But she knew how upset Rivers was, so she eventually decided to keep her company. “In the middle of the night I went and knocked on Joan’s door, and the two of us slept in her room.” Trump imitates herself lying rigid in bed, staring straight up at the ceiling in wide-eyed alarm, with the covers drawn up to her chin.
Notwithstanding her terror, Joan couldn’t resist acting like a Jewish mother even with an ancient Scottish ghost. “She said, ‘This woman is trapped in this house. I really want to free her,’” Trump reported. “We did a cleansing of room number one before we left. She did this whole ceremony with a bowl of water and a mirror, and she said a prayer for the woman, because she wanted to release her spirit.”
Despite her fear of ghosts, there was one spectral visitor Rivers didn’t seem to mind. After Orin Lehman died, she claimed that his spirit often came to hang out with her. “For a long time she saw Orin Lehman sitting in his favorite chair in her living room,” said Margie Stern. “She would just say, ‘He’s there.’”
Some wraiths may be tortured souls seeking escape from eternal purgatory, but Rivers’s own spirit is apparently a busybody who likes to check up on everyone. Before she died, she told Pete Hathaway, “I’m dying to see my mother again.” In life, she often visited him at his historic nineteenth-century home in Salisbury, Connecticut. “She definitely came back to this house after she died,” he said.
As a gift for her Connecticut house, Hathaway once gave Rivers a four-leaf clover made of horseshoes, and after she died he asked to have it back as a memento of their friendship. Several weeks later, he hung it on a wall.
“The next morning, I came downstairs as the sun was coming up, and I heard a knock on the front door,” he said. “I thought, how odd—who the hell is knocking on my door at five thirty in the morning? I heard it again, and I opened the door and there was no one there. I had set the sprinkler the night before, and everything was wet. No one had walked down the path, because there would have been wet footprints going onto the dry bluestone. As I turned around, I happened to see the four-leaf clover, and I thought, Joan was just here. I think she was saying, ‘I’m glad you finally got the horseshoe out of the box and hung it up.’”
When Hathaway told Rivers’s assistant what had happened, he imitated the mysterious knock, a distinctive pattern of raps as specific as Morse code. “Jocelyn said, ‘A chill has just gone up my spine. When we were traveling, that was the knock we used to do on each other’s doors to be let in. That was Joan,’” Hathaway reported.
About three weeks later, “I was minding my own business early in the morning and I heard high-heeled footsteps going up and down the halls and into the bedrooms,” he said. But when he investigated, “no one was there.”
That was the last time Hathaway felt Rivers’s presence. “She’s never been back,” he said wistfully.
Some of Rivers’s friends are disappointed that she hasn’t visited them. “I’m waiting for her to come back and talk to me,” said Margie Stern.
Sallie Ann Glassman had better luck. Shortly after Rivers’s death, Glassman was climbing Choquequirao, an Incan site in southern Peru, when Rivers suddenly appeared on the path ahead of her. “She points to her eyes and to my eyes and makes the gesture, ‘I see you,’” Glassman said. “It was enough to stop me in my tracks, but then she sort of dissolved right in front of me.”
Since returning to the United States, Glassman has seen Rivers again “many times,” she said. During one session with a medium, Glassman reported, “Joan said, ‘I’m right here.’ She put her hands on my face and said, ‘I’ve got this. You’ve been guiding me; now I’m guiding you.’ She expressed her frustration that she was trying to communicate with her loved ones, and they don’t know she’s there. Joan is trying very hard to let Margie Stern know she’s not just going to disappear on her.”
Sue Cameron also got quick results when she consulted her own psychic and Rivers showed up immediately. She seemed to be reexperiencing the last day of her conscious life. “She was sitting in the waiting room at the Yorkville medical center,” Cameron reported. “She said, ‘I have a premonition this isn’t going to go well.’”
(Cameron later called Melissa to ask if her mother had actually said that before undergoing her procedure, and Melissa replied, “That’s absolutely right.”)
During Cameron’s session with the psychic, Rivers seemed her usual self. Even when faced with brain death at the Yorkville clinic, she had apparently remained preoccupied with her eternal quest for new jokes, and her first thought was that the accident could provide fresh material. “When she stopped breathing, she came out of her body and watched all of it,” Cameron said. “She said, ‘Oh—I could really turn this into a bit!’”
Cameron wasn’t surprised by the fact that Rivers had made an appearance via a psychic; she had always expected to survive the death of her body. “Joan absolutely believed in heaven—there’s no question about it,” said Cameron. “She talked a lot about hanging out with people in heaven, and she nominated candidates for hell.”
Her intimates also assumed that Rivers would relish the chance to tell off her dead husband when she finally got to confront him again. In a tearful bedside farewell at the hospital, Cameron had even teased her comatose friend about such a scenario. “I said, ‘I feel sorry for Edgar, because he’s about to see you,’” she recalled wryly.
But other friends may have had a more accurate sense of Rivers’s growing detachment as the years went on. “I once asked her what she’d do if she saw Edgar in heaven, and she said, ‘I’d nod politely—and walk on by,’” said Robert Higdon, adding that they both burst out laughing at the thought.
When Cameron saw the psychic, she learned that the spectral Rivers was avoiding her late husband, as promised. “I asked if she’s seen Edgar. She said he’s in a small library with lots of books, and he stays in there all day and reads, and she doesn’t go in there,” Cameron said. “At the Ambazac house, they had a small room that was a den, with all the books, and Edgar stayed in there all the time and read books. Melissa re-created that room in her house, so I think Edgar’s in Melissa’s house now.”
To Cameron’s relief, Rivers seemed at peace with the circumstances of her death. “She was tired and ready to go,” Cameron said. “She was so tired of having to be Joan Rivers. She said it was such an ordeal to keep the Joan machine going. She said over and over, ‘I’m exhausted. I’m done! I don’t want to be Joan anymore.’ I said to her, ‘It was medical malpractice! I want to kill Gwen Korovin!’ She said, ‘Don’t bother. She’ll get a reality show, and that’ll kill her.’ She displayed no anger. I don’t think Joan would have chosen to go this way, and she certainly didn’t want to leave her family, but she was just bone-tired exhausted.”
Rivers did regret the pain her sudden death had caused her friends. “She said she was devastated when she saw how grief-stricken her loved ones were,” Cameron said. “When she died, there was a point where I couldn’t stop crying, and I went to the Santa Monica pier. I was holding on to the railing, just crying. She actually described that. Nobody knew that—but Joan knew.”
But as always, her family was her main concern. “Joan said, ‘All I care about is that Melissa and Cooper are happy,’” Cameron said. “She knew Melissa was doing well, and she was so happy she gave her this life. She said that she didn’t love doing reality television, and she did it for Melissa. She wanted to leave Melissa a safety net. She said the only downside of being dead is that she likes to have an impact, and Melissa can’t hear her. When I told that to Melissa, she said, ‘Believe me, I hear her!’ I said, ‘We all do!’”
Indeed, Rivers is actively keeping tabs on her friends, and she seems particularly interested in surgical procedures. “She asked me, ‘Do your feet fit in shoes now?’” Cameron said. “This is stunning, because last January I had a foot operation on a toe that had a bone spur on it, just so I could fit in shoes!”
Rivers also kept track of what happened to a se
ntimental object her daughter had bequeathed to Cameron, who was touched to receive a token of her deep friendship with Edgar when Rivers’s apartment was sold. “Joan described exactly the scarf of Edgar’s that was in her drawer in New York that Melissa gave me a couple of months ago,” Cameron reported.
For her, the whole conversation felt much like the ones she and Rivers shared in person for so many years. “She said, ‘Can you believe I did QVC?’ It was very funny. I wasn’t crying during this part; it was like I was talking to her. We were laughing.”
As for Rivers’s eternal reward, it turned out that her version resembles a cruise on Lake Tahoe. “Whenever she would have a gig at Harrah’s, they would give her a boat and a captain and food, just to go around Lake Tahoe during the day, and she loved doing that,” Cameron said. “The hotel would give us tuna sandwiches and fruit, and we would have lunch on the boat. She just loved being out on boats. When Edgar died, the first thing she did was charter a boat in Greece. That’s her go-to thing—charter a boat.”
Rivers apparently arranged something similar in the great beyond. “She said she was spending a lot of her time on boats, because she loves the wind in her hair,” Cameron reported. “She said it’s fabulous, because now she doesn’t care if her hair gets messed up. She’s happy. She’s out cruising—no personal appearances, no makeup, messy hair, floating on the water. She’s thrilled. Believe me, she’s fine.”
Since Rivers felt she never got her due on earth, Cameron was comforted to hear that Joan was overwhelmed by the response to her death. “She was at the funeral, and she said she had no idea how much she was loved. She said, ‘I cannot believe all the love! I never knew.’”
But Rivers couldn’t resist a minor dig about the most celebrated performance at the service. “She made a joke that she could have written Howard Stern’s speech better,” Cameron said. “That’s so Joan!”
Whatever her quibbles, Rivers was gratified to learn that she left such an enormous mark on the world she lived in. She had spent her entire life feeling judged and found wanting, and nothing—no amount of applause, fame, money, or love—was ever sufficient to fill the aching hole inside her. Her insatiable need for approval drove her until the day she died.
But in the end, she created a more outsized legacy than the icons she admired and envied. The session with the medium left Cameron with the sense that Rivers understood what she had achieved and that the larger world had finally recognized it as well.
Rivers left her life the way she lived it: at full throttle. She’d told so many of her friends that she didn’t want to stick around in an impaired state, and she managed to do exactly what she loved doing until the last day of her life.
“She had no ailments,” Bill Reardin said. “She was in such good physical shape. She had such energy. She never had people say, ‘She looks old and tired.’ She went out on top.”
It was the way she wanted to go, and Rivers’s last words to the psychic struck Cameron as a reassuring sign that her friend’s driven spirit was resting in peace at last.
“I’m so grateful,” Rivers said. “What a life!”
That sounded like a fitting epitaph for an extraordinary career, but Cameron suspected that Rivers had more to say. Before she died, she made it clear that she planned on settling some scores in the great hereafter. “She absolutely believed she was going to go and confront Elizabeth Taylor,” Cameron said.
Rivers was looking forward to delivering her final message: “You were fat, you bitch!”
Photos
Rivers loved this picture: “The only time in my life I was ever a natural blonde.”
Rivers felt “great sadness” about her mother’s 1927 wedding, which sent her, “without love, into a disastrous marriage.”
Rivers’s father “pinched every penny,” and she resented her parents’ “facade of affluence built on bitterness.”
A year out of college, Mrs. James Sanger married “for security, not love,” and soon divorced.
Joan’s sister, Barbara, grew up “beautiful and smart and got a law degree at Columbia.”
Rivers as a would-be glamour girl.
Rivers poses for a portrait circa 1968 in New York City.
Rivers during the 1960s.
Rivers in 1966, performing “Bride at the Airport,” telling her fiancé that her plane was diverted to Denver.
Rivers in Los Angeles in 1965, the year she finally found a husband and became an “overnight” star.
Rivers on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
In 1967, Rivers wasn’t allowed to mention her pregnancy on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Edgar Rosenberg as a boy in South Africa.
Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg.
Joan and Edgar in California.
Joan and Edgar with Melissa.
Joan took her daughter everywhere, “whether I wanted to go or not,” Melissa said.
Rivers and Barry Diller announced her new Fox show in May of 1986.
Winner of the 1990 Daytime Emmy Award as Outstanding Talk Show Host for The Joan Rivers Show.
Rivers with “the love of my life,” Orin Lehman, in 1996.
Rivers’s New York apartment, widely compared to Versailles.
Rivers with lots of plastic surgery but no makeup.
Rivers done up as a monument to extreme artifice in 2013.
Joan loved Max and all her other dogs.
Joan, Melissa, and Cooper Endicott.
Joan and Melissa on the red carpet at the Academy Awards in 2004.
Acknowledgments
Many authors thank their agents for helping them with a book, but this one literally wouldn’t exist without David Kuhn, because it was his idea. My deepest gratitude to David for pushing me to take on the extraordinary life story of Joan Rivers, who not only entertained me while I was writing about her but will forever inspire me with her courage and determination.
Thanks also to Judith Clain and her team at Little, Brown for their support and enthusiasm, which were much appreciated.
I owe an enormous debt to the friends and family, former coworkers, and other colleagues of Joan Rivers who gave their time and shared their experiences with me. My deepest thanks to Melissa Rivers, Sabrina Lott Miller, Sue Cameron, Dorothy Melvin, Liz Smith, Margaret Cho, Gloria Steinem, Judy Gold, Kathy Griffin, Larry King, Barry Diller, George Hamilton, Barbara Walters, Lou Alexander, Blaine Trump, Ivanka Trump, Shelly Schultz, Andrew Krasny, Lisa Lampanelli, Caroline Hirsch, Cary Hoffman, Henry Bushkin, Arnold Stiefel, Sandy Gallin, Bob Colacello, Josh Ostrovsky, Jesse Kornbluth, Annette Tapert, Jenny Allen, David Finkle, Rick Newman, David Bernstein, Margie Stern, Ricki Stern, Michael George, David Dangle, Robert Higdon, Pete Hathaway, Martyn Fletcher, Abigail Pogrebin, Mark Simone, Barry Dougherty, Pat Cooper, Kip Forbes, Kenny Bell, Steve Olsen, Andy Cohen, Billy Eichner, Lonny Price, Manny Azenberg, Erin Sanders, Sally Koslow, Rob Koslow, John Erman, Jason Sheeler, Larry Ferber, Marlaine Selip, Bill Reardin, Ann Northrop, Steve Garrin, Molly Haskell, Chip Duckett, Valerie Frankel, Charles Busch, William Finn, Karen Pearl, Bill Evans, Jeffrey Mahshie, Sallie Ann Glassman, Jeffrey Gurian, Jeff Cubeta, Lindsay Roth, Laura Haefeli, Dr. Anna Fels, Randi Gelfand Pollack, Leslie Stevens, and the late Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman, Lynn Grefe, Danny Schechter, and Joe Franklin, along with all the other people who shared their memories with me, including those who requested confidentiality. Thanks also to Jocelyn Pickett and to Jane Klain at the Paley Center for Media for her invaluable research assistance.
A special thanks to Bill Boggs, who first introduced me to the world of professional comedy in 1969, encouraged me to do this book, and shared his expertise as well as his experiences with Rivers. I am also very grateful to my other friends—you know who you are—for their unflagging support, and particularly to Carrie Carmichael for her extraordinary generosity during the months I was holed up writing.
Finally, my deepest thanks to my long-suffering computer guru, otherwise known as my son Nick, who bails me out of my all t
oo frequent technological emergencies with unfailing skill and the patience of a zen master. But my debt to my wonderful children extends far beyond such practical help; I am immeasurably grateful to Emily and Nick for giving me an irresistible reason to get up in the morning even when I can’t figure out what the hell else I’m doing. A lot of wonderful things have happened to me over the years, but you two are far and away the best, and I love you with all my heart.
Note on Sources
In reporting Last Girl Before Freeway, I conducted interviews with Joan Rivers’s family, friends, staff and other employees, colleagues, former coworkers, business associates, fellow performers; with insiders in comedy, television, radio, theater, and other parts of the entertainment industry; and with people who knew Rivers in different capacities. These interviews, many of them in multiple sessions, took place during the period from September of 2014, when Rivers died, through the spring of 2016, when the book was completed. In addition, I have quoted Rivers’s own words from her books, including the memoirs Enter Talking and Still Talking; from her jokes and other works; from published print interviews, documentary and other filmed and video interviews; from archival and historical sources, including books about related topics, print and other press coverage; and from Rivers’s performances, television and radio shows, and other appearances throughout her career.
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