On Sunday a grand old synagogue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side will hold a private funeral for a grand old comedian. The Temple Emanu-El is a colossal limestone building that seats 2,500 people, and the congregation gathering to mourn the death of Joan Rivers is expected to include celebrated figures from the US entertainment industry.
It may not match the expectations of Rivers, however, who died in hospital on Thursday, leaving precise instructions for what was required. “When I die, I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action,” she wrote in her eleventh book, I Hate Everyone... Starting With Me, published in 2012. “I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way.”
If Rabbi Joshua Davidson was wondering what to say, or for how long he ought to speak, he could turn to the directions from Rivers herself. “I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents,” she said. “I don’t want a eulogy; I want Bobby Vinton to pick up my head and sing ‘Mr. Lonely’.”
A spokesman for the synagogue said the funeral arrangements for Rivers could not be discussed, although the comedian’s daughter, Melissa, had expressed the hope that mourners would live up to the spirit of those instructions.
Before she died, Rivers is believed to have ensured her hair and make-up had been done. Ms Rivers said her mother had wanted to “look gorgeous” at her own funeral. “I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want [the American jeweller] 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,” Rivers added in her book.
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Perhaps it would have suited a lifelong contrarian, however, to have a funeral that did not match her expectations, as well as glowing tributes from figures she had mocked so mercilessly. The musician Boy George declared that “a genius has vacated this realm”, while Rivers had previously remarked that he was “all that England needed — another queen who can’t dress”.
She had said producers at the broadcasting network HBO were guilty of “crimes against humanity” for allowing the actress Lena Dunham to remove her clothes so often in her television series Girls. Dunham responded to news of Rivers’ death with a quip: “Joan is gone but a piece of her lives on — her nose, because it’s made of polyurethane.”
It is, though, hard to top Rivers’ own jokes about herself. “I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware,” she once said.
Among the celebrations of her long life and successful career in comedy, the abrupt manner of Rivers’ death was noted by some. Following what was supposed to be a routine throat procedure in a New York clinic. Under anaesthetic, Rivers suffered a cardiac arrest. She died a week later.
The New York State health department said it was investigating the matter. Yorkville Endoscopy clinic did not respond to request for comment but a source told ABC News that no one was suspected of wrongdoing and that the investigation was routine. A source close to the family told the New York Daily News that they were considering legal proceedings against the clinic.
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Rivers’ friend Harry Schliff spoke for many. “’Most people in their 80s, when they pass you think they had a good life,” he told the New York Daily News. “Joan had another 80 years ahead of her.”
Rivers’ s longtime spokeswoman Judy Katz said her funeral would be private, and asked well-wishers to make donations to an HIV charity, to Guide Dogs for the Blind or to the grief counselling service Our House Grief Support Centre.