Still Talking (20 page)

Heaven in a truck.

It was the first time I had seen Valentinos, couturier Chanel, Galanos, Ungaros-all in one afternoon. I chose and chose and chose. Bill Blass.

Geoffrey Beene-skintight as if it’s water on you. I’m talking two thousand, three thousand dollars a dress. Every handbag in the world. I went to the royal wedding and looked better than the Queen. “Where did you get that hat?” she said to me, touching her crown,‘I’ll trade you. “

Now came the Fox show. Who was going to dress me? I called Saks. I wanted them to lend me clothes. They didn’t call back. Then Amen called and volunteered. So one day every three weeks Jason Dyl and I went down to Newport Beach, to Amen Wardy, one of the great stores on earth, and Amen would pull out everything for me. He’d scream things like, “No, not this belt with that dress! I have a much better belt!” -and the belt was much better.

He once put me in an eighteen-thousand-dollar Valentino dress-and my joke was, “Should I buy this dress or a new car?” All the Valentino people tuned in to the show to see this dress on. Well, the show was built around the swallows coming back to Capistrano. We couldn’t find a swallow, so I appeared in the eighteen-thousand-dollar Valentino dress with a pigeon attached to my head. The Valentino people almost died. They made me return the dress that night.

Dissolve. When I was fired from Fox, everything stopped. My clothes were gone. Jason was gone. I never had to think about clothes before. Jason put everything together … down to the gardenia in my hair on New Year’s Eve. It was all gone.

When I began my present daytime show, I thought, Well, I’ll have no problem borrowing clothes. Saks turned us down again. Macy’s turned us down!

Bergdorf’s. So we called Barney’s, which turned out to be a magical store

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like Amen-so nice to me, so smart. Everything I wear on the show walks out of the store the next day.

But the point of all this was still the career. The glitz made me feel glamorous, and therefore I looked glamorous-which made me into more of a star-which made me realize I was a star-which made me feel better about myself-which gave me more assurance-which made audiences accept me more-which made me more relaxedwhich made me more assured-which … it was all wonderful.

Maybe, too, my kind of audacious humor came into vogue. I had become wilder on television, doing more of my nightclub act on The Tonight Show. Before, I was doing routines about how my husband doesn’t like cooking. Now I was saying, “Yoko Ono is so ugly. John Lennon saw her naked on her wedding night and said, ‘Yoko. Oh! No!’ ” The press loved it. And maybe everybody had got used to me, had figured out that I was not serious, that I was just laughing.

My new comedy record was a great success. It went gold. I wrote a book for mothers-Having a Baby Can Be a Scream-and it became a best-seller. I was guest host on Saturday Night Live. In April of 1983 my first People magazine cover called me “The First Lady of Comedy. ” One critic wrote, “Ignorance of Ms. Rivers’ rocketing ascendance into the ether of hype virtually amounts to co.itempt of one’s fellow man.”

The signals of stardom were all around me. Money was flowing in. We had to hire an extra secretary to handle the fan mail. When I performed, major stars wanted to meet me. Young people were in the audiences, screaming right along with me and coming up to me later as though I were a contemporary. I went from never being a presenter to hostessing the Emmys.

Suddenly Brandon Tartikoff, then president of NBC, was sending me flowers and coming to see me at the Improv, the local comedy club.

You know you are white-hot by the change in the world’s attitude.

Restaurant owners are friendlier-lines melt away, wine is sent to the table. Hairdressers would come into my dressing room admitting they were nervous about

doing my hair. Perks were given to me-hotels would upgrade my rooms for no extra charge. In Toronto we were put in a Royal Suite-for nothing.

In Hollywood Edgar and I leaped from the “F” to the “A” list. We went to one of those “just close friends” parties given by Swifty Lazar, and there were Cher, Neil Simon, Dolly Parton, Rock Hudson, and Neil Diamond. When David Geffen began courting me for a record, suddenly he was my best friend in the world and invited Edgar and me to a party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. It seemed to me the entire world of show business was there. Mel Gibson. Jane Fonda. Jack Nicholson.

That night Barbra Streisand was simultaneously having a fight with her boyfriend, Jon Peters, and dickering to buy a diamond ring from Diane von Furstenberg. Jack Nicholson got so high he went to the ladies’ room by mistake. “Jesus, I’m really whacked out tonight. I gotta sit down,” Jack said to a friend of mine, who answered, “You are sitting down.” Jack said, “Then I gotta lie down.”

I kept telling Edgar and Melissa, “Be aware that these are the wonder years, and they can go away at any moment.” In show business people get spoiled so easily. You assume your name will always be stenciled on the studio parking space, assume the gate will always go up for you at NBC. You assume that people will keep on buying tickets and dressing up and getting themselves out of the house to see you. Your people around you assume these things, too, because the phone never stops ringing with other people bringing fresh ideas. I kept reminding myself of Jack Benny, who stood in my dressing room one night at Ye Little Club and said, “They used to line up for me, and now they don’t. But I still love my business. Take the money now, because nobody will care when you are gone. “

Since childhood I have had this constant insecurity that I will suddenly be back in Greenwich Village making ketchup soup. Long after I was well established, I used to pack up everything in the dressing room-makeup, clothes-and take it all to my hotel room every night in case I was fired.

I always buy classic clothes so they will

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not go out of style, and all my miniskirts have huge hems so they can still be worn when the style changes. If I am wild about a dress, I buy one for now and another to put away so I will still look nice when my career has come to an end.

I’m crazy.

10

…

DON’T know how much of the next stage of my career I owe to Bill Cosby, who was also one of Johnny Carson’s guest hosts. I do know that Bill telephoned Freddie De Cordova, the executive producer, and said, “Why are you rotating guest hosts? You should use Joan permanently. ” And in August, once again, The Tonight Show lifted me to that degree of celebrity that only television can achieve-lifted me to the level of a household name. In August of 1983

NBC anointed me as the permanent, sole guest host of The Tonight Show.

The job did not come to me with a lit candle on it. That year they did not invite me to Johnny’s annual party, so I had no sense of any new, special status of being taken into The Tonight Show family. Freddie De Cordova and Peter Lassally, the producer, told me they were simply tired of scheduling a series of names and wanted to have one, predictable host.

I was proud to be the first woman allowed to host a full week at a time-a major trust-but I did not understand what it meant within the industry. My primary reaction was worry-how was I ever going to find enough new material for all those opening monologues? When NBC invited me to a lunch introducing the affiliates to the fall shows and their actors, I, amazingly, did not understand the significance of all the hoopla.

Backstage all the performers were lined up, and I was put at the end of the line. I thought, Well, okay, I guess it’s because I don’t have a real show on NBC. After everybody else was onstage, they announced, “Joan Riv-142

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ers!” and the whole place stood up and went crazy. I thought, That’s nice.

Everybody likes me. I had never allowed myself to “believe,” and still saw myself as just an up-and-coming television personality, still on trial. I had not been told the ratings for my guest-host shows. Peter or Freddie would say, “They were fine,” or “You didn’t do well in Tampa. ” I didn’t care because I never bothered to understand what those numbers really meant-and Edgar was kept at arm’s length by the Carson people. So I did not realize my importance to all those stations, how much money I was making for them. I did not realize the significance of the Cartier watch NBC sent me afterward for doing a few minutes of jokes. In retrospect, it’s almost impossible for me to believe I was so passive about the fundamental numbers of the business. I was so naive.

From then on my career became performing comic and television interviewer-who still hoped to be a legitimate actress. But hosting The Tonight Show for eight weeks a year was the final boost that took me into the big, big time. Though it was not prime time, not The Cosby Show or Cheers, I was still seen by 30 million people. The Tonight Show was the Tiffany of talk shows, the one show that had true meaning in my career and everybody else’s career. If I had done nothing but Hollywood Squares during the day and Carson at night, I could have floated in my career forever.

I was the guest host of The Tonight Show for nearly three years. I loved walking into NBC, where everybody knew and liked me. I loved going into the wardrobe room with my dresses hung and labeled for the week, seeing the three armoires, side by side, labeled JOHNNY, ED, and JOAN. Those dumb symbols are very important in show business; they reassure you. When I said, “Gee, I wonder if we can get some black thread?,” a spool of black thread would appear. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would love a Diet Coke.” A Diet Coke would miraculously appear.

Edgar looked forward to those days, too. He liked to sit with me in the dressing room while I went over my notes. At three o’clock, during makeup, Freddie De. Cordova and

Peter Lassally would come in, and for an hour we would laugh and gossip.

Freddie was marvelous-looking, big, still a dynamo in his early seventies, perfectly tailored, immaculate, always seemed to have on a different wristwatch, always had the meanest mouth in the West.

He had a gay man’s vicious humor in a straight man’s body and was witty and bright and smart and sharp, and he had seen it all and done it all and done it first class. I adored him.

Freddie’s social world was on the fringe of the Hollywood “A” list-the older, legendary names. We heard how Jack Benny’s wife, Mary, never loved Jack, heard that Cary Grant was cheap and that Jimmy Stewart was getting gaga. He said Billy Wilder was wealthy, but his wife, Audrey, had to make her own clothes. He claimed Alfred Bloomingdale’s widow was holding out on the cuff links Alfred left him in his will. Michael Douglas’s wife ruled everything, and he was a puppet in her hands. Bill Cosby was mean. I don’t remember a good word about anybody, dead or alive. He even put down the guests I was about to interview on the show. Before I went on with Joan Collins, he brought in a magazine story to show how old she looked.

The only person from the show I miss is De Cordovabut when he was in my dressing room, I didn’t dare leave, not even to go to the bathroom-because the minute anybody’s back was turned, he might make one of his wicked remarks. But what I loved: when Peter Lassally, a thin, serious, straight-arrow Dutchman, forced to be always deferential to the executive producer, made his own sardonic remarks about Freddie.

And showtime was such a high. I loved walking out to the center of the stage with the orchestra playing the theme we’ve all heard for twenty years, with the big audience, invisible behind the lights, revved up, the excitement, the tension coming at you, the love and anticipation. Inside me was a great swelling up and a joy at being there. My whole body felt awake and ready, as though I had just walked five miles on a cool morning.

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1 loved sitting behind the desk, pushing the show into any area I wanted and seeing it bubble. When everything was right-the guests were good, being sassy right back at me, and the audience was right on the same beam-the show took control of itself and became bigger than its parts, and I was in the middle of magic.

Some guests were wonderful-Rita Moreno was full of energy and knew she was there for performance, so if I said something, she said the opposite. Betty White was terrific, coming on and playing bitchy and man-hungry. Lily Tomlin worried terribly about being good and called again and again to go over what shed say, and then what I’d say, and what she’d answer-line by line,, every nuance, every aside. I work spontaneously, Lily works tot4lly controlled, but when she gets on camera, she is some package. Tyne Daly came at the last second from the Cagney & Lacey set with no time to change, so she brought the dress she was supposed to wear on a hanger to show the audience. When she came on my present show, she wore the same dress.

Orson Welles-this astonishing, huge ruin-had to be brought onstage in advance in a wheelchair. He came on the show to please his wife, who loved to watch me, but playful was not his middle name. I don’t think he ever in his life went for funny ladies. By then there was no greatness left, just the remarkable voice we remember from Citizen Kane and War of the Worlds.

The best guests know they are booked to entertain, and they have eight minutes to score-like a civilian going to dinner with the boss-to be their most charming, deliver the three great stories that have carried them through life, perform their public persona.

Sometimes guests were not the brightest. Or they were terrified. Or drunk.

Or egomaniacs. Or mean. Some guests, otherwise fantastic people, just have off days. Michael Landon came on angry, and I never knew whyunless he was mad that he had me and not Johnny. But he was a reluctant talker and subtly antagonistic. He did not like me and let it show-and finally threw me a zinger, saying that selling door-to-door as a young man he met a

lot of obnoxious people. Then, looking right at me, he said, “And you certainly tend to meet them in studios, sometimes.” I came right back at him, saying, “And you meet such rude guests, sometimes.” What makes you good as a host is that you stay human on camera, but I always regret encounters like that-and, of course, I regret that one doubly now that Michael is dead.