Joan Rivers had a UK tour planned for the autumn. It was going to be called “Quick, Before They Close The Lid (Seriously, this one could be IT). Alas, it was. Rivers died on Thursday in a New York hospital.
Fortunately, she left strict instructions for her funeral, which will take place in a synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is not known yet whether the Temple Emanu-El will do exactly what Rivers asked for. The dignified terms of a Jewish funeral will no doubt be a suitable way to commemorate her life but there is another way.
“When I die”, Rivers once said, “I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action. I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents . . . I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag. And I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing just like Beyoncé’s.”
From her big break on The Johnny Carson Show in 1965 until her last days as a performer of 81, Joan Rivers was one of those comedians who pushed at the boundary of what can be counted as grounds for humour. She was not averse, for example, to making jokes about the Holocaust in which many of her family members were lost. “The trouble with me”, she once said, “is I make jokes too often. That’s how I get through life.”
She could be acerbic, even cruel. Elizabeth Taylor was upset to hear she had more chins than the Chinese telephone directory. Cindy Crawford would hardly have enjoyed hearing that the way to confuse her was to ask her to spell “mum” backwards. As Joan Rivers readies herself for her own “red carpet show for dead people” the comedy must, by her own demand, go on.