Still Talking (34 page)

Nevertheless, in front of that camera was the one time in the day when I was safe and could find some joy. After

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all the awfulness and anguish, I could go out there and, because the show was live, nobody could touch me. I loved walking out on that stage. By that time the audience was my only friend; those loving, warm, accepting faces were there for me, and I could make a joke and they would laugh. I was never depressed by The Late Show. I did not go home and think, Rotten show tonight. I was pleased with it, pleased with myself.

In early March we went to Paris for a week with Melissa and took Billy Sammeth and his sister, hoping a break would help. While we were away, we fought to get Arsenio Hall as a guest host, but Fox refused. We did, however, have a hot lineup of hosts. Now, Fox in its inexperience was even more certain it could do better without me.

I was hoping in Paris we could repeat the good times of the past, the therapy we all desperately needed. But the trip was a flop. Edgar spent evenings in the hotel, and Billy, running a fever, spent days in bed. I was getting desperate calls from Los Angeles-Ron Vandor was trying to get rid of our head writer.

When we returned to Los Angeles, Billy told us he could not continue and was going to disappear for at least a month. Now I was alone, pulling that wagon all by myself.

Edgar was walking and sounding and acting like an old man. There was no force in his voice, no energy. His spirit was dying. He was becoming grouchy-suddenly wanting nobody in the dressing room. His stomach was acting up, his foot ached with gout, and the gout medicine made his heart medicine react badly, and vice versa. He was back to taking a sleeping pill at night. His hiatal hernia flared up painfully. He was terrified of AIDS

from the blood transfusions during the heart attack. He had morning, afternoon, and evening pills. He took Tylenol constantly. His blood pressure was high.

I had to do something about the fact that my husband was in major trouble.

Actually we were both in trouble, both shipwrecked and in the water, I holding on to the log with one hand, fingernails slipping, and holding Edgar

afloat with the other hand. I knew I should let him go and pull myself to safety, but I could not let him sink.

After the heart attack Edgar had tried several psychiatrists, and settled on one he liked. But I was doubtful that he went regularly and talked honestly. Now, in this Fox crisis, I said “You’ve got to talk to this man about your problems, tell him the pain you’re in. There’s no point in going if you play games with him.” He agreed.

A few weeks later I called the psychiatrist and asked if Edgar was actually going. Was he admitting to being depressed, talking about his terrible childhood?-“I think he hated his mother. ” The doctor brushed me off, saying, “Don’t you worry. Just don’t you worry. ” Then he added, “He’s a wonderful man, and we have delightful conversations about books and South Africa. ” Despite doctorpatient confidentiality, it smelled too jolly to me, and I begged Edgar to go to somebody else. He refused.

Every time he got upset, I expected another heart attack. In the night I listened to his breathing, expecting to call the paramedics at any moment.

I involved myself in fights with Fox that I only half understood and half cared about because I did not want him so upset. I carried our flag into battle, afraid that if he did, he might drop dead.

I, too, was crazed, but controlled my desperation by focusing solely on the show, as though I had blinders on, taking no time for fun, never getting on the phone with Kenny Solms or Treva Silverman and laughing-just working and watching my back, just getting through each day. I became short-tempered; when Melissa called from college, I would say, “Missy, I can’t talk to you now. ” When she got chicken pox, that was the first time I did not fly to her when she was in trouble.

Each day I had to appear cheerful and confident. I had to hear everybody’s troubles and be above the office politics, had to buck up my husband. My house was no solace. When I came home exhausted, on my pillow would be a note: “Call Peter Dekom immediately.” The next morning when I arrived at Fox, there would be Ron Vandor, angry, saying, “You shouldn’t have asked Barry Manilow

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if he ever used drugs. He won’t come back.” I began to eat, began to get fat.

There was nobody to talk to.

On Friday, March 20, a routine meeting was scheduled with Jamie Kellner to talk things over-without Barryand discuss whom to hire as the new producer to replace Bruce McKay. I expected it to be a woman named JoAnn Goldberg, whom Fox had had me interview in New York. Going into the meeting, Edgar and I believed everything would work out. We would be fine if we could just hang on till April when the Fox prime-time shows were to go on the air. When those shows got low ratings, Fox would realize that our numbers were better than they thought. So we wanted no confrontation just tell us what you want and we’ll do it.

The day was dark and dismal, no sun, and I was in full makeup for the show.

I sat on a couch and Edgar and Jamie were in easy chairs. The minute we were seated, Jamie, ice-cold, said, “McKay is out as of today, you will no longer have any artistic control, and Ron Vandor will be your producer.”

It was like the guillotine. I finally lost it. I cried out, “You can’t. You just can’t. Vandor doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I was begging-“Get anybody. Just not Vandor.” Jamie insisted it would be Vandor. I told him that I would never work under Vandor, and Fox should just pay me off. Jamie answered, “No, you’re in breach.”

Suddenly Barry walked in, and Edgar’s whole body tensed, his face hard and red. I swear they had planned it all-like the French court with Diller listening from behind a screen. He never sat down. He had not come in for a dialogue. In a controlled fury he began pacing behind Jamie, saying he was sick of all the problems, saying we were a failure, and they owed it to the affiliates and the advertisers to rescue the show.

I felt so wronged. I told him the truth-“We’re a winner on your network, Goddammit. You can’t put me on stations nobody can find and expect me to compete. It’s a good show. What do you want from us?”

Barry watched me, emotionless. Then he turned his attention to Edgar. In one terse sentence he stripped Edgar of all his duties as executive producer and banned him from the set. In that instant the show and our future were balanced on the point of a needle. Then Edgar and I catapulted ourselves into destruction.

“You’re a tinhorn dictator,” Edgar said. “I don’t need this. I’m a rich man.”

Barry Diller said, “Go fuck yourself.”

Had this been a silent movie, there would have been music swelling and a close-up of my face. What will she choose? Her husband? Or her career? I should have told Edgar to shut up. I should have grabbed Barry, should have said, “Edgar’s out of control. Let me talk to you. Help me. I’ll do whatever you want. Just keep us on.”

Automatically, without thinking, I chose my husband. And I would do it again. There was a marriage there of twenty-two years. I believe that marriage is a total commitment, that once you say “yes” to somebody, that is it-and I had received the same commitment from my husband. That was one thing I doubt Fox ever understoodthat the bottom line of my behavior and marriage was loyalty. There is so little of it in life. It is the only thing you have left when everything else between two people is snipped away. You take the words “love” and “affection” and “devotion” and what they really add up to is “loyalty.

We walked out of the meeting with Edgar’s dignity and our marriage intact.

But from that moment on we were dead. They were setting up the new show with Barry Sand. The Iago-ettes were thrilled. They thought they were going to be television pioneers.

In the car going back to the office, Edgar was railing at the world and exultant-“That son of a bitch. Somebody finally told him off. ” He thought he would go down in Hollywood history, and was furious at me for not joining in. “Don’t you know what you’ve done?” I told him. “You’ve just pulled down the temple.” I was out of my mind. Twenty-two years of building had gone up in flames.

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My husband-the businessman who always understood what was happening every moment-had lost all touch with reality. He was thinking only of himself. If I was alone before, now I was really alone-and with no place to go, no emergency plan to fall back on.

I doubled over, convulsed with stomach cramps. I had never felt such pain, like knives shredding my stomach. At the studio I could barely walk. In my dressing room I realized I could not continue. Edgar called Peter Dekom, who told us the Fox people would not believe that I was sick unless I used their doctor for an examination. When he came to the house, he took one look and told me to stay in bed for a week. I was finally breaking down.

But I could not stay in bed. Edgar was lying next to me in the darkened bedroom staring at the ceiling, too depressed to move. Even with the cramps I had to get up, start looking for a way out. Maybe I should still tell them I would be their puppet, be handed my monologue and go out and do the show. But the show would die without the stamp of my identity. And I had made my choice.

Then Peter Dekom called to say that Fox had relented enough to hire JoAnn Goldberg as producer, and she would be at my house that Sunday for a meeting. In my paranoia toward Fox I dreaded JoAnn. I assumed she would be Fox’s girl and therefore an enemy, but her professionalism, her open-mindedness at the meeting, made me think there was hope. I went into the studio on Monday, still with cramps. I knew if I stayed away, Fox would do something terrible, use my absence as proof of breach of contract.

The staff was outraged at the way Edgar and Bruce were being treated. When Courtney Conte was told by Fox to stop speaking to Edgar, he refused. A petition to keep Bruce was circulated, and when JoAnn arrived for her first production meeting, everybody in the room was dressed in black.

But JoAnn calmed the waters. When I did not get any more calls from Fox executives, I thought, By God, we’ve come through. During the next six weeks she ran the show extremely well. She had a kindness that let us accept her. She understood the politics and made Edgar feel included,

let him sit with her at the console during the show and save a little face.

They liked each other. I actually convinced myself that everything was going to be okay.

People were stopping me in stores, on the sidewalk, to tell me the show was terrific. I relaxed, and the ratings began to go up; we were averaging around 3.2 and higher in the twelve cities, and nationally we were back to our December numbers. At Fox’s Los Angeles station the ratings had increased 167 percent over the previous February. Even the press was beginning to come around. The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Translated into dollars and cents … Rivers sells.”

JoAnn liked and respected Jamie, who was friendly and reasonable. After four weeks, however, Jamie left on a prolonged trip to New York, and Kevin Wendle took over his responsibilities. Ron Vandor was quickly reassigned to another job, and Kevin became JoAnn’s liaison with Fox. Almost immediately a newspaper story ran an item: “Our loose-lipped but highly placed sources tell that Joan Rivers is going to be off the air in ninety days.” JoAnn, pointing out guests would now be even harder to book, asked for a newspaper ad refuting it. Kevin refused.

He began to find ways to complicate JoAnn’s life. I had been making jokes during the show about Fox being cheap, and Kevin passed the word that I was not allowed to say “Fox” on the air. “You must be joking,” JoAnn told him and called Jamie in New York to point out that all comics beat up on their parent, that Carson was always making remarks about the NBC commissary.

Then Kevin demanded we cancel a guest who was appearing on a show scheduled opposite one of Fox’s new series. He fought and fought before agreeing to a small raise for our stage manager-who was essential and threatening to quit. The music budget was cut by $1,750 a week just when we were increasing the music.

Without telling me, Fox sent a letter to my protection service canceling my guards. Kevin called JoAnn and asked, “How did she take it?”

JoAnn said, “Fine.”

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“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Everything’s just fine.”

On April 6 Fox introduced its first prime-time shows with a press party, even paying to have the huge HOLLYWOOD sign in the hills altered to FOXWOOD.

Once again, I was not invited. I had to be there to contradict the rumors that the show was being canceled. My public-relations man, Richard Grant, talked to the Fox people, and they said I could come-but not Edgar. The photographers swarmed around me, and every question was, “Is your show going to be canceled?” Imagine how I felt having my picture taken that night, smiling for the cameras with Jamie Kellner and Barry Diller.

Edgar wanted me to boycott the party out of pride. He was unable to say, “Do what you need to do to save the show. I’m bowing out.” He was taking pills now to sleep and pills to wake up and pills to keep alive. Still, he insisted on coming to the studio and sitting on the couch in my office while I worked. I discussed business matters in the car as always, but I did not know how to give him back his pride. It was clear to me now that his job was his pride. I tried to detach from his anguish to preserve my remaining emotional reserves.

On April 20 Redbook magazine withdrew a cover story on me because of rumors the show was being canceled. That night we got a 4.4 rating in the twelve major cities. Fox’s new shows in prime time, which should have drawn twice my viewing audience, later only got 3’s and low 4’s. Indeed, their first prime-time show, Mr. President, starring George C. Scott, had ratings in the 2’s. So, as T had known all along, with their station lineup, my show was doing fine after all. But even if Fox finally understood, it was too late.