For more than five decades, she made the world laugh even at herself, but she perhaps laughing at the moment, at the sheer joy of reunion with her husband, Edgar Rosenburg, who committed suicide on August 14, 1987.
Described as the great love of her life, Edgar served as her manager for the majority of their marriage and also co-produced her late-night Fox talk show, The Late Show, starring Joan Rivers. Edgar committed suicide by overdosing himself on Valium in his Philadelphia hotel room in 1987, just a few months after Fox fired both him and Joan. The network executives initially wanted to dismiss only Edgar but when Joan fought back, both husband and wife were fired.
After nearly 30 years, Joan never really came to terms with her husband’s suicide, a source close to the late comic told HollywoodLife.com exclusively, adding: “Joan’s a happy woman now. I know she is. Because now she’s reunited with the love of her life, her precious Edgar.”
No doubt, Edgar would have been so proud of the groundbreaking career Joan went on to build. Just two years after his death, she found enormous success on another daytime talk show, The Joan Rivers Show, which ran for five years and earned her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host in 1990.
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Joan thanked her late husband in her weepie acceptance speech:
“Two years ago I couldn’t get a job in this business. I could not get a job. My income dropped to one sixteenth of what it was before I was fired. And people said I wouldn’t work again. And my husband had a breakdown, and it’s so sad that he’s not here, because it was my husband Edgar Rosenberg who always said, ‘You can turn things around.’ And except for one terrible moment in a hotel room in Philadelphia when he forgot that. This is really for him. Because he was with me from the beginning. And I’m so sorry he’s not here today.”
Joan was a comic character in every sense of the word, as she would even mock her own characteristics often talking about her many cosmetic procedures and no topic was off limit to her. She even joked about her death.
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Rivers blazed trails for other women in the comedic industry by bringing taboo topics like abortion to light onstage. Without her, there would be no Sarah Silverman or Chelsea Handler or Amy Schumer.
Here are just a few things to remember about Joan Rivers:
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