Celebrating comedienne Joan River’s 80th Birthday!

IMAGE – YOUR QVC FAMILY

Joan Alexandra Molinsky (born June 8, 1933), better known by her stage name Joan Rivers, is an American television personality, comedian, writer, film director, and actress. She is known for her ribald, depreciative style. Rivers’ comic style relies heavily on her ability to poke fun at herself and other Hollywood celebrities.

Joan Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman; January 6, 1906 – October 1975) and Meyer C. Molinsky (December 7, 1900 – January 1985). Her sister Barbara died in 2013. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and her family later moved to Larchmont, in Westchester County, New York. She attended Connecticut College between 1950 and 1952 and graduated from Barnard College in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and anthropology. Before entering show business, Rivers worked at various jobs such as a tour guide at Rockefeller Center, a writer/proofreader at an advertising agency and as a fashion consultant at Bond Clothing Stores. During this period, agent Tony Rivers advised her to change her name, so she chose Joan Rivers as her stage name.

By 2003, Rivers had left her E! red-carpet show for a three-year contract (valued at $6–8 million) to cover award-show red-carpet shows for the TV Guide Channel.

Rivers appeared in three episodes of the TV show Nip/Tuck during its second, third and seventh season playing herself. Rivers appears regularly on television’s The Shopping Channel (in Canada) and QVC (in both the United States and the UK), promoting her own line of jewelry under brand name “The Joan Rivers Collection”. She was also a guest speaker at the opening of the American Operating Room Nurses’ 2000 San Francisco Conference. Both Joan and Melissa Rivers are frequent guests on Howard Stern’s radio show, and Joan Rivers often appears as a guest on UK panel show 8 out of 10 Cats.

Rivers was one of only four Americans invited to the Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla Parker Bowles on 9 April 2005.

In 2006, Rivers was featured on the adult animated show, Drawn Together as Princess Clara’s vagina that had received too much plastic surgery. Clara’s ‘vajoana’ often repeated the phrase “who are you wearing, who are you wearing?”.

On August 16, 2007, Rivers began a two-week workshop of her new play, with the working title “The Joan Rivers Theatre Project,” at The Magic Theatre in San Francisco.

On December 3, 2007, Rivers performed in the Royal Variety Show 2007 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, England, with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip present.

In January 2008, Rivers became one of 20 hijackers to take control of the Big Brother house in the UK for one day in spin-off TV show Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack.

On June 24, 2008, Rivers appeared on NBC-TV’s show Celebrity Family Feud and competed with her daughter, Melissa against Ice-T and Coco.

Rivers performing in her show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Rivers and daughter Melissa were contestants in 2009 on the second Celebrity Apprentice. Throughout the season, each celebrity raised money for a charity of his or her choice; Rivers selected God’s Love We Deliver. After a falling out with poker player Annie Duke, following Melissa’s on-air firing (elimination) by Donald Trump, Rivers left the green room telling Clint Black and Jesse James that she would not be in the next morning. Rivers later returned to the show and on May 3, 2009, she became a finalist in the series. The other finalist was Duke. On the season finale, which aired live on May 10, Rivers was announced the winner and hired to be the 2009 Celebrity Apprentice.

In 2013, Joan Rivers will appear on an episode of The Celebrity Apprentice 6 as a guest advisor.

Rivers performing at a London Udderbelly event in 2009

Rivers was featured on the show Z Rock as herself and was also a special so-called pink-carpet presenter for the 2009 broadcast of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. She was also roasted in a Comedy Central special, taped on July 26, 2009, and aired on August 9, 2009. From August 2009, Rivers began starring in the new reality TV series How’d You Get So Rich? on TV Land. A documentary film about Rivers, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival at the Castro Theatre on May 6, 2010.

In 2011, Rivers appeared in a commercial for Go Daddy, which debuted during the broadcast of Super Bowl XLV. To date, Joan has made two appearances on Live At The Apollo, once as a comedienne and once as a guest host.

Joan and her daughter Melissa Rivers premiered the new show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? on WE tv. The series follows Joan moving to California to be closer to her family. She moves in with daughter Melissa while searching for a home of her own. It was recently revealed that WE TV has ordered a new season consisting of 10 episodes premiering in January 2012.

In 2011, Rivers was featured as herself in Season 2 of Louis C.K.’s self-titled show Louie, where she performed on-stage. Since September 10, 2010, Rivers has been co-hosting the E! show Fashion Police, along with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne and George Kotsiopoulos commenting on the do’s and don’ts of celebrity fashion. The show started as a half-hour program, but expanded to one hour on March 9, 2012.

On August 7, 2012, Rivers showed up in Burbank, California to protest that the warehouse-club Costco will not sell her New York Times bestselling book, I Hate Everyone … Starting with Me. She handcuffed herself to someone’s shopping cart and shouted through a megaphone. The police were called to the scene and she left without incident and no arrests were made.

First airing on March 5, 2013 on YouTube, Joan launched a new online talk show called “In Bed with Joan,” in which each week she has a different celebrity guest that “comes out of the closet” and they talk about various topics. The show takes place in Joan’s bedroom, which is in Melissa’s house in Malibu, California.

Rivers’ first marriage was in 1955 to James Sanger, the son of a Bond Clothing Stores merchandise manager. The marriage lasted six weeks and was annulled on the basis that Sanger did not want children and had not informed Rivers before the wedding. Her second marriage was on July 15, 1965 to Edgar Rosenberg, who committed suicide in 1987. Their only child, Melissa Warburg Rosenberg (now known as Melissa Rivers), was born on January 20, 1968. She has one grandson, Melissa’s son Cooper (born Edgar Cooper Endicott on December 1, 2000) who is featured with his mother and grandmother in the WE tv series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?

In her book, Bouncing Back (1997), she described how she developed bulimia and contemplated suicide. Eventually, she recovered with counseling and the support of her family. In 2002, Rivers told the Montreal Mirror that she was a Republican.

In a June 5, 2012 interview with Howard Stern, Rivers said she had several extramarital affairs when married to Rosenberg. According to Rivers, she had a one-night sexual encounter with actor Robert Mitchum in the 1960s after an appearance together on The Tonight Show. She also had an extended affair with actor Gabriel Dell during the out-of-town and Broadway productions of her play, Fun City, in 1971, for which Rivers told Stern she “left Edgar over” for several weeks.

Rivers is open about her multiple cosmetic surgeries, and has been a patient of plastic surgeon Steven Hoefflin since 1983. Her first procedure, an eye lift, was performed in 1965 as an attempt to further her career.

Huffington Post celebrates Joan’s 80th HERE

Joan Rivers reportedly canceled her birthday party following the death of her sister. Read more.