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CNN SPOTLIGHT

CNN SPOTLIGHT: Joan Rivers

Aired September 6, 2014 - 19:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNNY CARSON, COMEDIAN: Will you welcome, please, Joan Rivers.

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): For 50 years.

JOAN RIVERS, ENTERTAINER: You are not the one to interview a person who does humor. Sorry.

TURNER: Fearless.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Are we serious?

J. RIVERS: It's no big deal to have a woman in the White House. John F. Kennedy had a thousand of them.

TURNER: And funny.

J. RIVERS: No man has ever put his hands up a woman's dress looking for a library card.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: Rebounding.

J. RIVERS: If you laugh at it, you can deal with it.

TURNER: And reinventing.

J. RIVERS: You want brutal honesty?

TURNER: On the red carpet.

J. RIVERS: I'm not going to say anything nasty. She came in an egg. And some people will do anything to not have to speak to Ryan Seacrest.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: At her kitchen counter.

J. RIVERS: You know how you get a man's respect?

MELISSA RIVERS, DAUGHTER OF JOAN J. RIVERS: How?

J. RIVERS: Naked. TURNER: Out front and in the spotlight, where she always liked

it best.

CNN SPOTLIGHT: "Joan Rivers."

J. RIVERS: Can we talk?

Joan Rivers could always talk.

J. RIVERS: Do you know what it's like to go in the morning to take off a facial mask and realize you're not wearing one? Oh, you don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: With sometimes outrageous jokes, nothing was ever off- limits.

J. RIVERS: I hate old people. Oh. If you are (EXPLETIVE DELETED) old, get up and get out of here right, right now.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: Born in 1933, Rivers says even as she was growing up in the New York suburbs, she wanted to be an actress.

J. RIVERS: I never had a choice. I always say, it's like a nun's calling.

TURNER: But her show business career didn't start until she was 24 years old. The Phi Beta Kappa graduate with Barnard with one failed marriage behind her moved out of her parents' home and tried to get a job as an actress.

And while her acting career didn't take off right away, she got her first break writing for the puppet Topo Gigio on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Give me a kiss good night.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: And joined the iconic Second City comedy theater in 1961.

LARRY KING, FORMER HOST, "LARRY KING LIVE": When you started, though, it was tougher. Women -- comediennes were rare.

J. RIVERS: They were rare, and they didn't want to listen to you. I think it's easier now, because I would come on stage, and they just didn't want to hear what I had to say.

KING: Yes. You had to be great, right?

J. RIVERS: You had to take -- you had to be stronger. And of all my group, and I never realized it until afterwards, I was the last to break through. And my group was Pryor and Carlin and Woody Allen.

KING: That's right.

J. RIVERS: I never cooked when I was single because I figured if the lord wanted a woman to cook, he would give her aluminum hands.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: As her comedy career was taking off, she married producer Edgar Rosenberg in 1964, who would manage her career and become the focus of so many of his wife's jokes.

J. RIVERS: I moved -- my husband's name is Edgar. I moved into Edgar's apartment, which was a mistake, and because it's a man's apartment, very masculine, a lot of leather and chains.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: The pair had one daughter together, Melissa.

J. RIVERS: We had a rule that I never was away more than five days ever from the baby, as we used to call Melissa. I flew through the night so I could be a Scout mother, make the meetings. I wouldn't wear that lousy outfit, but I was still a Scout mother.

KING: So, you were -- no matter you were -- you were Vegas, you would come home?

J. RIVERS: I would come home. Yes. I was always -- I thought it was always there. And when I wasn't, Edgar was. There was always a parent in the house.

TURNER: In 1965, Rivers saw her career get a huge boost when she appeared on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" for the first time.

J. RIVERS: He gave all of us our starts. My life changed. I went on the show the first time, seven years of struggling, coming out of Second City. And on the air, he said, you're going to be a star. And the next day, my life was different.

TURNER: It was the start of a 21-year professional relationship with Carson and the show. She made regular appearances, eventually becoming the show's substitute host in 1983.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's Joan Rivers!

TURNER: But Rivers' decision to launch her own show on the brand-new FOX network in the fall of 1986, becoming the first and only woman to host a network nightly talk show, ended her relationship with Carson and "The Tonight Show."

J. RIVERS: He should have been proud. I finally at the -- after my contract was up, done, I took another job. Everybody -- Cosby did. David Brenner did. We all did. We all went on.

I think because I was a woman, he never thought I would leave. Or maybe -- maybe he liked me better. But the minute I became competition, it became out to kill me, out to kill me. And that's what came down forever. Never spoke to me again.

TURNER: The show was canceled in 1987. Just a few months later, Rivers' husband, Edgar, committed suicide in a Philadelphia hotel room.

J. RIVERS: I was in the hospital, and some idiot called the house and they said, where's your mother? Somebody from Philadelphia. And Melissa said, she's not here. And they said, well, please tell her your father killed himself. How is that for a phone call?

TURNER: Rivers regrouped by doing what she always did, putting her life out in the open.

KING: Is there any area you would not go to?

J. RIVERS: No. If I think I want to talk about it, then it's right to talk about. And I purposely go into areas that people are still very sensitive and smarting about.

KING: Why?

J. RIVERS: If you laugh at it, you can deal with it. I -- that's how I have lived my whole life. If I swear to you -- and I'm Jewish -- if I were in Auschwitz, I would have been doing jokes just to make it OK for us.

I will show you fear. That's fear. If my book ever looked like this, it would mean that nobody wants me, that everything I ever tried to do in life didn't work, nobody cared, and I have been totally forgotten.

TURNER: Her career surged again when her withering take on red carpet fashion full of biting remarks and celebrity put-downs exposed her to a whole new group of fans.

J. RIVERS: Yes, you have to wear dead animals, because I tried, and live ones bite. You must wear dead animals.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: And in 2010, she felt she was at the top of her game.

J. RIVERS: I think I'm working the best I have ever worked now, because I -- it's all been done to me. What are they going to do? Are they going to fire me? I have been fired. Audiences are not going to like me? A lot of audiences have not liked me. I have been bankrupt. My husband has committed suicide. I mean, it's OK.

TURNER: Coming up, Rivers gets real about life and death.

J. RIVERS: If anything happens, Melissa -- no, but I'm no chicken. I have had a great life, an amazing life. If I died this morning, nobody would say, so young.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

J. RIVERS: The neighbors would come over, and they would say to my mother, how's Joan? Still not married?

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: And my mother would say, if she were alive, you know how that hurts when you're sitting right there?

TURNER (voice-over): Joan Rivers' favorite jokes were about Joan Rivers, on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

J. RIVERS: When I was 21, my mother said, only a doctor for you. When I was 22, she said, all right, a lawyer, CPA; 24, she said, well, grab a dentist; 26, she said anything.

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: If he can make to it the door, he was mine, you know? What do you mean you don't like him? He is intelligent. He found the bell himself. What do you want?

(LAUGHTER)

CARSON: Would you welcome, please, Joan Rivers.

TURNER: From an early appearance on "The Sammy Davis Jr. Show."

J. RIVERS: I never cooked when I was single because I figured if the lord wanted a woman to cook, he would give her aluminum hands.

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON": Oh my goodness, Joan.

J. RIVERS: I'm so sorry I'm late.

TURNER: To her comeback with Jimmy Fallon five decades later.

J. RIVERS: This is so embarrassing. I have to sit on this. And I will explain this to you. I'm sorry. I'm so embarrassed.

FALLON: You don't have to be embarrassed. Tell me what -- why?

J. RIVERS: Well, coming back, I wanted to write -- it's very special for me to be back, seriously, very, very special.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

J. RIVERS: So my girlfriend and I decided we would get matching vagina rings just like to collaborate.

(LAUGHTER) J. RIVERS: And...

FALLON: To celebrate the moment.

J. RIVERS: Celebrate the moment.

FALLON: I appreciate that, you and your girlfriend.

J. RIVERS: Yes. And mine is killing me. But, apparently, I spoke to Bruce Jenner, and her's is fine.

(LAUGHTER)

FALLON: No.

TURNER: Rivers built a landmark career in comedy, the job she said she always wanted.

J. RIVERS: I love performing. It's like a drug for me. I love what I do. When I could put two thoughts together as a child, I knew that's what I wanted to do.

I am so thrilled to be here. I just want you to know that.

TURNER: Her secret? Saying out loud things others would not.

J. RIVERS: Oh, when I was in labor, when I was having my child, I screamed. When I was having my child, ahh! And that was just during conception.

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: I hate old people. I say I hate, hate -- oh, the bodies? The bodies? Enjoy your bodies now. Oh. Out of brassiere, this is how I go to the bathroom. It is just...

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: If I had your figure, I would have stayed single. You want to know something? Can we talk?

Can we talk, really, when I look at it, it's really what I say to my audiences all the time, because I make my audiences face reality and face truth.

And you will say something and then you will just go, can we talk here? Are we going to tell it, which is like saying, are we going to tell the truth or not?

I bought the book "The Joy of Sex," OK? And I got -- did you read that chapter 11, where you wrap yourself totally in Saran wrap? And I lay -- oh, yes, great. I lay down on the dining room table. When my husband came home, he says, leftovers again?

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: Oh, you don't know.

TURNER: Her wicked humor may have caused her trouble. But as she told comedian Louis C.K., laughter was also her lifeline.

J. RIVERS: I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn't get better. You get better. It isn't easy. I have gone up, I have gone down, I have been bankrupt, I have been broke. But you do it, and you do it because -- because we love it more than anything else.

TURNER: Bankrupt, broke, Rivers had been through everything, including her husband's suicide.

J. RIVERS: Oh, I'm still angry at my husband. I will never forgive him. It's 12 years. People say, oh, you will go heaven, you will meet Edgar. I said, I will kill him.

KING: Because?

J. RIVERS: Because what he did to our daughter, because what he did to us, because what he did to our lives.

TURNER: Though life wasn't easy, Rivers always seemed to find a way to make it funny.

JOY BEHAR, CNN HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: Well, how much have you actually had done?

J. RIVERS: Two full face-lifts.

BEHAR: Yes?

J. RIVERS: And then little bitty, bitties.

BEHAR: Tweaking?

J. RIVERS: Tweaking. Like, I have a very good friend, Steven Hoffman (ph) in California. And I will say, what do you think, Steve? Tell me the truth. And he will say, wait another year, wait two years. Or they will say, oh, my God, get in here tonight.

TURNER: As a fashion critic for E! News, she took aim at how other people looked.

J. RIVERS: I love Rihanna. I think she can do no wrong. But why the green lips? It looks like she just (EXPLETIVE DELETED) the Grinch.

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: Talk about Christmas (EXPLETIVE DELETED) early. I have not seen lips that green since Miss Piggy got out of the back seat of Kermit's car.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: Doing stand-up, she was certified funny. She was irreverent.

J. RIVERS: Oh, oh, children on an airplane. Lady, lady. Where is Casey Anthony when you need her?

TURNER: And irrepressible.

J. RIVERS: Angelina Jolie, if I could make just one person happy with my charity works, I will die content. I thought, easy, give Jennifer Aniston back her husband.

TURNER: And absolutely nothing was off-limits.

J. RIVERS: At this age, Larry, listen, my friends are dropping like flies. I wear black always just in case I get a quick call.

TURNER: As for her own mortality, Rivers was unafraid, as she told her daughter, Melissa, on their reality show.

J. RIVERS: So, listen, all right, if anything happens, Melissa -- no, but I'm no chicken. I have had a great life, an amazing life. If I died this morning, nobody would say, so young.

You're a terrific person. Cooper's fine. You're all fine. I have had an amazing life. And if something happens, things are fine and life is fine.

TURNER: When we come back, how Joan Rivers changed everything.

KATHY GRIFFIN, COMEDIAN: She blazed a trail obviously for me, all the girls, and in the face of so much adversity.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

J. RIVERS: Joan Rivers.

TURNER (voice-over): Stand-up comic, late-night host.

J. RIVERS: Are you married? How many kids?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Six.

J. RIVERS: Six? Oh, God.

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: One by one or a litter?

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: Red carpet diva. This is how we knew Joan Rivers.

J. RIVERS: Marie Osmond, she makes Mother Teresa look like a slut.

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: The laughs made her a legend.

J. RIVERS: Where is your diamond? Oh, there it is. I'm sorry. Poor bitch.

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: But her groundbreaking career as woman in comedy might just be her greatest legacy.

Hours after her death, Anderson Cooper talked with Kathy Griffin about the woman who was an inspiration, a mentor, and a friend.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Kathy, thank you for being with us. And I am so sorry for the loss of your friend.

GRIFFIN: I'm going to try to do a good job. But I feel -- my head is kind of jumbled because I'm grieving. But I also really want to say, respect must be paid to this woman. And she blazed a trail, obviously, for me, all the girls, and in the face of so much adversity.

She was just a great living example to me. And we had many, many deep conversations about how it's different for girl comedians. And we spoke in shorthand and had a language. And I said to her, you know, you're in a club by yourself. You're not just in a small, exclusive club. You're really the one.

COOPER: It's interesting. You and I were talking about this a lot. And you were saying that you spoke a language that really hardly anybody else can understand.

GRIFFIN: Well, I think when you talk about women in stand-up, it's really quite different than, you know, women who are comedic actresses or women that have had a tremendous support system of, like, big, powerful producers or multimillion-dollar network deals. Everything Joan did, she created by herself. And...

COOPER: Fighting for it every...

GRIFFIN: Fighting for it. She said something to me.

I was whining about something. And she said, look, when you're a woman in this business, you have to hold on until your knuckles are white, until they chop your fingers off. Then you hold on by your wrists. Then you hold on by your elbows, and you never let go.

And we would joke about everything, appropriate and inappropriate. But she really lived that. And I don't think she should have had to fight that hard, but she just did.

COOPER: Also, I mean, at the time that she started doing stand- up, the really -- I mean, Lucille Ball was a female comedian but it's different.

GRIFFIN: But not a stand-up comedy.

COOPER: And not a stand-up.

GRIFFIN: It's very different when you're talking about being on the mike by yourself.

COOPER: Right. All alone on that stage.

GRIFFIN: You're all alone. And I thought it was so cool that the night before she went into the coma, she did an hour-long set.

COOPER: Yes.

GRIFFIN: At a small theater in New York for the love of the game.

COOPER: Right.

GRIFFIN: She didn't have to.

COOPER: That's the incredible thing. I mean, the documentary that was made of her recently...

GRIFFIN: "A Piece of Work." It's really good.

COOPER: If somebody hasn't seen it, they really should see it.

GRIFFIN: It's a must-watch.

COOPER: I want to show our viewers just a clip from that because, again, she was out doing stand-up, I mean, repeatedly late at night in small comedy clubs just trying out new material.

GRIFFIN: Yes, and having fun doing it.

COOPER: Well, she also in this -- I want to show this clip because she had every joke she told in these filing cabinets. Let's look at the clip from the film.

GRIFFIN: OK.

J. RIVERS: These are all my jokes. These are jokes over the last 30 years? These are just -- every time I write a joke, I try to remember to get it on a card.

Why should a woman cook? So her husband can say, my wife makes a delicious cake to some hooker?

(LAUGHTER)

J. RIVERS: And you wonder why I'm still working at this age.

GRIFFIN: And, by the way, did you like her categories? There was one file that said cooking and Tony Danza. I mean, she would make fun of anything and everyone.

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER: And herself, too.

GRIFFIN: First and foremost.

COOPER: Right.

GRIFFIN: And so I have been watching a lot of footage of her earlier appearances. And you can see her just having to jump higher and try harder. And she was very good about actually not letting that sort of overtake her with anger.

COOPER: She had that relationship with Johnny Carson for 21 years, to be then cut dead by him.

GRIFFIN: He broke her heart.

COOPER: For, you know, taking a job that -- she wasn't getting "The Tonight Show." It was a great opportunity for her. It's understandable why she would do it. Never spoke to her again.

GRIFFIN: Well, should we just cut the crap? That's because she's a woman. I mean, several men went on to take over "The Tonight Show" and other late-night shows on network and never a woman.

So I -- my -- you know, also, Joan was so gracious. You know, he made me.

COOPER: Right.

GRIFFIN: I got to always give him that.

But she also later on, years after that happened to her, she was able to articulate how much it just wounded her.

COOPER: But, also, you know, to have lost her husband to suicide.

GRIFFIN: Yes.

COOPER: Find herself raising a daughter by herself and have to, you know, move forward and make a living.

GRIFFIN: Absolutely.

COOPER: And you also pointed out something before we went on air. She invented a whole new television programming, which is the red carpet stuff.

GRIFFIN: Yes.

She took a bunch of celebrities walking into a building and turned that into two hours of entertainment. She put designers on the map before anyone knew who they were. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the egg rival, the womb arrival.

She was incubating, is what she told us.

J. RIVERS: I'm not going to say anything nasty. She came in an egg. And some people will do anything to not have to speak to Ryan Seacrest.

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER: You had dinner with her recently.

GRIFFIN: Yes.

COOPER: You were talking about the last time you had dinner together.

GRIFFIN: Well, we closed the restaurant down, and issued the rules, nobody else, no friends, no staff, and she had this great joke in her act when she said, I have a staff. And sometimes I get lonely and I turn to them and I say, staff, I'm lonely. Who is going to "blank" me tonight?

COOPER: Wow.

GRIFFIN: And she just said things like that at her age that made it actually funnier.

COOPER: Right.

GRIFFIN: And, by the way, there she is making a Lady Gaga joke.

COOPER: Right.

GRIFFIN: Which most 51-year-olds don't do or 61-year-olds.

COOPER: And, again, the night before she was sent to the hospital, she was doing stand-up that night.

GRIFFIN: She did a full set.

COOPER: A full...

GRIFFIN: A full hour.

COOPER: Right.

GRIFFIN: You know, not just throwing out a joke or going to see someone else's show. She always put the audience first, which is your job, and didn't worry about offending -- you know, it didn't -- I don't know if it really occurred to her. I think she was always going for the funny so much...

COOPER: Right.

GRIFFIN: ... that she stopped being startled when celebrities would be upset with her, but thought it was kind of fun around the end.

COOPER: There was something almost kind of sensitive about her. The first time I met her, I was really kind of -- I was moved by how vulnerable she was.

(CROSSTALK)

GRIFFIN: She has been through everything and so much more than anyone else out there.

We were having dinner three weeks ago. She just kept saying, aren't we lucky?

You know, sometimes, I sort of get bitter and raise my fist to the sky, and she would say, no, we're having fun. And aren't we lucky to be doing this? And it's the best job in the world.

COOPER: It really says a lot about her. Thank you. Thanks for being here. You did good.

(END VIDEOTAPE)