HOW
Joan Rivers MOVED ON
T
he year was 1986 and Joan Rivers was playing sold-out shows all across America. Her new book, Enter Talking had just been released and she was a permanent guest host on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. After decades of hard work, she had finally become a superstar. She couldn’t know that in the coming years, her shining life in the spotlight would take a tragic turn, stripping her of it all. She had fame and fortune, the job of her dreams, a loyal husband, a loving child, and a lavish estate. Not only had Rivers succeeded as a comedian, but she had made history on the newly launched FOX Network as television’s first and only female late-night talk show host. In May 1987, the First Lady of Comedy was fired from her job, and publicly humiliated. Her husband, Edgar was unable to bear his own failure as her manager and producer and sadly, took his own life. They’d been married for 22 years.
8
The worst was yet to come for Rivers. Reeling with grief and rage, she discovered she was broke. After earning millions of dollars and living a life of baroque luxury, she was unaware her husband had squandered her wealth on bad investments. She was $37 million in debt, and her opportunities for making more money had vanished. Their daughter, Melissa, blamed her mother for his death and at the Bel-Air mansion where five telephone lines once buzzed relentlessly, the phone never rang. Nobody wanted to hire her as an entertainer. Suicide wasn’t funny, and her husband’s tragic death turned her into a professional pariah. Even her social life evaporated. No one invited her to anything. As her 55th birthday approached, she couldn’t see any reason to keep on living. It was hard enough for young women to succeed in show business, but for an aging has-been, the prospect
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