It’s not knee-jerk sentimentality about the newly deceased that makes me want to salute her courage. There will be plenty who line up to dismiss her as an incorrigible attention-seeker and even a thoroughly nasty (capitalist and right-wing) piece of work. But Rivers put herself in opprobrium’s way for the sake of principle not pure self-promotion.
Born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn on June 8, 1933 – the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants – she felt driven from an early age to go into show-business, despite parental disapproval, starting out at first as an actress. She remained proud of an early theatre appearance opposite a then unknown Barbra Streisand in a lesbian drama called Driftwood but, inspired by the freewheeling example of Lenny Bruce, it was comedy that claimed her. After playing small downtown clubs she got her big break thanks to guest appearances on The Tonight Show, with host Johnny Carson hailing her as a new star.
She blazed a taboo-busting trail in the mid-60s, at a time of easily offended sensibilities and few outspoken female role-models. It seemed that as she grew older disgracefully (as everyone should), refusing to make way for the next generation, always insisting on her right to go on talking, and to be heard, things came full circle – we needed her again.
Amid a climate of censorious political correctness, her contempt for cravenness was refreshing, her disdain for celebrities a joy. “As recently as August 25 she tweeted to her two million followers: “Celine Dion’s asking $72 million for her Florida home. For that you get 5 bathrooms and the promise of never hearing the Titanic song again.” “You are a tramp, you are a whore, you are disgusting!” I remember her yelling at a hapless female punter at the London Palladium in 2005, outraged that she had a partner and no wedding ring, playing fast and loose with ideas of equality and empowerment. “I despise Obama, I throw up at the name of Hillary, I shudder and get hives at McCain,” she railed during the last presidential election campaign. “They spent half a billion dollars knocking each other instead of taking care of the country. It’s obscene!” If we were outraged by what she said rather than by what she saw then we were missing the point.
She wasn’t scared of dying – what she feared was being ignored; she saw the link between toeing the line and surrendering that most valuable part of yourself, your individuality. Will she endure long in the halls of fame? I think so. When she was over here ahead of her 2008 Edinburgh show she told me “I don’t care about my epitaph” and then, in the same breath, brazen in her comparisons as you’d expect: “You think Vincent van Gogh cares they’re buying his paintings now?”
But her legacy is assured. It’s not just her iconic status – pointing the way for other female comedians to keep their tongues and claws sharp and always at the ready, however old they get. The bare bones of her material looks likely to resist decay too.
Her sense of timing and gift of the gab remained a thing of wonder. And while some of her references may become swiftly obscure, her attitude will remain sharply defined. That voice – rasping, gasping, exclamatory (“Can we talk?” “Oh, come on” “Shuddup!”) – reflected a particular place and identity – New York, Jewish. It’s universal in reach, though; everyone is invited, no one is spared. Rivers was harsh but she was also manifestly – and at times painfully – human: you could easily see past the freakish mask to the fallible, ever-striving soul beneath.
In that interview six years ago, she was far nicer than her reputation suggested: shrewd, polite and down-to-earth, as blessed with wisdom as with wit. One aside of hers has stayed with me, and serves as well as any other to sum up the live-life-to-the-full, grab-every-chance spirit she possessed, and tried to pass on. “I get crazy when people go down memory lane, talking about 'the good old days'” she wailed. “I say 'Are you crazy? These are the good old days! Let's enjoy them."
Read: 100 great jokes by 100 comedians including Joan Rivers
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