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September 4, 2014

In May 2013, I was more than a tad nervous when asked to conduct a 45-minute Q&A with Rivers following a performance of her act at the American Jewish University.  Rivers, after all, was the notorious fashion polista of the red carpet awards scene, so ruthless that she once lambasted Meryl Streep for wearing a busy print gown that, in Rivers’ words, made her ”look like a sofa.” 

Afraid to fall under the comic’s critical eye, I meticulously searched for a new dress to wear to the Q&A, spending more than $400 – way beyond my usual budget — in the process.  And even though I had interviewed Rivers three times previously, the comedian was always so blunt and direct that I worried her critiques might extend to my questions that evening.

Rivers arrived to the event an unfashionable 45 minutes late, intense and all business (and dressed to the nines in an all-black ensemble – No, I didn’t ask her who she was wearing), and immediately threw a monkey wrench into the proceedings.   Looking directly into my eyes, she told me that her act, which was to precede the Q&A, was undoubtedly going to cover every question I might already have on my list.  So I had better listen carefully, she added, because if I asked her to repeat herself she did not intend to do so.   Freaked out, I sat backstage with half a glass of wine and in a frenzy crossed out questions as I listened to her act, in which she spewed ample zingers as she told stories of her life while mugging and running or even staggering across the stage.  She had once told me she walked an average of a half-mile during each of her stand-up sets.

But fortunately there was still plenty to talk about in the Q&A, during which Rivers was alternately hilarious and poignant – as well as gracious to her interviewer.   She told my favorite joke about Mel Gibson (He gave me a [Thanksgiving] turkey recipe; it says, “preheat the oven to 9,000 degrees”) but – perhaps because of the AJU audience — didn’t do her bit on Anne Frank as “one of the great whiners in history.”

And then there were the stories that were embarrassing or heartbreaking.  When the former Joan Molinsky first announced that she wanted to become an actress, her father actually threatened to have her committed to a mental institution, she said.  Instead, Rivers left home, broke off all contact with her parents and found herself alone and lonely the following Yom Kippur.  It was a little temple in the Bronx that let her in without a ticket, and to those congregants she was eternally grateful, she said.

It’s no secret that Rivers’ late husband, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide in 1986, not long after the comedian left her spot as permanent guest host on “The Tonight Show” to launch a rival program on the Fox network.  I asked Rivers if she had been able to forgive Edgar for taking his own life.  She paused, then said that, no, she hadn’t been able to forgive him, in large part because of the negative effects of his suicide on their daughter, Melissa – especially regarding her trust issues with men.   And look at everything he has missed, she added, noting the joy she has had as the grandmother of Melissa’s son, Edgar Cooper Endicott, who was born in 2000 and named for his late grandfather.

Since news of Rivers’ death came today, I’ve been thinking back on my favorite moments from our several interviews over the years; on the phone from her palatial apartment in New York in 2007, she once told me she was sitting at the desk she had set up, of all places, on her bathroom counter, with its stunning view of a cloudy day over Central Park.  Like a nurturing grandmother, she described the Passover seders she held yearly in her home, making sure to invite plenty of people who had no place else to go. 

I loved that Rivers claimed to once have told Mick Jagger to go iron his face. 

But most of all, I admired Rivers for continually reinventing herself in the aftermath of personal misfortune.  When acting didn’t play out for her as a young woman, for example, she tried standup because it paid $8 a gig — and found her niche as a performer. 

After Johnny Carson spurned her for leaving his show, she found herself broke and unemployed and then a widow to boot.  But she picked herself up and began hawking her own jewelry on QVC, as well as creating her new niche as a red carpet interviewer (it was Rivers who invented the now-famous phrase, “Who are you wearing?”)  She likened preparing for the red carpet to “studying for the S.A.Ts,” given all the information about celebrities she had to memorize.  It wasn’t just a fluffy job.

Rivers also told me she continued working, even in her senior years, because she loves to live large: “If I have $1, I’ll spend $1.05,” she said.  That predilection came from her Russian immigrant mother, whose wealthy family had sold fur and bricks to the czarist army.  “She remembered servants carrying big silver platters with pears stuffed with caviar in for dinner,” Rivers recalled in one interview.

But it was a rueful Rivers who responded to my question about why she often riffed in her act about hating old people:  “They remind me of me,” she said with a wistful laugh.

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