Joan Rivers Was More Than the Fashion Police: Get to Know a True Comic Legend

Image via Complex Original

From September 1983 until 1986, Joan Rivers was the "permanent guest host" of The Tonight Show and late night audiences got to enjoy some of her most crude and daring monologues, including this one from '82. In between spitting on virtue, Rivers delivers a hilarious bit about a woman she was so pleased to get married, even though she was the poster girl for herpes and the bride on top of the cake was bowlegged. 

Rivers worked alongside Ms. Piggy in The Muppets Take Manhattan, successfully introducing a lot of children to a standup worth getting to know. In a perfect world, we'd be watching an entire special with the two connecting over their mutual hatred of all things not them, and destroying men who scorned their romantic advances. Looking at you, Kermy. 

Everyone has something to say about Rivers' plastic surgery, including herself. But in a career where women stop being interesting after the men who run Hollywood don't want to sleep with them anymore, could you blame her? She never felt shame for what she did to make herself feel better about her appearance, and it was often a great source of jokes. In Spaceballs, her character based on C3PO is completely metal, which, no offense to the one deceased, but in real life she was mostly plastic, so she could probably relate.  

Louis C.K. has a talent for bringing out the best in other performers, and this clip from Louie shows his respect for a woman he probably grew up watching and admiring. It's a softer side of Joan Rivers not many people had the pleasure of experiencing. In the heartbreaking clip, she calms the fellow comedian down, saying they do comedy not because it's a job, but because it's a calling. 

If you have followed Rivers' career, you'll see that what she preaches in this clip is exactly what she practiced. She never stopped working a day in her life, she felt most alive on stage, and she did what she did because there was something inside of her pushing her to do it.

And then, Louie tries to have sex with her, and that sentimental speech just means a little bit more when it ends on a laugh. 

What a lot of people don't realize about Joan is that she was always more than someone who razzed people on the red carpet about their outfits. She was a feminist warrior. In this stand up act from 1968, she rants about the differences between men and women, and it is still fully relevant today. She's timeless. 

Love her or hate her, Joan Rivers could not possibly care less. Everyone was fair game to her, the Hollywood elite and music's darlings now, were all possible victims to Joan's sharp tongue. There's something you have to find respectable about that, she never backed down. Even when she said Rihanna's lipstick reminded her of Miss Piggy leaving the backseat of Kermit's car. 

It's hard to picture the late comedian as being, well, late and gone. Because, although she was 81, she still attended every event—like, literally every one. She even mentions walking the red carpet (albeit, it was shaved) at the Porn Awards. 

Imagine writing that essay in grade school: "My grandma is my hero because she took me to the Porn Awards." 

There was always a lot of roasting of celebrities in Joan's life, but she always used herself as her biggest punchline. She made jokes about her appearance, her body, and how her childhood friends would use her oversized Girl Scout uniform as a tent. She proved as long as you could dish it out, you had to be able to take it, too. 

This clip of Rivers is perfection. After making a Helen Keller joke, because, well, she is Joan Rivers, a heckler says she isn't funny. She goes off on a rant about how people use comedy to get through life. She once famously said, "Life is very tough. If you don't laugh, it's tough." She used comedy more as a kind of therapy than as a job, and it's always very satisfying to watch a heckler get owned. 

Comedians are a special breed of people. Often, the more pain they're experiencing, the funnier they are. Case in point, Joan Rivers. She grew up thinking she was so ugly it completely shaped her stand-up, her husband, and father of her daughter, committed suicide, and when she had to cremate her mother-in-law, she made it a joke. It's not a sign of strength, really, it's just how she, and many others, cope. She often called her audiences her group therapy sessions. And, with Joan's passing, she'd want her family, friends, and her fans to heal themselves by laughing as well.