince Charles and Camilla absolutely adored her. The English all have potty humor, and Joan was full of that kind of humor. They loved it, and they were real friends.”
Rivers still found it challenging to negotiate the gap between their respective sensibilities. Every year Prince Charles sent Rivers a Christmas gift that sometimes consisted of two elegant teacups. Rivers reacted with her usual rude humor.
“One year I took a picture under my Christmas tree with the teacups and wrote, ‘How could you send me two teacups when I’m alone?’” she said. “Another time I wrote, ‘I’m enjoying tea with my best friend!,’ and I sent a picture of me in a cemetery. And he never acknowledges it! He never says to me when I see him, ‘Ohhhh, funny funny funny!’ So this year I thought, I’m just going to write him a nice thank-you note. And the other day our mutual friend calls and says, ‘Just spoke to Charles! He said, “I can’t wait to see Joan’s note this year!”’”
Although Rivers was thrilled by their association, she understood its limitations; the friendship was close enough to impress people, including herself, but it was not intimate. When asked about her relationship with Charles and Camilla, Rivers admitted, “Not inner circle. Outer inner circle.”
As time went on, the bond deepened to include invitations to visit Highgrove House, the family residence of Prince Charles and Camilla in Gloucestershire. By the time they got married in 2005, Rivers was one of only four Americans invited to their wedding. Three years after that, Prince Charles turned sixty, and Rivers performed at We Are Most Amused, a birthday gala to raise money for his Prince’s Trust charity.
Rivers’s ultimate triumph came when she was presented to the Queen. “Joan curtsies, and she was so overwhelmed,” recalled Robert Higdon. “She said, ‘You just look so fabulous! I just love your pin!’ The Queen said, ‘Thank you,’ in this prim, clipped voice, standing there with her handbag over her arm.”
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