Joan Rivers celebrated her 80th birthday on Saturday (I’ll avoid the obvious jokes about the age of the majority of her body). When I was a kid and there was no school the next day, my parents would let me stay up to watch The Tonight Show or, as we all called it, Carson. If Joan Rivers happened to be hosting, my parents would race to change the channel. I loved her back then, though. She was hardly the prim and proper companion to the charming, Midwestern Johnny Carson (Betty White, for example). She was outrageous and overtly New York (the standard euphemism for “Jewish”).
This clip is from one of her Tonight Show monologues in 1984. It’s a time capsule of early 1980s Hollywood, which she skewers along with herself.
I haven’t followed her E! network career, but I did enjoy her appearances on Nip/Tuck. Now, that was inspired casting.
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