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!' "

She is succeeding in youth-oriented venues because she is a tenacious woman who carefully analyzes her comedy and the changes it has demanded over more than 40 years.

"My comedy is different, I'm different. I was always outrageous and I was always cutting-edge. But what was cutting-edge then is sweet now. So the audiences have come a long way, but I've come along with the audiences."

For example, when she first started playing nightclubs, and Ed Sullivan introduced her as "Little Joan Rivers," she made a 1967 appearance on Sullivan's Sunday night variety show when she was pregnant with her daughter Melissa. But, she says, she wasn't allowed to use the word 'pregnant.'

"I had to say, 'Soon, Mr. Sullivan, you will hear the pitter-patter of little feet.' "

Coping = Comedy

To maintain her comic persona in these times, Joan says, the cutting edge has to go much deeper. She gets laughs on issues such as the ones she imagines are faced by Paris Hilton's parents. "Those poor people! To have your daughter do a porno at a Marriott Hotel!"

Rivers sees young audiences as having come of age in much greater turmoil than the ones she first entertained. Consequently, she'll even joke about terrorism.

"Terrorists are ugly. If they were attractive, I would listen to them. OK, let's come to the table, let's talk, I'll wear a nice dress. … Have you ever seen a good-looking terrorist and gone, 'I wonder if he's got a brother?' "

The state of the world has always contributed to her comedic approach. Now, she says, "It's frightening and it's angry and it's confused and, yes, that's what comedy is too. That's why you can talk about everything now and they will come with you. But isn't that what comedy should be? It should be taking something that is so painful that we can barely look at it and making it palatable and making it funny, by making it funny, it's OK."

"This whole country can't deal with death. And I do a lot of death in my act … I talk about death and my dog … I talk about my husband's suicide. And I think that's because we're all so frightened that death is, literally, maybe this afternoon for all of us."

Melissa says that her mother's way of "coping through everything" is comedy. "So much disillusionment walked into her world, that I think she really tapped into that."

Before the suicide of Joan's husband and Melissa's father, Edgar Rosenberg, in 1987, Joan had a career that was protected in many ways, according to Melissa.

"My dad allowed my mom to stay in some form of adult adolescence, you know, there was no pressure … All she had to do was create, and write, and be funny, and the rest of the world was kept at bay. That's all she had to do."

Rosenberg committed suicide after a business setback and during a period of marital strife. Joan believes the career she had built up to that time was destroyed, and that the suicide was an act of abandonment.

"I'm still angry. People come up to me and say, 'Oh, you'll get to heaven and you'll meet Edgar.' Oh, no, I won't. I don't ever want to see him again. I'm not interested. What he did to me, what he did to my daughter — what suicide does to the people who are left behind! I hope he's calm. I hope he's rested. But I don't want to go into eternity with him. I'm still too angry."

The suicide also created a well-known estrangement between Joan and Melissa. "It was very hard in the beginning," Joan said, "because she blamed me."

"I disagreed with how our relationship was handled," said Melissa. "I disagreed with the level of panic she went into. But it wasn't happening to me. It wasn't my career disappearing."

"I think we both hit really rock bottom about a year afterwards," Joan said. "And then … we realized, we're it. We are the family. We're very close, now."

Puncturing Star Egos

Among the biggest factors in rejuvenating Joan's career were the red carpet appearances she began making in the mid-'90s with Melissa. She punctured egos the way she always did in her standup comedy. The difference was — for a new generation — now it was live and in person.

For instance, she complained loudly and bluntly when she thought actor Kevin Costner had given his fianc&eacut;e an undersized engagement ring. "He must have convinced her, put this in the sun, it will grow," she said.

Does she care whether people are upset with her, or is it just part of the act?

"Of course you care," Joan says, "But my job is — the minute I hit the red carpet — to say what I think to the people that are watching me. I'm a critic. That's what I turn into."

It may surprise some of her targets to know that she admits to being thin-skinned. She says that people say things that hurt her, "All the time. Loudmouth. Vulgarian. Oh, God, yes, constantly."

"She's exceptionally thin skinned," Melissa says. "And it's interesting, because she'll never let it show until she gets home."

Joan deflects a lot of criticism by making herself the butt of her jokes, including jokes about the plastic surgery she's had.

In her speech accepting the honorary doctorate from the Pratt Institute, she told the graduates, "Do you know how thrilled I am, because as a doctor now, I can get a professional discount for plastic surgery!"

She says she began to talk about her plastic surgery because other stars who have undergone it denied they had facial work. Joan says she has had "One big face lift, you know, a big job. And then, I tweak. I will go in for the botox. I will say, 'This is not looking good on camera. Could we just pull that up?' "

Joan is also, by her own account, constantly insecure about her career. If the comedy doesn't work, she has Joan Rivers Worldwide, a business which has generated more than $500 million in overall sales of cosmetics, jewelry and fashion accessories. She markets her products extensively through appearances on QVC, and estimates that she spends about 60 per cent of her time on her growing enterprise.

"She won't accept that she's successful," Melissa says. "She won't accept that she's beautiful. She won't accept that she's a legend. She won't accept any of that. I think if she accepts it, she's scared she'll stop fighting to keep going."

What's missing in her life, Joan says, is a companion. But the most important thing is "making sure my daughter's gonna be OK. She's [divorced] and that's a tough time for her. And of course, my grandson. And those are my two priorities."

When Joan plays grandmother to Melissa's son, Cooper, "You cannot imagine the chaos that goes on," Melissa says. "I'll come down and she'll be trying to feed him Cool Whip for breakfast. And I'll say, 'Mom, you cannot do that. He has to eat better food.' And literally, not like three hours later, she'll say, 'You know, Melissa, he doesn't have a very good diet.' Really? Call me surprised! You just gave him Cool Whip for breakfast!"