Much has been written about standup comic Joan Rivers after her recent tragic death. However, not many people know about the tragedies she dealt with in life. For example, after she was fired from her own late night talk show, and the subsequent suicide of her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, she became severely depressed.
She discussed her reaction to these events in her books and interviews. At first, she said she fell into despair. Then she started feeling guilty. Why didn’t she insist on Edgar seeing a therapist? How could she miss the signs?
Finally, guilt turned into anger. In fact, both Rivers and her daughter, Melissa found themselves lashing out at one another. Who else could they blame? Edgar wasn’t around, so out of desperation they blamed everyone else including themselves.
Then, Rivers focused her anger on Edgar. She wondered how he could have done this to Melissa? She was devastated. Rivers was so angry, she kicked his desk until she broke a toe. Then, frustrated, she started going through his medicine cabinet, tossing “a flying pharmacy” out the window.
She went through a period of writing angry letters (commenting that even angry letters could have style). She and Melissa were coached by Rivers friend Woody Allen to go into therapy. There she learned that everybody grieves differently. The first rule of survival, she’d say in later routines, was there are no rules!
As a child, like most standup comics, she craved attention. She also had a built in audience at her father’s office, where she became addicted to laughter at an early age. Her craving for attention, and laughs, never faltered, even in the midst of her depression.
After being fired off her own show, Rivers couldn’t find work. She’d been blackballed by Johnny Carson, who had asked her to be his permanent guest host, then froze her out when she left for her own show. She considered suicide herself, but couldn’t go through with in because of the pain it would inflict on Melissa.
Eventually, she told herself what she told many audiences along the way, to “Grow up!” She had a daughter to raise, and was in debt. She threw herself into writing jokes, even about Edgar. Rivers recalled how she was out to dinner with Melissa one night, and commented that if Daddy were here to see the prices, he’d kill himself all over again.
Poor taste? Yes. But to her, it was a well-crafted joke. And if it was funny, it didn’t matter if it was offensive. She lived to make jokes. If anyone complained, she’d just say, “Oh, Grow up!”
That was her approach to surviving life’s setbacks, and, no doubt, to recovering from depression; “Get over yourself! Grow up!” She was a tough-talking acerbic, sometimes self-deprecating, always outspoken New Yorker. That attitude and her perverse work ethic (together with therapy) got her and Melissa through the dark days.
When she and Melissa were still at odds, Rivers remembered in an interview, they did something so astonishingly stupid; they made a TV movie about themselves coping with Edgar’s death. And, they played themselves. Rivers reflected, that after walking through hell all over again, on camera, in that tacky, made-for-TV psychodrama it somehow mended them.
Rivers’ “Get over it!” attitude and hard work paid off. She soon had her own daytime talk show which won her an Emmy. She also played Broadway as the lead in a play about Lenny Bruce’s stripper-turned whorehouse-running mother, “Sally Marr… and Her Escorts. She was nominated for a Tony.
Other projects followed, including her Academy Award Red Carpet snark-fests, “Fashion Police,” and even a reality show starring her and Melissa. It seemed she never gave up trying to find her daughter a job. Amazingly, she stayed in top form, and continued to be funny and relevant well into her 80s, something very few comics have ever been able to accomplish.
Listed here are a few resources for survivors of suicide:
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For suicide survivors: www.forsuicidesurvivors.com
- Suicide survivors.org: www.suicidesurvivors.com
- Surviving suicide: www.survivingsuicide.com
Image credit: Joan Rivers 2010 – David Shankbone CC BY 2.0