Rivers Runs Through It

Whenever a celebrity dies, pop culture fans anticipate the rule-of-three and speculate the identity of the next two shoes to drop. Recently, however, the names-of-the-game leveled out at two, twice. Less than a month after James Garner’s death in July 2014, Lauren Bacall passed away in August. Before a person could blink, the body of Robin Williams had been discovered – the victim of suicide. Just over three weeks later, on September 4, Joan Rivers succumbed to complications following what was supposed to be a routine throat procedure at an endoscopy clinic.

In the art of show business, what united these four - at-first-glance vastly diverse performers - was a shared passion for fearlessly maintaining a fierce independence in an arena that avariciously emphasizes “business” over “art.”

When Lauren Bacall fell in love with Humphrey Bogart, he gave her a choice. She could be a movie star, and he would do all in his power to assist her, or she could be his wife. The actor, 25 years her senior, had already been married three times to aspiring starlets. Bacall chose to be his wife. She made the same decision four years after Bogart’s death when she married actor Jason Roberts. She later reflected, “I put my career in second place through both marriages.”

 

James Garner and pal Lauren Bacall are caught off-guard by a paparazzo.

Not once, but twice, James Garner went to court to be cut loose from his starring roles in the highly popular TV series “Maverick” and “The Rockford Files.”

Unleashed as a standup comic and as the star of the wildly successful sitcom “Mork & Mindy,” Robin Williams was a rabid dog of inspired madness. And yet there was a large part of him that ached to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, which he proved again and again, in poignant performances from “The World According to Garp” to “Awakenings,” “One Hour Photo” and “Insomnia.” After Oscar-nominated roles in “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Dead Poets Society,” and “The Fisher King,” he finally took home the Academy Award, as Best Supporting Actor, for “Good Will Hunting.”

 

Joan Rivers: "Robin genuinely made me laugh and was one of the 'good guys.'
I'll miss him and his wonderful spirit."

And then there’s Joan Rivers. Throughout her life, come hell or high water - an infamous fallout with her fatherly mentor Johnny Carson, the humiliating demise of her own talk show and the ensuing suicide of her husband – she persevered, with a vengeance, swearing by the mantra, “I succeeded by saying what everyone else is just thinking.”

From childhood, Joan determined her unique destiny. She was born Joan Molinsky in Brooklyn to Russian Jewish immigrants. Her father, a doctor, would do funny impressions of his patients. Joan would call herself a pudgy child who felt inferior to her older, more attractive sister, Barbara. In her 1986 memoir, Enter Talking, the comedian asserted, “I could not endure the reality that I might end up Joan Molinsky, an unattractive, nondescript little Jewish girl, run-of-the-mill, who might just as well have stayed in Brooklyn and married a druggist and had a normal life.”

 

She appeared in school plays and at 16 was a self-described “chubby” extra cheering on a wrestling match in 1951’s “Mister Universe.” She attended Connecticut College for Women in New London, then New York City’s Barnard College. She took acting classes and graduated with an English major in 1954. She worked in the publicity department at the luxury department store Lord & Taylor, then as a fashion coordinator (portending her gig as host of the “E!” channel series “Fashion Police”) for the Fifth Avenue flagship of Bond Clothing Stores. She married the son of a Bond executive in 1957 and was divorced six months later.

"New York was the magic city. New York was Oz. All I
wanted to do was get out of Brooklyn and get into Oz."

Joan adopted the name Rivers on the suggestion of her agent (coincidentally named Tony Rivers) and started appearing in off-off-Broadway plays in Greenwich Village. “I was a very serious actress in the Village,” she recalled, ”but I wasn’t pretty, and at that time you had to be an 8-by-10 glossy, unretouched.”

Joan Rivers appeared in such Greenwich Village clubs
as The Bitter End and The Gaslight Cafe, often as part
of the comedic musical trio Jim, Jake & Joan.

In the late 1950s, Rivers performed in a short-run play titled “Driftwood” as a lesbian with a crush on a character played by a then equally unknown Barbra Streisand. In a 2008 interview, Rivers reminisced, “Let me tell you, Barbra is a great kisser, but no tongue…I don’t really see her anymore…When I do see her, she always says, ‘So, are you still in the business?’ And she’s not making a joke. She has no clue what anyone else is doing.”

When her parents refused to foot the bills for her acting endeavors, she supported herself with temporary office work. “I guess I became a comedienne,” she said, “because I had no money. I always made the secretaries at the casting offices laugh.” Rivers joined the landmark improvisational comedy troupe Second City in Chicago in 1961. She struck up a friendship with iconoclastic comic Lenny Bruce, who fortuitously encouraged her to base her humor on her personal life.

 

Second City performers Avery Schreiber, Joan Rivers, Bill Alton, Del Close

Her off-color ethnic wisecracks offended both the audience and host Jack Paar alike in an early appearance on “The Tonight Show,” and instead of the anticipated springboard for success it proved to be an embarrassing career setback. A contemporary of Woody Allen and Bill Cosby, Rivers worked on the original “Candid Camera” TV series in 1965 as a writer and as an on-camera “bait,” luring unsuspecting victims into ridiculous situations.

That same year, she made a triumphant return to “The Tonight Show” for new host Johnny Carson, who immediately took the young comedienne under wing. Rivers would soon refer to herself as “Johnny Carson’s daughter.” She appeared regularly on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” where, oddly enough, she also wrote material for the annoyingly coy mouse puppet Topo Gigio (above). In 1983, Johnny Carson selected Rivers as his permanent guest host.

In 1986, the new Fox Television Network wooed Rivers with the promise of her own late night talk show in competition with “The Tonight Show.” An eleventh hour phone conversation ended with Carson hanging up on Rivers, and the two never spoke again. She was banned from “The Tonight Show” and only returned to the program after nearly 30 years in February of 2014 during Jimmy Fallon’s first night as the new host (below).

In the Moviehouse, we’d like to take a look at a side of Joan Rivers that might be unfamiliar to many, showcasing her efforts as an actress and as a filmmaker. Seventeen years after her inauspicious film debut as a “chubby” bit player in “Mister Universe,” Rivers returned to the screen in a small but memorable role in the 1968 drama “The Swimmer,” based on a terse tale written by John Cheever, a product of genteel Westchester County in New York whose mastery of the short story earned him the nickname “the Chekhov of the suburbs.” The story depicts the allegorical journey of a middle-aged ad-man, introduced in the surroundings of a poolside summer party in an affluent suburb, who, clad solely in his trunks, is suddenly inspired to return to his home by swimming across all the pools in his county. As his odyssey progresses, he encounters neighbors who subtly refer to his financial setbacks and family difficulties to which he seems oblivious, while he grows physically weaker and the weather inexplicably turns autumnal.

Frank Perry, a filmmaker who could seesaw sublime, poignant dramas like “David and Lisa” (1962) and “Diary of a Mad Housewife” (1970) on one end and an over-the-top trash heap like “Mommie Dearest” (1981) on the other, with escapist fluff like the “Rancho Deluxe” (1975) in between, directed “The Swimmer” from a screenplay written by wife Eleanor Perry (whose script for “David and Lisa” was nominated for an Academy Award), who masterfully fleshed out John Cheever’s 10-page into a complex feature film.

In one of the more disturbing moments in "The Swimmer," creepy Burt Lancaster
tries to seduce screen newcomer Janet Landgard as the onetime family babysitter.

Not unlike the story’s enigmatic protagonist, 54-year-old Burt Lancaster, past the twilight years of his career as a leading man, wanted to prove his prowess and charisma in a challenging role that had already been turned down by Paul Newman, William Holden, and Glenn Ford. Lancaster worked out strenuously during the production to keep physically fit and took swimming lessons from UCLA water polo coach Bob Horn.

Roger Ebert called the movie “a strange, stylized work, a brilliant and disturbing one.” Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, “Although literal in style, the film has the shape of an open-ended hallucination. It is a grim, disturbing and sometimes funny view of a very small, very special segment of upper-middle-class American life."

Among that “special segment” Lancaster intrudes upon in his trek is a cocktail party where the hostess coldly greets him as a “gatecrasher.” After an equally icy exchange with the party’s bartender, he approaches a tipsy socialite played by a then-33-year-old Joan Rivers (above). He introduces himself as “an explorer” and tells her, “I’m swimming home…Do you want to come with me?” The dumbstruck Rivers utters, “Where?” and with a twinkle in his eye, he responds, “Along a river of sapphire pools.” Visibly dazzled, she tells him, “I never heard anyone talk like you.” When he says, “Come with me, be my love,” a sad reality hits Joan as she replies, “You’re no different from any other guy.” “But I am,” he insists. “I’m a very special human being. Noble and splendid.” The look that comes across his face is both ennobling and unsettling.

"The Swimmer" marked the scoring debut of future Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony
and Pulitizer Prize-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch. Producer Sam Spiegel
hired the 22-year-old Hamlisch after hearing him play the piano at a party.

This brief encounter took seven days to shoot. Joan Rivers later recalled that she, director Frank Perry, and Lancaster would rehearse the scene together, but behind Perry’s back, Lancaster decided to re-direct her character “so that there would be no sympathy for me.” In her 1991 memoir, Still Talking, she maintained that the actor “redirected every line…Frank wanted a happy girl who then got hurt. Lancaster was going to be Mr. Wonderful who came up against a mean bitch…Trying to please both men, I was going back and forth between line readings, and nothing made sense."

To say the least, it was a troubled production overall. The film was shot in Westport, Connecticut, during the summer of 1966 but not released until the spring of 1968. Rivers recalled that Perry and Lancaster often had confrontations on the set. (According to an assistant director, “There was nothing wrong with the director, and there was nothing wrong with the actor, but they were just wrong for each other.”) Ultimately, producer Sam Spiegel was pressured by Lancaster to fire Perry, who was replaced by Sydney Pollack, a friend of the star’s who directed him in “The Scalphunters” and “Castle Keep.” Spiegel himself, who had won three Best Picture Academy Awards (for “On the Waterfront,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” and “Lawrence of Arabia”), eventually removed his name from the credits.

Variety pointed out that “a lot of people are not going to understand this film; many will loathe it; others will be deeply moved.” Burt Lancaster would insist that “The Swimmer” was the best film of his career and his personal favorite.

Joan Rivers in her high school yearbook:
"There is not one female comic who was
beautiful as a little girl."

The unsure, almost fragile nature of Joan’s bubbly party girl in “The Swimmer” may have been a reflection of her image of herself. This was especially evident in her teleplay for the 1973 TV movie “The Girl Most Likely To…”, a dark, ugly-duckling comedy featuring 29-year-old Stockard Channing (outstanding in her first credited role) as an intelligent, wisecracking and homely college coed – a pathetic victim of relentless ridicule - who undergoes a miraculous makeover after a disfiguring car accident and wreaks bloody vengeance on her previous tormentors.

The hectic shooting schedule of "The Girl Most Likely To..." required
Stockard Channing to bounce back-and-forth out of the makeup chair.

The game comedic cast includes Ed Asner, Susanne Zenor (the original dim-bulb blonde in the pilot for “Three’s Company”), Larry Wilcox (the blonde motorcycle cop in “CHiPs”), Warren Berlinger (a longtime comic character actor from stage, screen, and television – anyone remember “Kilroy” on “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color”?), and Fred Grandy (best known for his role as yeoman purser “Gopher” on “The Love Boat” before entering politics as a U.S. senator for Iowa), along with cameos by comedy pros Jim Backus, Joe Flynn, Chuck McCann and Carl Ballantine.

Ed Asner steals the show in "The Girl Most Likely To..." as a deadpan,
dedicated but dimwitted detective hopelessly in love with his adversary:
"I never figured on the old exploding 8-ball trick!"

Rare for a made-for-television film, “The Girl Most Likely To…” achieved cult popularity over time, leading to its release on DVD in 2006.

Alex Rocco: "Of course I know what a uterus is - he's the guy who killed Caesar!"
Joan Prather, Billy Crystal, Alex Rocco in "Rabbit Test"

Joan Rivers’ unique perspective on the irresoluble battle of the sexes took on a new perspective when she co-wrote and directed the 1978 comedy “Rabbit Test,” featuring the motion picture debut of Billy Crystal as the world’s first pregnant man. Five years earlier, Marcello Mastroianni starred in the French-Italian comedy “A Slightly Pregnant Man,” and in director Ivan Reitman’s 1994 comedy, “Junior,” Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed a scientist who impregnates himself with an untested fertility drug. No such scientific explanation in “Rabbit Test,” when virginal night school instructor Crystal is dragged by his cousin, a brash Vietnam veteran (an unbridled, frenetic performance by Alex Rocco), to a seedy USO club and ends up seduced by brassy “Mystery Lady” Sheree North atop a pinball machine; the naïve Crystal thinks he got pregnant because he was on the bottom.

"Why me?...Why couldn't it be someone else?...Wilt Chamberlain, I mean he's tall,
he could carry better." Billy Crystal and Doris Roberts in "Rabbit Test"

Doris Roberts, best known as the intrusive, manipulative Italian-American mother on “Everybody Loves Raymond” (a role that garnered her four Emmy Awards and three additional nominations), plays Crystal’s quintessentially overprotective Jewish mother. Joan Prather (“Smile”) has little to do in the thankless role of Crystal’s girlfriend, a Gypsy immigrant, whose stereotypical Romanian parents are portrayed by Imogene Coca and Norman Fell. In drag, Roddy McDowall hams it up as the fortune-telling Gypsy grandmother.

Joan Rivers directs Doris Roberts in "Rabbit Test"

 The parade of guest cameos in “Rabbit Test” includes Richard Deacon (best known as the butt of endless bald jokes on “The Dick Van Dyke Show”) as a newscaster in a ludicrous hairpiece, George Gobel and Fannie Flagg as the President of the United States and the First Lady, Paul Lynde and Alice Ghostley (the female Paul Lynde), Roosevelt Grier, original “Hollywood Squares” host Peter Marshall, Tom Poston as a Catholic priest and Charlotte Rae as a Jewish cousin of Doris Roberts’ who taps Poston’s crucifix and says, “I had nothing to do with that, you know,” and Jimmie Walker as a jungle ventriloquist whose dummy is shamelessly played by a wisecracking Billy Barty in blackface (below). Rivers herself has a fleeting cameo as a nurse running down a hospital corridor, proclaiming, “Hot colon coming through!”

"Rabbit Test" takes potshots at Jews, Catholics, Poles, African Americans,
Gypsies, doctors, parenthood, movies, politics, homosexuals, obesity, and
anything else Joan Rivers might have had in her voluminous joke file.

The movie, produced by Joan Rivers’ husband, Edgar Rosenberg, was shot on a budget of just under a million dollars. The couple hocked their Bel-Air house and Joan’s jewels, while her father and sister mortgaged their homes to contribute to the film’s budget.  Daughter Melissa Rivers, all of ten years of age, was credited as associate producer. (Old-time radio comedian Fred Allen once defined “associate producer “ as “the only person in Hollywood who will associate with the producer.”) The cast, numbering over 130, all worked for Screen Actors Guild scale pay. Rivers recalled, “I came out of the improvisational school of Second City. The actors contributed 50 percent of what appeared on the screen.”

During the three-week shoot, a number of veteran crew members showed little sympathy for the one-liner comedienne-turned-fledgling director. “Sometimes I just put my head against the camera and cried,” Rivers related. ”My assistant director didn’t tell me that he was the one who was supposed to yell, ‘Quiet on the set!’ So I ended up shouting my head off.”

The New York Times critic Janet Maslin, who noted the movie was constructed from “less-than-sparkling one-liners, wrote, “As a director, Miss Rivers is forever sandbagging her own scenes, throwing away a good chuckle in a sequence that desperately needs a punch line.” Maslin pointed out, “Mr. Crystal manages to convey neither astonishment nor acceptance of the impossible.” According to the reviewer, “When it winds up on television, which is where a movie this visually crude belonged in the first place, ‘Rabbit Test’ may improve slightly: Constant commercial interruptions may help distract attention from the movie’s continuity problems, which are severe.”

Famed female impersonator Charles Pierce as the Queen of England
with Joan Rivers in "Rabbit Test."

Joan Rivers commented at the time, “Seventy percent of the critics hated my movie. The other 30 percent were geniuses, knew their work and were sensually attractive.” Critic Roger Ebert bluntly responded, “So there you are. I’m dumb, lazy and sensually unattractive, and ‘Rabbit Test’ is not a funny movie. It really isn’t. It’s jammed from wall to wall with eccentric characters and throwaway one-liners and would-be funny signs (The Christian Science Memorial Hospital), but it’s just not funny.”

Ebert admitted, “But it tries. Not a moment goes by without something on the screen that’s supposed to be funny. That’s what makes the movie quietly amazing: That so many different gags could not be funny…’Rabbit Test’ is flat and mechanical, filled with funny ideas for a movie, but not with funny things in a movie.”

Despite the onslaught of negative reviews, the picture ended up making $15 million in theater rentals. Almost immediately, Joan Rivers had two more film projects in the works. Late in 1978 she signed a contract with Columbia Pictures to direct and star in “A Girl Named Banana,” a caper comedy set in the Catskills written by Rivers and the master of caper fiction, Donald E. Westlake, author of The Hunter (filmed as “Point Blank” and as “Payback”) and, among several others, The Hot Rock. “On ‘Rabbit Test,’ I could get a decision in 20 minutes,” Rivers said at the time. “We spent four months on the Columbia deal. The contract is longer than the script.” Unfortunately, the script was never filmed, and “The Rabbit Test” remained the only project Rivers ever directed.

On the Fox network's "The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers,"
Mel Brooks guest-hosted in drag as Joan.

In 1987, after guest-starring on TV’s “The Love Boat” and in the movie “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” Joan Rivers supplied the voice for the gold-plated android Dot Matrix (a distaff version of the prissy droid C-3PO in George Lucas’ original “Star Wars” trilogy) in Mel Brooks’ comedy “Spaceballs.” After spoofing musicals in “The Producers,” westerns in “Blazing Saddles,” horror classics in “Young Frankenstein,” early cinema in “Silent Cinema,” and Hitchcock in “High Anxiety,” the auteur of parody launched into space, “the last frontier. It is about space. It is the last genre I can destroy. So I’m destroying it."

John Candy, Lorene Yarnell (Joan Rivers' voice),
Daphne Zuniga, Bill Pullman in "Spaceballs"

Specifically, Brooks targets the first “Star Wars” (“Episode IV: A New Hope”), featuring Bill Pullman (best known as the alien-battling President in “Independence Day”) as space cowboy Lone Starr, John Candy as his sidekick, Barf the Mog (“half man, half dog, I’m my own best friend”), and Daphne Zuniga (familiar to TV viewers for her roles in “Melrose Place” in the 1990s and “One Tree Hill” in the 2000s) as Princess Vespa of the planet Druidia (“That’s all we need, a Druish princess!”…”Funny, she doesn’t look Druish!”).

"Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

John Candy’s fellow SCTV alumnus, Rick Moranis, delivers an outstandingly inspired performance as the villainous Dark Helmet, Brooks’ takeoff on Darth Vader (“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate!”). Brooks does double-duty onscreen, portraying planet Spaceball’s inept President Skroob (which is almost “Brooks” spelled backwards) and as the pint-sized, Yoda-like guru Yogurt, who sounds uncannily like Brooks’ Yiddish 2000 Year Old Man as he intones, “May the Schwartz be with you!” (“Schwartz” is probably as close as Brooks could get to the Yiddish euphemism for penis, “schvantz,” without being censored.)

At the time, “Spaceballs” was Mel Brooks’ most expensive production, with a budget of $25 million. (Brooks’ first film, “The Producers,” was budgeted at $947,000.) As he had sought Alfred Hitchcock’s approval for “High Anxiety,” Brooks wanted (and needed) George Lucas’ blessing to make the movie. Lucas gave Brooks the nod but with the stipulation that the latter wouldn’t merchandise his own action figures. Ironically, the film itself repeatedly parodies shameless merchandising. In a 2012 interview, Brooks said Lucas wrote him a “lovely note saying how much he loved the picture…He said, ‘I was afraid I would bust something from laughing.’”

In his review, Roger Ebert commented, “The strangest thing about ‘Spaceballs’ is that it should have been made several years ago, before our appetite for ‘Star Wars’ satires had been completely exhausted…Maybe the reason ‘Spaceballs’ isn’t better is that (Brooks) was deliberately aiming low, going for the no-brainer satire.” Despite other such mixed reviews, “Spaceballs,” over time, has become a cult favorite and proved to be Brooks’ most financially successful picture. “It never stopped selling!” Brooks exclaimed.

As mentioned, Joan Rivers was the voice of Princess Vespa’s faithful droid, Dot Matrix. The talented performer in the elaborate costume – complete with “Virgin Alarm” (“It’s programmed to go off before you do!”) – is Lorene Yarnell, half of the popular 1970s mime team Shields and Yarnell. Not at all coincidentally, one of Dot Matrix’ first lines is Rivers’ catchphrase “Can we talk?” In the DVD commentary for “Spaceballs,” Mel Brooks recalled Rivers as “wonderful” and “a pleasure to work with.”

"Spaceballs: The Animated Series"

In “Spaceballs,” Yogurt says, “God willing, we’ll all meet again in ‘Spaceballs II: The Search for More Money.’” In a recent interview, Rick Moranis related, “Mel wanted to do a sequel after (‘Spaceballs’) became a cult video hit…MGM wanted to do a sequel. And my idea for it was ‘Spaceballs III: The Search for Spaceballs II.’ And I was unable to make a deal with Mel.” Brooks’ long-held desire to make a sequel was finally realized, sort of, in 2008’s “Spaceballs: The Animated Series” on G4 TV. The single-season program featured the voices of Brooks as President Skroob and Yogurt, Daphne Zuniga as Princess Vespa, and Joan Rivers (as Dot Matrix). Absent were Bill Pullman, Rick Moranis, and, obviously, John Candy, who died in 1994.

Joan Rivers and Janeane Garofalo as they appeared on "The Simpsons"

Following “Spaceballs,” Joan Rivers occasionally returned to acting, usually in cameo roles (and often as herself) in movies – “Serial Mom,” “The Smurfs,” “Iron Man 3” – and on television – “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Louie,” “Hot in Cleveland” – and lending her voice to such films as “Look Who’s Talking,” Disney’s “Whispers: An Elephant’s Tale,” and “Shrek 2,” and the TV series “Arthur” and “The Simpsons.”

Joan Rivers is reunited with "Rabbit Test" costar Alex Rocco
in "How to Murder a Millionaire."

Joan Rivers starred in the 1990 made-for-television comedy “How to Murder a Millionaire,” with Morgan Fairchild, Telma Hopkins, Alex Rocco, and David Ogden Stiers, and had a dramatic role in the 1992 TV movie “Jackie Collins’ Lady Boss.”

Brooke Shields, Joan Rivers, Kathy Griffin, Judd Nelson in "Suddenly Susan"

On the late ‘90s Brooke Shields sitcom “Suddenly Susan,” Rivers guest-starred as Kathy Griffin’s mother.

Our editors were unable to find a picture of Joan Rivers and
Robert Klein from "Goosed," but we figured this would do...

Joan Rivers and fellow standup comic Robert Klein portrayed Jennifer Tilly’s Jewish parents in a forgettable if not obscure 1999 romantic comedy, “Goosed,” featuring Damon Wayans, Thomas Haden Church, and D.B. Sweeney.

Ryan Ochoa and Joan Rivers mug for "Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend"

Rivers’ last credited acting role was as Grandma Doyle in the 2014 direct-to-DVD juvenile feature “R.L. Stine’s Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend.”

Postscript:

“I’m in nobody’s circle, I’ve always been an outsider. I don’t have those wonderful dinners with Woody, I’ve never been asked by Jay. And it makes you sad, because I think it would be wonderful to sit and talk about things that very few people understand. But I’m very competitive, and I’m sure they feel that…And I think that’s what has kept me going. I’m not gracious.”

Joan and daughter Melissa Rivers

“I’ve been up, I’ve been down. I’ve been fired, I’ve been hired, I’ve been broke. What are you going to do to me? Not like me? I don’t give a damn.”