Joan Rivers
Aug. 7, 2004 -- In May, Joan Rivers received an honorary doctorate from the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York City. As she stepped forward to acknowledge the tribute, it was where you might expect a legendary woman of 70 to be — on a podium accepting a lifetime achievement award in front of kids who don't quite know who she is.
Except the graduates in the audience of people mostly in their 20s knew exactly who Joan Rivers is — not because they're aware of the career she had long before they were born, but because at an age when a lot of comedians are doing nostalgia shows, she is playing to the kind of young and trendsetting crowds that advertisers and entertainment companies crave.
"I never think about my age," she says, although executives in the entertainment industry do. "They've said, 'Well, you're 70 years old and they're not interested in you any more.' " How dare they?! How dare they tell me college kids aren't interested in what I say? No one should worry about your age."
With several important career moves and a thriving fashion accessory business, she has proved herself right.
To people who grew up in the '90s, Joan Rivers is the woman who does sometimes scathing fashion commentaries with her daughter Melissa on the E! Entertainment Network. Joan has become such a cultural icon — interviewing celebrities as they walk the red carpets that lead into awards ceremonies — that she got an animated cameo showcase in the summer's most popular movie, Shrek 2.
She and Melissa have now parleyed that success into a three-year contract, reportedly worth up to $8 million with the TV Guide Channel.
And this summer, on Wednesday nights, you can again find her working a downtown New York basement nightclub called Fez. It's not far from the hip Greenwich Village clubs where she began her career as a stand-up comic in the 1960s.
"I said to my assistant, 'We're gonna go some place and start at ground zero,' " she said. "A small place where people go, ooh, and I start the act by saying, 'Camera pans in — Old lady on stage. Can it be? My God, Joan Rivers!' "
