Joan Rivers
"Can we talk?"
The lady saw a sign that said "Wet Floor" so she did.
"No man is ever going to put his hand up your dress looking for a library card."
Born: Joan Alexandra Molinsky, June 8, 1933, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died: September 4, 2014(aged 81), Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Jewish
Education: Connecticut College, Barnard College, (BA, BS)
Occupation: Actress, comedian, writer, producer, television host
Years active: 1959–2014
Home town: Larchmont, New York, U.S.
Television
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
That Show with Joan Rivers
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers
The Joan Rivers Show
Can We Shop?
Fashion Police (host)
Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?
Religion: Judaism
Spouse(s):
James Sanger (m. 1955; annulled 1955)
Edgar Rosenberg (m. 1965;wid. 1987)
Children: Melissa Warburg Rosenberg
Emmy Awards:
Outstanding Talk Show Host
1990: The Joan Rivers Show
Joan Alexandra Rosenberg
(née Molinsky; June 8, 1933 – September 4, 2014), known by her stage name Joan Rivers, was an American actress, comedian, writer, producer, and television host, best known for her stand-up comedy, for co-hosting the E!celebrity fashion show Fashion Police, and for starring in the reality series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? alongside her daughter Melissa Rivers.
Rivers first came to prominence in 1965 as a guest on The Tonight Show, a pioneering late-night program with interviews and comedy, hosted byJohnny Carson, whom she acknowledges as her mentor. The show established her particular comic style, poking fun at celebrities, but also at herself, often joking about her extensive plastic surgery. When she launched a rival program, The Late Show, he never spoke to her again. She went on to host a successful daytime slot, The Joan Rivers Show, which won her a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host. Her satirical style of humor, however, by focusing on the personal lives of celebrities and public figures, was sometimes criticized. She also authored 12 best-selling memoir and humor books, and provided comic material for stage and television.
On September 4, 2014, Rivers died following serious complications—including cardiac arrest—during a procedure on her vocal cords at a clinic on the Upper East Side of Manhattan
Early life and education
Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York in 1933, the younger daughter ofRussian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman; January 6, 1906 – October 1975) and Meyer C. Molinsky (December 7, 1900 – January 1985). Her elder sister, Mrs. Barbara Waxler, died on June 3, 2013, aged 82. She was raised in Brooklyn, and her family later moved to Larchmont, Westchester County, New York. She attended Connecticut College between 1950 and 1952, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa 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 a fashion consultant atBond Clothing Stores. During this period, agent Tony Rivers advised her to change her name, so she chose Joan Rivers as her stage name.
Career
Jim Connell, Jake Holmes and Joan Rivers when they worked as the team: "Jim, Jake & Joan"
1950s–1960s
During the late 1950s, Rivers appeared in a short-run play, Driftwood, playing alesbian with a crush on a character played by a then-unknown Barbra Streisand. The play ran for six weeks.[10]Rivers performed in numerous comedy clubs in the Greenwich Village area of New York City in the early 1960s, including The Bitter End and The Gaslight Cafe, before making her first appearances as a guest on the TV program The Tonight Show originating from New York, hosted at the time byJack Paar.
By 1965, Rivers had a stint on Candid Camera as a gag writer and participant; she was "the bait" to lure people into ridiculous situations for the show. She also made her first appearance on The Tonight Show with new host Johnny Carson, on February 17, 1965. During the same decade, Rivers made other appearances on The Tonight Show as well as The Ed Sullivan Show, while hosting the first of several talk shows. She wrote material for the puppet Topo Gigio. She had a brief role in The Swimmer (1968), starring Burt Lancaster. A year later, she had a short-lived syndicated daytime talk show,That Show with Joan Rivers; Johnny Carson was her first guest. In the middle of the 1960s, she released at least two comedy albums, The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album[15] and Rivers Presents Mr. Phyllis & Other Funny Stories.
1970s
By the 1970s, Rivers was appearing on various television comedy and variety shows, including The Carol Burnett Show and a semi-regular stint onHollywood Squares. From 1972-76, she narrated The Adventures of Letterman, an animated segment for The Electric Company. In 1973, Rivers wrote the TV movie The Girl Most Likely to..., a black comedy starring Stockard Channing. In 1978, Rivers wrote and directed the filmRabbit Test, starring her friend Billy Crystal. During the same decade, she was the opening act for singers Helen Reddy, Robert Goulet, Mac Davis andSergio Franchi on the Las Vegas Strip.
1980s–1990s
Rivers spoke of her primary Tonight Show life as having been "Johnny Carson's daughter," a reference to his longtime mentoring of her and, during the 1980s, establishing her as his regular guest host by August 1983. She also hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, on April 9, 1983. In the same period, she released a best-selling comedy album on Geffen Records, What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? The album reached No. 22 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.
During the 1980s she continued doing stand-up shows along with appearing on various television shows. In February 1983, she became the first female comedian to ever perform at Carnegie Hall. Later that year, she did stand-up on the United Kingdom's TV showAn Audience With Joan Rivers.
In 1984, Rivers published a best-selling humor book, The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abramowitz, a mock memoir of her brassy, loose comedy character. A television special based on the character, a mock tribute called Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abramowitz, was not successful with the public.
The decade was controversial for Rivers. She sued female impersonatorFrank Marino for $5,000,000 in 1986, after discovering he was using her real stand-up material in the impersonation of her that he included in his popular Las Vegas act. The two comics reconciled and even appeared together on television in later years.
Also in 1986 came the move that cost Rivers her longtime friendship with Carson, who had first hired her as aTonight Show writer. The soon-to-launch Fox Television Networkannounced that it was giving her a late night talk show, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, making Rivers the first woman to have her own talk show on a major network.
The new network planned to broadcast the show 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.Eastern Time, making her a Carson competitor. Carson learned of the show from Fox and not from Rivers herself. In the documentary Johnny Carson: King of Late Night, Rivers said she only called Carson to discuss the matter after learning he may have already heard about it and that he immediately hung up on her. In the same interview, she said that she later came to believe that maybe she should have asked for his blessing before taking the job. Rivers was banned from appearing on the Tonight Show, a decision respected by Carson's first two successors Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. After the release of his 2013 biography on Johnny Carson, Carson's manager Harry Bushkin revealed that he never received a call from Rivers' husband Edgar concerning the move to Fox, contrary to what Edgar had told Rivers.
Rivers did not appear on the Tonight Show again until February 17, 2014, when she made a brief appearance on new host Jimmy Fallon's first episode. On March 27, 2014, Rivers returned for an interview.
Shortly after Carson's death in 2005, Rivers said that he never spoke to her again. In 2008, during an interview with Dr. Pamela Connolly on television'sShrink Rap, Rivers claimed she did call Carson, but he hung up on her at once and repeated the gesture when she called again.
The Late Show Starring Joan Riversturned out to be flecked by tragedy. When Rivers challenged Fox executives, who wanted to fire her husband Edgar Rosenberg as the show's producer, the network fired them both. On May 15, 1987, three months later, Rosenberg committed suicide in Philadelphia; Rivers blamed the tragedy on his "humiliation" by Fox. Fox attempted to continue the show with a new name (The Late Show) and rotating guest hosts. A year after the Late Show debacle, Rivers was a guest on TV's Pee-wee's PlayhouseChristmas Special. By 1989, she tried another daytime TV talk show, The Joan Rivers Show, which ran for five years and won her an Daytime Emmy in 1990 for Outstanding Talk Show Host. In 1994, Rivers and daughter Melissa first hosted the E! Entertainment Televisionpre-awards show for the Golden Globe Awards. Beginning in 1995, they hosted the annual E! Entertainment Television pre-awards show for theAcademy Awards. Beginning in 1997, Rivers hosted her own radio show onWOR in New York City. Rivers also appeared as one of the center square occupants on the 1986–89 version ofThe Hollywood Squares, hosted by John Davidson.
In 1994, Rivers—who was influenced by the "dirty comedy" of Lenny Bruce—co-wrote and starred in a play about Bruce's mother Sally Marr, who was also a stand-up comic and influenced her son's development as a comic. After 27 previews, "Sally Marr...and Her Escorts," a play "suggested by the life of Sally Marr" ran on Broadway for 50 performances in May and June 1994. Rivers was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Actress in a Play and a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Sally Marr.
2000s–2010s
By 2003, Rivers had left her E! red-carpet show for a three-year contract (valued at $6–8 million) to cover award shows' red carpet events for the TV Guide Channel.
Rivers poses for a photograph at The Pierrehotel in New York City, May 24, 2001
Rivers appeared in three episodes of the TV show Nip/Tuck during itssecond, third and seventh season, playing herself. Rivers appeared 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 were frequent guests onHoward Stern's radio show, and Joan Rivers often appeared as a guest on UK panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats.
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 against Ice-T and Coco.
Rivers and daughter Melissa were contestants in 2009 on the secondCelebrity 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 outwith 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.
Rivers was featured on the show Z Rock as herself; she was also a special "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 filmabout 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. She made two appearances on Live at the Apollo, once as a comedian and once as a guest host.
Joan and her daughter 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. WE tv then ordered a new season consisting of 10 episodes, which premiered 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. Beginning September 10, 2010, Rivers co-hosted the E! show Fashion Police, along with Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne, and George Kotsiopouloscommenting on the dos 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 would not sell her New York Times best-selling book, I Hate Everyone ... Starting with Me. She handcuffed herself to a person's shopping cart and shouted through amegaphone. The police were called to the scene and she left without incident; no arrests were made. On March 5, 2013, she launched a new online talk show on YouTube, called In Bed with Joan, in which each week she had a different celebrity guest who "came out of the closet", and they talked about various topics. The show took place in Rivers' bedroom, in Melissa's home in Malibu, California.
On August 26, 2014, Rivers hosted a taping of Fashion Police with Kelly Osbourne, Giuliana Rancic, and George Kotsiopoulos about the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards and the 2014 MTV Movie Awards which would be her last television appearance before her death.
The day before her throat surgery, Joan released her most recent podcast of In Bed with Joan, with LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian.
Style of humor
During her 55-year career as a comedian, her tough-talking style of satirical humor was both praised and criticized as being truthful, yet too personal, too gossipy, and very often abrasive. Nonetheless, with her ability to “tell it like it is,” she became a pioneer of contemporary stand-up comedy. Commenting about her style, she told biographer Gerald Nachman, “Maybe I started it. We're a very gossipy culture. All we want to know now is private lives.”
However, her style of humor, which often relied on making jokes about her own life and satirizing the lives of celebrities and public figures, was sometimes criticized as insensitive. Her jokes about Elizabeth Taylor andAdele's weight, for instance, were often commented on, although Rivers would never apologize for her humor. Rivers, who was Jewish, was also criticized for making jokes about the Holocaust and later explained, "This is the way I remind people about the Holocaust. I do it through humor", adding, "my husband lost his entire family in the Holocaust." Her joke about the victims of the Ariel Castro kidnappings, similarly came under criticism, but she again refused to apologize, stating, "I know what those girls went through. It was a little stupid joke."
Rivers accepted such criticism as part of her using social satire as a form of humor: "I've learned to have absolutely no regrets about any jokes I've ever done ... You can tune me out, you can click me off, it's OK. I am not going to bow to political correctness. But you do have to learn, if you want to be a satirist, you can't be part of the party."
Rivers states that seeing Lenny Bruce perform at a local club while she was in college influenced her developing style:
He was an epiphany. Lenny told the truth. It was a total affirmation for me that I was on the right track long before anyone said it to me. He supplied the revelation that personal truth can be the foundation of comedy, that outrageousness can be cleansing and healthy. It went off inside me like an enormous flash.
Comedian Bill Cosby, who was credited with first suggesting to Johnny Carson that he make her a co-host, called her “an intelligent girl without being a weirdo . . . a human being, not a kook.” Others, including Time magazine, once compared her humor to Woody Allen's style, of “how to be neurotic about practically everything,” while noting that “her style and femininity make her something special.” Rivers likewise compared herself to Allen, stating: “He was a writer, which I basically was . . . and talking about things that affected our generation that nobody else talked about.”
Her style of comedy was also compared to Johnny Carson's, as being in many ways starkly contrasting, and one of the reasons he made her co-host. CriticMichael Pollan compared their style:
Where Carson is scrupulously polite, Rivers is bitchy; where he is low-key, she is overheated; where he is Midwest, Waspy and proper, she is urban, ethnic and gossipy. Carson conducts interviews as if he were at the country club; Rivers does hers at the kitchen table.
In her personal life, however, fewer of those neurotic or intense character traits which viewers see on screen, are displayed. Ralph Schoenstein, who dated her and worked with her on her humor books, states, “She has no airs. She doesn't stand on ceremony. The woman has absolutely no pretense. She'll tell you everything immediately. Joan isn't cool—she's completely open. It's all grist. It's her old thing--'Can we talk?'”
According to biographer Victoria Price, Rivers' humor was notable for taking aim at and overturning what had been considered acceptable female behavior. By her bravura, she broke through long-standing taboos in humor, which paved the way for other women, including Roseanne Barr, Ellen DeGeneres, and Rosie O'Donnell.
Personal life
Rivers was a member of the Reform synagogue Temple Emanu-El in New York and stated publicly that she "love[d] Israel".
Rivers' first marriage was in 1955 to James Sanger, the son of a Bond Clothing Stores merchandise manager. The marriage lasted six months 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. Joan had one grandson, Melissa's son Cooper (born Edgar Cooper Endicott in 2000), who was featured with his mother and grandmother in the WE tv series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?
In her book, Bouncing Back (1997), Rivers described how she developedbulimia nervosa and contemplated suicide. Eventually, she recovered with counseling and the support of her family.
In 2002, Rivers told the Montreal Mirrorthat she was a Republican. However, on a 2013 episode of Celebrity Wife Swap, Rivers stated that she was a Democrat. Then, on January 28, 2014, during a conversation with Reza Farahan, she announced that she was in fact a Republican.
In a June 5, 2012, interview withHoward 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 Dellduring 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 was open about her multiple cosmetic surgeries and was a patient of plastic surgeon Steven Hoefflin, beginning in 1983. Her first procedure, an eye lift, was performed in 1965 as an attempt to further her career.
Death
On August 28, 2014, Rivers experienced serious complications and stopped breathing during a procedure on her vocal cords, at a clinic inYorkville, Manhattan. She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and was put into a medically induced coma after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest.
On August 29, her daughter, Melissa, publicly stated that Joan was "resting comfortably" in the hospital. On August 30, it was reported that Rivers had been put on life support. Reports initially stated that Rivers' family might face ending her life support if her condition did not improve.
However, on September 1, 2014, an unnamed source told Entertainment Tonight that Rivers' physicians at Mount Sinai Hospital had started the process of trying to bring her out of the coma on August 31. Prior to that, there had been no further medical updates beyond her daughter's statement.
On September 3, Melissa Rivers issued a brief statement that Rivers had been moved from Mount Sinai Hospital'sintensive care unit into a private room, without any comment concerning Rivers's condition or prognosis.[70] The following day, September 4, 2014, Melissa announced via another statement that Rivers had died at the age of 81 at 1:17 p.m. EDT.
Books
Having a Baby Can Be a Scream. J.P. Tarcher. 1974. (Self-Help/Humor)
The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz. Doubleday. 1984.ISBN 978-0385293594. (Humor)
Enter Talking. Dell Publishing Co. 1986. ISBN 978-0440122449.(Autobiography)
Still Talking. Random House. 1991.ISBN 978-0394579917. (Autobiography)
Jewelry by Joan Rivers. Abbeville Press. 1995. ISBN 978-1558598089.(Non-Fiction)
Bouncing Back: I've Survived Everything ... and I Mean Everything ... and You Can Too!. Harper Torch. 1997.ISBN 978-0061096013.
From Mother to Daughter: Thoughts and Advice on Life, Love and Marriage. Birch Lane Pr;. 1998. ISBN 978-1559724937. (Self-Help)
Don't Count the Candles: Just Keep the Fire Lit!. HarperCollins. 1999.ISBN 978-0060183837. (Self-Help)
Murder at the Academy Awards (R): A Red Carpet Murder Mystery. Pocket. 2009. ISBN 1416599371. (Fiction)
Men Are Stupid...And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman's Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery. 2009.ISBN 141659924X. (Non-Fiction)
I Hate Everyone...Starting with Me. Berkley Trade. 2012. ISBN 978-0425255896. (Humor)
Diary of a Mad Diva. Berkley Publishing Group. 2014. ISBN 978-0425269022. (Humor)
Filmography
Films
Year/Title/Notes
1965, Once Upon a Coffee House
1968, The Swimmer
1978, Rabbit Test, Also director and writer
1981, Uncle Scam
1984, The Muppets Take Manhattan
1987, Les Patterson Saves the World
1987, Spaceballs, Voice
1988, Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
1989, Look Who's Talking, Voice
1993, Public Enemy #2
1994, Serial Mom
1995, Napoleon, Voice
1999, Goosed
2000, The Intern
2000, Whispers: An Elephant's Tale, Voice
2002, The Making and Meaning of 'We Are Family, Documentary
2002, Hip! Edgy! Quirky!
2004, Shrek 2, Voice
2004, First Daughter
2007, The Last Guy on Earth
2010, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Documentary; herself
2010, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Uncredited
2011, The Smurfs, Party Guest
2011, Tower Heist, Uncredited
2013, Iron Man 3, Cameo
2014, The Story of the Swimmer, The making of The Swimmer, Documentary; herself
Television
Year/Title/Notes
1968–69, That Showstarring Joan Rivers, Syndicated daytime talk show
1972–77, The Electric Company, Voice
1973, Here's Lucy
1973, Needles and Pins, Guest-starred as Eleanor Karp in episode "The Wife You Save May Be Your Own"
1984, An Audience with Joan Rivers
1986, Joan Rivers: Can We Talk?
1986–87, The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, Host
1988–89, The New Hollywood Squares, Hosted by John Davidson, center square
1989–93, The Joan Rivers Show, Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host
1990, How to Murder a Millionaire, Starred along withMorgan Fairchild
1992, Lady Boss
1994, Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story[73]
1995–2014, Can We Shop?
1997, Another World, Cast member
2001, E! True Hollywood Story: Joan Rivers, Parody episode of show aired April 1, 2001
2004, 2007, Jack Dee Live at the Apollo, Cast member, guest host in 2007
2004, Dave the Barbarian, Voice – Zonthara, Emperess of Evil
2004–05, 2010, Nip/Tuck
2004–06, The Joan Rivers Position
2006, An Audience with Joan Rivers
2006–07, 8 Out of 10 Cats
2006, Joan Rivers: Before Melissa Pulls the Plug
2006, Dawn French's Girls Who Do Comedy, In-depth interview with Dawn Frenchfor the BBC
2007, Straight Talk
2008, Shrink Rap, With Dr. Pamela Connolly – More4
2008, Celebrity Family Feud
2008, Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, Celebrity Hijacker
2008, Z Rock, Aunt Joan
2008, Spaceballs: The Animated Series, Voice
2008, 2010, Arthur, Voice – Bubby (Francine's Grandmother)
2009, Celebrity Apprentice 2, Herself
2009, How'd You Get So Rich?, Herself
2009, The Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers, Herself
2009, Celebrity Ghost Stories, Herself
2010, Celebrity Apprentice 3
2010–2014, Fashion Police
2011–2014, Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?
2011, Louie, Herself
2011, The Simpsons, Voice – Annie Dubinsky (season 23, episode 8 – "The Ten-Per-Cent Solution")
2012, Joan Rivers: Don't Start with Me
2012, Hot in Cleveland, Anka
2013–2014, In Bed with Joan, Online talk show
Theater work
Year/Show/Venue
1972, Fun City, Morosco Theatre
1988, Broadway Bound, Broadhurst Theatre
1994, Sally Marr...and her escorts, Helen Hayes Theatre,Broadway
2008, Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress, Geffen Playhouse,Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Leicester Square Theatre
2012, Joan Rivers: The Now or Never Tour, UK tour
Awards and nominations
Year/Nominated work/Award/Category/Result
1984, What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most?, Grammy Award, Best Comedy Album, Nominated
1990, The Joan Rivers Show, Daytime Emmy Award, Outstanding Talk Show Host, Won (1991, Nominated)
1992, Outstanding Writing – Special Class, Nominated, Outstanding Talk Show Host, Nominated
1993, Outstanding Writing – Special Class, Nominated, Outstanding Talk Show Host, Nominated
1994, Sally Marr...and her escorts, Tony Award, Best Actress in a Play, Nominated
2009, Arthur, Daytime Emmy Award, Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program, Nominated,
Note: Emmy nominations for Outstanding Writing – Special Class shared with Toem Perew and Hester Mundis.
Honors
On July 26, 1989, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard.
