Joan Rivers rushes into the library of her quiet Bel Air home, breathlessly dropping a cluster of bracelets on the couch and apologizing for being late. Rivers' 21-year-old daughter, Melissa, has had knee surgery the day before, and Joan is loving the role of ministering mama, even it if does make her late.
People who know the brash and blunt Rivers from her talk-show reign might not recognize this small-boned, almost delicate woman with the husky voice who has managed to triumph over the past three years.Those years saw her publicly fired from her late-night talk show, watched her reviled in a national magazine and witnessed the horror of her husband's suicide.
Not a lot to laugh about. But Rivers says that humor comes from pain. She grew up a chubby, brunette perfectionist - her childhood a constant source of material. She never lost that touch, she says - "I'm still fat, I'm stil dark and I still feel out of place. Whatever scars you have in childhood you carry through life. There's no Retin-A for childhood scars."
Rivers will unpack that salty humor when her syndicated talk show debuts on Sept. 5 (it will air locally Mondays through Fridays at 11 a.m. on Ch. 2). She calls it a "chat" show and says there will be touches of titillating TV. "After all, I want to know if the Elephant Girl goes to college." But there will also be interviews and lot of her patent humor.
Her book-packed library with its needlepoint pillows that say "It's better to be nouveau riche than never to be riche at all" remind you of the strength Rivers has shown through this dark time.
"I'm not strong," she insists. "People say that, and you keep looking behind you wondering who they are talking to. You just have to get through. It's not a question of strength. It's just a question of the alternative - Edgar's alternative - which is not getting through."
Her companion, manager and husband for more than 20 years, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide on Aug. 14, 1987. "Total despair goes through your head,"she says, "and we're still not through. I have a daughter, a terrible blow had come on her head as well as mine. At 19 to have your dad kill himself when you spoke to him that afternoon and he said he was coming home - that's a lot to deal with."
Rivers was back at work three months later as the center square on "Hollywood Squares." She says she didn't have to be too funny and it helped keep her occupied.
Staying occupied has been a way of life for Rivers, who is one of the true hyphenates in the business. She has performed in movies, television and in clubs; she is a screen writer, a movie director, a Vegas headliner and a best-selling author. She is national spokesperson for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and proud winner of both the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year and the Instant Pudding awards from Harvard. (Those are the only awards that she chooses to display.)
After Fox fired her from "The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers" she says she couldn't get arrested in Hollywood. "Every door was shut here," she says, pushing the bracelets over her hand. A dispute with Johnny Carson kept her off the "The Tonight Show" and though she was scheduled to appear on "Late Night with David Letterman," that vehicle is generated by Carson Productions and she soon found herself "unbooked."
That's when Rivers hauled herself back to New York, where she had grown up. And, with characteristic chutzpah, she tried out for a Broadway play. Everybody, including the cast, thought it was a gimmick. But Rivers' appearance in Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" stretched from six weeks to 51/2 months.
Looking back, she says, "I think that `Hollywood Squares' got me to my knees and `Broadway Bound' got me to my feet."
It was a matter of necessity, she says. "I had bills to pay. I have a big house and a gardener, a rose girl, two secretaries, a daughter in college and two other relatives we're sending through college, and I couldn't sit around and wear my widow's weeds."
Rivers' home of 15 years is now up for sale as she painfully cuts still another tie with her past. The most difficult thing now, she says, is living the single life.
"I was invited to Malcolm Forbes' 70th birthday party and I didn't go. I just couldn't handle going alone yet - traveling alone, getting yourself home alone. No one to say to, `Did you see what that one wore?' My daughter had surgery yesterday and I was alone. Oh, people called, but nobody is going to sit with you for seven hours. Nobody. It's very hard."
She pauses a moment and twists the bracelets on her right wrist. "Nobody gets everything in life. And God has given me plenty. No life is 100 percent, circle-perfect."
Then, she laughs. "It's not religion, it's just stupid philosophy."