Trump's (Trump Shuttle inflight magazine, Aug. 1990) By Frank Lovece
Comments
Content
I
:=
;
E
oan Rivers has left
L.A.
beNew sec-
hind. "l'm happier
in
a
York," she says, without
ond's hesitation" in that famil-
iar whiskey-sour voice.
o'Iom
much more carefree." It's the
city's o'serendipity," as
calls it.
she
"You walk out your door,
you don't know who you're gonna meet, whatos gonua
happen.
L.A.,
you get in your
car. you drive to you r appoi ntment, you have your appointment, you
get back in your car, you drive home.
,'i
ilr !r ;.'l*r'
i:
il"r; ::i.li
By
You knaa your day. In New York." she
Frank
Lovece
observeso
a little awe-struck, 'oyou
You don't
really. . . never. . know.
you're
know even if you're gonna get there,
if
in a traffic jarn. So. I like it
much better. Just the intellectual
stimulation is all New York. L. A. is so laid back. I find New York to be a big
village. I talk to everybody and they
all talk back to me. I know every door-
man.
I
know all the Cristede's de-
Iiverymen, I feel aery comfortable in
New York. And I never do atrywhere.
"
Not that New York hasn't done its fabled bit to stymie that. "My apartment is like St. John the Divine." she
riffs. "They've been building
tl-rat for
I l0years. I think I have the same con-
tractor
After laving out a siz-
able sum for an apartment on Fifth
Avenue, Rivers
still
has the same
problem as any New Yorker who has
ever renovaled an apartmenl.
"Very upsetting, uery upsetting,o'
she iaments, no longer joking. "It's,
50
TRUMP'S
AUGUSTl99O
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HER SHARP WIT HAS HELPED HER CUT THR(IUGH THE T(IUGH TIMES. N(lW, SHE TELIS US, SHE IS AT H(IME IN NEW Y(}RK ANI! WITH HERSETF
RI VERS'EDGE
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.*&::;i:;:*t:
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JOAN RIVERS
like, cutting
corner and cutting a corner and doing theleastamount of work." Afterrenovations began to drag on, and she started complaining about it on her show, just-plain-folks frorn Iowa and elsewhere began sending her pictures of their own renovation horrors.
a
bought the paint, my own roller, and painted it." She was dressed in her 'ochic painting outfit,'o of course.
"I have an outfit for everything, thank youo'o she jokes. "My chic painting outfit is totally different
from the gardening outfit." Rivers loves gardening. It's "very relaxing. You can stay outside, stand like a fool, andwater.o'
ivers returned
to her New
York roots in
l9BB, after 15 years in Los Angeles, to create
her syndicated Joan
Riuers Shout. The day-
time show is
more
trademark caustic than
her shortlived
nered four
late-
night show on Fox. In
its first year it has garDaytime
Emmy Award nominations, including one for Joan herself as Out-
standing
Talk
Show
And Rivers discovered-or rather,
ered-that nobody makes it in
fight.
ooNever
rediscov-
New York without a
Host. Though up in the ratings, the show, produced by Tribune Entertainment, is shifting this fall from WCBS to WNBC in the New York metropolitan
market.
oolt's'She's
o'Why'd you don't take me seriously. It comes down to, put that in?''Well, we put it in'cause we thought it was better there.' 'So why didn't you oslc me?' " she
mind clout and celebrity," she says flatly. a widow, and she's a woman,'and so they
says
in an angry stage whisper,
oo
ol'm paying the
Rivers doesn't mean to do schtick off-stage. She probably doesnot even know she's doing it. It's like Croucho Marx once complained-no matter how hard he tried to be brusque or impatient in public,
people always found him funny.
ooStrangers
check.' " Then, suddenly, it's showtime again. Rivers admits to having "the nicest painter who will neuer leave. He comes over weekends, too." She starts to
enumerate her renovation problem: "I have the loudest air-conditioner in the history of America' I have things that don't dry, things that are rotting, floors that are broken . . . ." Sowhy did she buy the place? "Because it had suchpotential. ." Since the late 7 Days did a story on Rivers and her co-op board, she says, "W'e've made a lot more peace now. It's just that everybody in the building wants to be nice but everybody has different ideas of what nice is. Everybody thinks they're right, and that's ridiculous, because I'm right! I just do things myself lately. I wanted my hallway painted, and I'm not gonna go up in front of the board and beg.
expect me to be funny and snippy and
ool
go to somebody's snappy,o' she remonstrates. house for dinner, and they're waiting for one wisecrack after the nexto and what they get is what you're
seeing, and they're aery disappointed. They say, 'WeIl, Joanwill talk. She'll be funny at this end of the table.'And then I go in and I don't do a damn thing."
Then, with perfect timing: ool'm not invited back to a lot ofplaces." What she's doing dining with strangers is 'owhat a single lady does, unfortunately, in New York: You get invited and you go." She was photographed at this or that soir6e with a New York realtor for a while, and, ool she says, saw one other man I had a very serious fling with. And that's''over with. Unfortunately. But iros rner with, and that's that." So: Joan's available.
I just
"H"y,"
she cracks,
oogive
'er a try!"
(corurrNutio oN recr: 82)
52
TRUMP'S
AUGUSTIggO
loan Rivers
(corlrrNuro rnoru pecn 52)
One could do worse. She's success-
[ul, smart, funny, and neurotic - in a way that is like pheromones to a New
Yorker. herWest 57th Street offices just down from CBS Broadcast Center, it's the late
t
friends. I neverstay gloomy at home at night; there's always someone I can have fun with. And the rest," she
best way to break from the service-for12 set. By 1965 she had made her way
says, shrugging, 'ofollows or it
doesn't."
Carson's Tonight Shout, where he anointed her on the air.
ooGod,
to Johnny
youore funny," he said. "You're
Rivers recalls last June's Tony Awards, where she was a presenter.
She had caught sight ofher bust in the
going to be a star."
show starring Joan Rivers. A meeting with some producers and bookers has begun late and is running later. In the outer office, a writer patiently waits a half-hour past the appointed time to interview her. And over at her Fifth Avenue triplex, contractors are waiting as well. If all the world's a stage, then Joan Rivers is il Pagliaccio. If comedy is in-
monitor and said 'o'Whoa! I look like Bernadette Peters! What has happened
here!"'
've been able to stay alive in the business for a long timeo" she muses, on the question of whether o'There's a big differshe's a success.
ence between being a success and be-
:MY APARTMENT IS LIKE ST. JOHN THE DIV|NETt RIVERS RIFFS. 6THEY'VE BEEN BUILDING THAT FOR I loveens. I THINK I HAVE THE SAME
CONTRACTOR.
ing in the business for a long time.
And I've been up and I've been down and I think I'm on the ascent again.
deed the obverse of tragedy, the
much-beleaguered comedienne may be the funniest woman alive. In a career that spans three decades, from the end ofthe fifties to the edge of the nineties, River's has sur-
"One of the reasons I did Comir Relief was because I said, 'That's enough! I'm not the grand old lady of comedy here! I'm as current as any
one of you!'
o'
She has done everything, but only one time each-directed one movie
'
(Rabbit Test, 7978), co-created one
vived a decathlon of personal and public crises. There was the climb to
establish herself as a comic; her wellknown public fray with her mentor and, she thought, her friend, Johnny Carson; the suicide of her manager/ second husband, Edgar Rosenberg; and her battle with Fox Broadcasting that ended her Late Show,the putative anchor ofthe fledgling network, seven months into her three-year, $10-million contract. In the gratingly cheery world of press-kit bios, hers begins ooMy whole career has with the quote, just hard, hurting, little steps." been But she has survived. "Not tragic. Not tragic," she insists today, in the compact office she shares with her beloved Yorkie, Spike. She's just taken a call from her 22-year-old daughter Melissa, a California college grad,
The exasperation, of course, is
mock. Rivers, both in her act and in her 1986 autobiography, Erter Talk-
TV series (Husbands, Wiaes and Looers, 1978), and starred in one TV movie (How to Murder a Millionaire,
1990) and one cable speci al(JoanRiaers
ing,has gone on and on about stories like: "Another time at the beach I was wearing a little robe and when I took it off to go swimming, the blind date oOh, my God."' To describe hersaid,
seH from childhood
[and FriendsJ Salute HeidiAbromaShe has written, however,
witz,l9BS).
to college
days
three best-sellers: Haaing a Baby Can B e a Scream (197 4), The Life and, Hard T imes of Heid.i Abromowitz (l 984), and the autobiography. ivers tells a story:
ool
she uses words like fat and ugly. "That's heridea," her mother once indignantly told reporter. No doubt the anguish of going dateless much of the
a
was in
mourning and we went to
Greece, my daughter and I.
time was realo but too, what comedian ever got mileage out of claiming to be good-looking?
Joan Molinsky was born
And, like, my husband was dead l0
days, and we were sitting in a caf6, and this kid came up to me and came on to me, and said, 'I want to go to Paris.
in Brook-
with whom she has a close girl-girl rapport. Rivers hangs up with momentary serenity on herface.
Iyn, and when she was nine, her doctor father and housewife mother joined the upwardly mobile exodus out of the city. They settled in Larchmont, New York. "In Westchester," Rivers once riffed in her act, practi'cally between clenched teeth, o'they
Are you going to Paris?' I said, 'No! Co away!'He's, like, I should take him to Paris! Is he out of his mind?!" Doing a o''I would lothroaty voiceo she says oueto gotoParis with you!' " No, she decides. Joan Rivers, at homgin New York and with herself, is
It surfaces again later when she don't say your name, they say what you tells you, 'oI have a very good life, a gave: 'This is service-for-12.' " Next to running away and joining aery good lifc. And I have a lot ofa few," she amends-oovery good, the circus, being an actress was the
82
TRUMP'S
AUGUSTl99O
notlookingforatrophyguy. v
Frank Louece is a syndbated columnist
andauthon
TR [j
THE MAGAZI E
OF
HE POW ER CORRIDOR
Joarr Rivers,
lV|
New
l+J
V
IN
D-0
with her Yorkie. Spike, r'ears
Karl Lagerfeld from Barneys
York.
Srylist: David Dangle, Hair: Robert Chiu. Makeup: Mark
Sanchez.
Photographed for TRUMP'S by
Ken Nahoum.
THE ORTGTNALS/ 14 They Do It With Style, Su-bstance, and Character
This month: Dominick Dunne, chronicler of New York's social scene, has people looking for the cl6s inhis romans by Jeffrey Ferry Barack Obama is the first African-American to be placed in charge of the prestigious oHarvard Law Review' by Maureen Dezell
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ON THE COVER/sO
Rivers'Edge
Her sharp wit has helped her cut through the tough times. Now, she tells us, she is at home in New York and with herself by Frank Lcnece
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