Still Talking (22 page)

era-take a question and make it into a joke, a game, hit the ball back into my court.

Joan Collins, one of my favorite guests, is a pro at playing the game. One night I asked her, “Besides your husband, who’s the best man you’ve ever been in bed with?”

“Your husband,” she answered.

I shot back, “Funny, he didn’t say the same about you. “

So the lineup of guests was a constant issue between us and them. While they doubtless resented our secondguessing, we resented their choices. We felt they were feeding us Johnny’s castoffs. They were alarmed by the unknown, by anyone who was unpredictable. Of course, those were exactly the guests that I and a younger audience liked, and once they had been on, they were fine, and, ironically, coveted by Johnny.

When we wanted Pee-wee Herman, Peter said, “He’s a Letterman guest,” which meant he didn’t have The Tonight Show type of humor. When we finally got permission to have him, I heard that Johnny called up and said, “How come we haven’t used Pee-wee Herman?” I really cared about Pee-wee-and I still do. I’m so sad for him. They were also nervous when I asked for Howie Mandel and Arsenio Hall, both of whom became regulars. When we were finally allowed to have Cher, they said to her right in front of me, “We want to bring you back for Johnny.” That wonderful woman refused.

In our constant campaign for the right guests, Billy Sammeth was our buffer. He was brilliant dealing with Peter, with whom he had a nice father-and-son relationship, and was marvelous at persuading guests to come on the show. As well as being a professional, Billy is the best playmate in the world. Everybody loves him. He could get through to anybody and talk anybody into anything because he is charming and nonthreatening and very funny.

Peter complained, jokingly, that Billy was like a little Chihuahua at his ankle. Billy would say, “Yes, Boy George is really strange, really odd, and probably your audience won’t like him. But, Peter, think how funny it could be. ” He would say to Peter, “You had a great show last night.

Speaking of great shows, have you thought about Howie Mandel? “

If Billy struck out, then I would step in, playing the same game of “Please, Daddy, may I?” I would say, “Please, please, it’s my birthday. The present I want most in the world is Bobby Goldthwaite. Come on. ” When David Lee Roth was really hot, I asked for him for Christmas. I think I finally got him for Passover. But everything has its price. After prostrating myself like that, I would hang up angry-at Peter and at myself.

But stubborn as he was, he was still a friend, and we usually got what we wanted by relentless wheedling.

This jousting with Peter, over what were known as “Joan guests” was kept jovial and joking. That was very important to us because the Lassallys-Alice and their son and daughter-were the only family that ever in our lives became intimate friends.

We met Peter while we were still in New York and Carson was married to Joanne. Peter worked for the Arthur Godfrey radio show, and Joanne Carson brought him over to The Tonight Show. Joanne liked intrigue, liked being involved in the show, promoting ideas, and she wanted a producer who was her guy, who would report to her-but right away Peter discovered he had to be Johnny’s guy. He had survived a Nazi concentration camp, and he survived the Carson show-got in nobody’s way, made no enemies, ruffled no feathers, made sure the powerful people were happy. When Edgar and I moved to California, the Lassallys were new there, too. I liked them, and they were the only couple we met who liked being a family and doing things with their children. We went on vacations together-unheard-of for us: skiing in Vail and Aspen, day trips up to San Simeon and down to San Diego, stopping in La Jolla to play on the beach. We took a house together in Hawaii. Their daughter traveled with us to Europe.

They were the one current of normality, of suburbia, we ever had-the friends we called on a Sunday and said, “Come on over. We’ll order a pizza and make a salad. You bring the wine.” They were the only couple who ate in our kitchen. We discussed our children-major deci-

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sions like should their daughter wear cork-soled shoes in her high school graduation. They were the family we piled into the station wagon with for a trip, letting the kids go to sleep in back on the floor. It was a neighbor kind of friendship, as ordinary as we could get in a high-powered world. In the middle of a universe of deals and networking, they made us feel grounded in reality.

But the glue in the relationship was the friendship between Edgar and Peter. Edgar had more in common with Peter than with anybody else in Hollywood. Peter was Dutch, so both had European backgrounds, both were displaced by Germans. Both loved European food. Both loved show business and gossiping. Both had the same outlook on life and were very dramatic and Prussian about their authority. I remember Peter making a federal case about his daughter’s boots, forbidding her to wear them because they looked cheap-and there I was standing there wearing a pair myself.

With Peter, Edgar did not feel like a star’s husband. When I was out of town, the Lassallys had him to dinner alone. The friendship worked partly because the power was equally divided. Edgar could feel superior because Peter had to butter up Freddie De Cordova and let Edgar pick up most of the checks. But Peter held my Carson career in his hands.

I was grateful to have Alice in my life. She was a reader like me, very much a New Yorker, but we were never friends to the point where we did anything alone together. I think she felt too different from me. That is a curse of celebrity-friendship with a star must be extremely hard. This affected Peter as well. Everywhere you go with me, there is a fuss-“Oh, Miss Rivers, right this way”-and everyone with you becomes a tagalong. If somebody takes me to that favorite restaurant where they’ve been going for years, suddenly the chef is coming out of the kitchen. For a man like Peter Lassally, who had major clout on his own, that could be a subtle putdown, especially if he felt he had made my fame and fortune possible.

When nobody is allowed to forget that I am Joan Rivers, relaxation and naturalness are hard. Alice Lassally once

said to me, “You always dress like a star, don’t you?” And simultaneously I am wondering why people really want to be my friend.

Trust is hard. I cannot relax. There are so few people with whom you can take the second step, because celebrity makes you four times more vulnerable. I feel constantly scrutinized and am terribly careful what cards I put on the table. But I trusted the Lassallys, and they were very important to me; I opened up to them more than to anybody else in the business.

In 1984, after my first year as permanent guest host, the Lassallys introduced us to the NBC vice president for special services, Jay Michelis.

Jay became a friend who was willing to educate me in reality. He was a man bigger than life, full of energy, with a barrel chest, a booming voiceand he was absolutely outrageous. He had come up through the ranks at NBC and was a key figure in charge of relations with the affiliate stations. At a meeting he would join the portly, proper wife of the owner of a station in North Dakota and say, “Well, Martha, gettin’ any lately?” and she loved it.

“Ooooohhh, Jaaay! ! ! ! ” He was full of the devil.

The first time we went out to dinner, he totally embarrassed me with his language. Then I told myself, “Stop being such a prude and sit back and just enjoy him,” and soon there were evenings when he became a real person who talked quietly and seriously. During one of those evenings he told me that, in fact, my ratings were higher than Johnny’s. This information, Jay said, was kept from Carson for fear of upsetting him. People magazine confirmed this in a story, quoting the Nielsen company that in my three years as permanent guest host, Carson averaged 6.5 in the week before my guest-host shots, and I averaged 6.9.

Because advertising revenues are based on ratings, I was far more successful than I had been allowed to know.

Then, around March 1984, an event occurred that began the long decline to the end of my relationship with The Tonight Show. My memory of the details are of course

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from my point of view, but remembering, I am saddened again by the silliness of this tragedy on all sides.

Each afternoon when I arrived, I gave a secretary a copy of my monologue for the censor to review. On this particular day Lassally came to my dressing room and directed me not to use a certain joke in the monologue, one so insignificant, I can’t even remember it. The censors had nothing to do with this; Peter just considered the joke not funny.

I told Edgar that I could not take it out-“It’s wrong for him to ask this.”

Lassally was already in control of my guests, and this meant to me that he considered himself a judge of my comedy as well. I was already being driven crazy by the show’s censor on questions of taste, and if I let Peter start editing my monologue for humor, he would be another door to fight through before I went in front of the camera.

Everybody in the business thinks they know comedy. Everyone has theories about what makes comedy work, except that the theories don’t work. People will tell you what type of person is a television-comedy personality, and then along comes Roseanne Barr, or Whoopi Goldberg. Neil Simon has a wonderful line about this: “If we all knew what was funny, we wouldn’t have to go out of town. ” When people interview me about comedy, I’m hard to pin down because I don’t know what makes people laugh at a joke. But when they do laugh at one of mine, I fall on my knees and say, “Thank you, God.”

Ordinary people say a joke to themselves, and it doesn’t feel right in their mouth, doesn’t sound funny in their head-so they think it must not be funny. They don’t realize two things. First, only 50 percent of a joke is the words. The other 50 percent is delivery-whatever makes a comic funny, what lets him say “hat” so you laughand when anybody else says “hat,” it’s nothing. Comics have their twist on the ball, something they are born with.

You can teach dramatic acting, but you cannot teach comic delivery.

Second, just because ten guys don’t laugh doesn’t mean the next ten guys won’t laugh. No one person can decide

what will be funny. Nobody. Not Neil Simon. Not Bill Cosby. Nobody. You can only guess what may work for you. Comedy, the only thing I know that is truly democratic, is for five hundred people in an audience to judge.

I have learned this truth the hard way, writing jokes on pieces of paper and putting them on the floor and saying them out loud. Sometimes you do try a joke on a comedian friend you respect. When Garry Shandling was my opening act, I would say to him, “Do you think this is funny?” He might say, “Yes, very funny”-but thoughtfully, a professional opinion, no laughter.

Peter, from time to time, brought me comedy ideas. I tried a few and they were good, and I still do them. He suggested that after a joke about a celebrity, I should look for her in the audience. “I met the Queen of England. She doesn’t look anything like her stamp. For example, she’s not all one color. Is the Queen here? Look for a woman in a housedress and a crown.”

But most did not feel right for me, so I would swallow and say, “I’ll think about that.” This time, however, he was directing, and I was very upset.

His veto of that joke tripped every switch. It released the fear that comes when I feel constricted on camera, when self-consciousness inhibits the spontaneity that keeps the audience in suspense about what’s coming next.

Worst of all, Peter’s veto released the hurt I feel when yet again the core of me becomes vulnerable, the center of where I must believe I am funny, my comedy instinct.

Peter returned to my dressing room with Freddie De Cordova. The instant I saw them, I lost control. I fled into my bathroom and locked the door and ran water in the sink to drown out their words and make them think I was preparing to go on the air.

Edgar stayed behind to handle the crisis. He did not consider our friendship with Peter. He stood my grounddoubtless with the same lack of finesse I had displayed. He refused to remove the joke. He said to Peter what he always said in those moments: “Joan doesn’t respect your judgment on comedy. She doesn’t respect mine. She doesn’t respect anybody’s.”

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Peter was helpless and furious. What he heard was “We don’t respect your judgment on comedy.” Period. So his best friends-the woman he felt he had promoted and protected-had humiliated him in front of his boss, a man he had to pretend to like and who would soon be adding this insult to his store of gossip. By the time I decided to emerge, fourteen years of friendship with Peter were gone.

A few nights later, Edgar and I met with the Lassallys to patch up the relationship. The four of us sat at our kitchen table, tears were shed, but ultimately they wanted an unconditional apology. Perhaps I did not appreciate how much we had humiliated Peter, because telling him I was terribly, terribly sorry was not enough. It was like that wonderful New Yorker cartoon of the wife saying to the husband, “It’s not the egg rolls, Harry, it’s the last twenty years.”

It was such an unnecessary break, such an ego, thing. From then on, Peter was correct and professional-but the tension was now just below the surface. He had to deal with us, and we had to be nice to him. We all pretended that everything was all right. We still met in the dressing room before the show and laughed. But all of us knew deep down that the relationship was not working.

I remember one week in particular that summer when America was having Olympic fever. The games were held in Los Angeles and Mary Lou Retton had just won the Gold Medal for gymnastics. We wanted her on the show. They said, “She’s only sixteen. She won’t be able to talk. ” But after a lot of arguing, they finally agreed, and Billy got her. She was adorable. The audience ate her up. “You know what I’m going to do?” she told me. “I’m going to get a red convertible with Dolby sound. “