Can we talk more about Joan?
EVERYTHING to laugh with and cry about is in the soon-due book “Joan Rivers Confidential.” Subtitle: “The unseen scrapbooks, joke cards, personal files, and photos of a very funny woman who kept everything.” Co-authors are daughter Melissa Rivers and Joan’s p.r. buddy
Scott Currie. They report: “Childhood insecurities” begat 564 “Parents hated me” jokes.
Like: “I was born ugly. After the doctor slapped me, then nurses took a shot” . . . “My first birthday present was luggage” . . . “Bath toys? They gave me a toaster and a radio” . . . “My childhood memory was them loosening the wheels on my stroller” . . . “When I wet the bed, my mother bought me an electric blanket” . . . “They’d take me to the subway and throw candy bars on the tracks.”
Joan Molinsky Rosenberg threw out nothing. Kept is a 1938 Brooklyn Ethical Culture School teacher report stating her “keen desire to succeed. She enjoys recognition.” Kept is a nursery school play that formed her thinking that “fat or thin, rich or poor, a theatrical career makes you a fairy princess.”
Age 8, she stole a “Your Career in Show Business” library book. She memorized it and thus began her “tunnel vision.” In the intro, Melissa “swimming in boxes and boxes” of Joan’s stuff, ponders the task of examining 55 boxes plus more in unair-conditioned storage plus a separate Bubble Wrapped sealed cache labeled “‘Tonight Show’ 1960s to 1986.” Says p.r. guy Scott: “After starting to work on this last August, I went down a whole dress size.” We who spoke at her funeral — Deborah Norville, Howard Stern, me — plus a chorus line who knew and loved Joan enormously — cohost the launch party.