[Magdalen] Joan Rivers, 81

[Scott Knitter]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Ann Markle <ann.markle at aya.yale.edu> wrote:
> Interesting how she is loved and lionized.  I don't care for her, never
> did, and especially not her plastic face, which she seemed to find pretty,
> but I found unattractive to the point of scary (think the hockey mask in
> "Halloween").  I honestly don't get it.  I know she was one of the
> "breakthrough" female comedians, but there were others (like Phyllis Diller
> and Carol Burnett) who were actually funny.  Obviously others' mileage
> varies considerably from mine.

I've often thought her hilarious, and I saw her live when I attended
The Tonight Show in Burbank, California, when she guest-hosted (guests
were Daniel J. Travanti of Hill Street Blues...cue the theme; Lee
Greenwood to introduce his new song God Bless the USA; Garry Shandling
as her "Ed McMahon"). Her jokes during commercial breaks were often
funnier than when the tape was rolling (the show was done at 5:30 p.m.
Pacific time and aired two hours later, at 11:30 Eastern/10:30
Central, in those two time zones).

I thought her longer face looked fine...unique, but fine, and very
expressive. Obviously she didn't agree and chose to have the
manufactured look in which she seemed not able to smile fully. "A
visitor in her own face," as they say.

There's a good documentary about her that shows both the glamorous and
not-so-glamorous aspects of her life and career. I seem to remember
that she produced it, or something...or was simply cooperative about
the honest portrayal. For example, we get to see her without her
makeup, in her early-morning grumpyness, donning sunglasses before
paging through her schedule book ("I'd be blinded by all the white
space!"). And trudging off to perform wherever they would hire her,
like in a far-flung casino in the frozen tundra of northern Wisconsin.
There we see her heckled by a man offended by her joke about Helen
Keller--he said, "You wouldn't joke about her if you had a child who's
deaf and blind like I do." She laid into him with a vulgar rant. I
suppose she felt that would keep the show going rather than stopping
to bring the house down and meekly apologize. (And surely the man
should not have been surprised, even if hurt.) There are other
comedians who might have handled it with more class or perhaps just
quickly apologized and moved on, talking to the heckler individually
later. But she turned the air blue, basically, and attacked him with
much name-calling. That's the part of her personality I didn't love,
along with the self-centeredness in general.

-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA