She may have died a decade ago, but Joan Rivers is still the undeniable star of “Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute” which aired on NBC on May 13 and is streaming on Peacock this week.
That’s because the iconic stand-up comedian, the first woman to host a late night show, the QVC queen, the entertainment and reality TV sensation, kept an expansive archive of her jokes. At her death there were more than 70,000 jokes in this archive, all meticulously typed up on cue cards and arranged by topics — and it’s these jokes that are the heart of this special. Every star and comedian featured in it, from Aubrey Plaza to Tiffany Haddish to Rita Wilson to Chelsea Handler to Sarah Silverman to Michelle Buteau, shares at least one of them. As comedian Patton Oswalt recounts, the archive included 140 jokes about Cher, four jokes about Hitler and 866 jokes about Elizabeth Taylor — the Jewish diva, he jokes, was “history’s true monster.”
And because it’s a Joan Rivers special? It is oh-so-Jewish. I mean, starts with “Hava Nagila” Jewish! Specifically, Tiffany Haddish stops a melancholy a cappella version of “Hallelujah” (of course, originally sung by Leonard Cohen) to tell the people holding up their phone lights in the crowd that this isn’t Hanukkah or a funeral, and then the former b-mitzvah MC — who had her own bat mitzvah back in 2019 — brings down the house by singing Hava Nagila, rapping and rousing the crowd with a “mazel tov in the house.”
The show, which was filmed in the Apollo Theater in New York and whose proceeds went to Joan’s favorite charity, God’s Love We Deliver, was produced by Joan’s daughter Melissa. Throughout it, celebrities who were touched and inspired by Joan each speak on a different topic that was a big part of her comedy. Patton Oswalt talks about her joke organization system, Nikki Glaser talks about aging and appearances, Michelle Buteau talks about parenting and fashion, Rachel Brosnahan — who took inspiration from Joan for her “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” role — tells jokes about vaginas. Haddish comes back on stage to talk about Joan’s Jewish jokes — specifically, about what Joan’s humor taught her about being a Jewish woman: never buy retail and always get jewelry from your man (you can’t spell jewelry without J-E-W, she quotes). Rivers, Haddish says, was “my rabbi when it comes to fashion;” she says that thanks to the comedian, she is a better Jew, better dressed and a better comedian.
Bill Maher reads a timeless Jewish joke in the special: “Preparing a Jewish dinner is very simple — all you need is the phone number of the nearest Chinese restaurant.” And yet not all of Joan’s jokes still hold up, even if there’s a hint of her trailblazing genius in all of them. Aubrey Plaza leads a delightful “in memoriam” segment to the ones that have aged particularly badly, including a morbid one about Anne Frank. Jewish comedian Randy Rainbow talks about Rivers’ appeal to gay men and shares addendums to some of her jokes about them, including one about someone writing a gay version of bible.
“We already have a gay version of the bible — it’s called the bible! Some guys who knew a guy and a bunch of rules about what you’re supposed to wear and eat? That’s very gay,” he quips.
Many of Joan’s bits are still perfect today, though. “Fashion Police” (Buteau jokes that celebrity were more scared of it than the actual police) remains iconic. Jeff Ross talks on the show about Joan’s affinity for poking fun at others, trying to guess what Rivers would say about recent famous looks — he jokes that Sam Smith’s Brit Awards outfit looks like he was sitting “shiva for a butt plug.” Ross also brings some feeling to the evening, talking about how much the charity cause means to him as someone who was a caretaker for his grandfather and for whom a meal service helped give him the evenings off to chase after his one dream.
Joan Rivers was the master of roasting people, perhaps, because she was the master of roasting herself. So many of her jokes are self-deprecation, completely made up or a little real. Many of their premises were about how her parents didn’t love her, or how unattractive she found herself — her funeral, one reads, would be “the first time a man ever approached her when she was lying down.”
Yet the show is all about praise for Rivers, who paved the way for so many of the comedians. In the video segment included in the Peacock special, Howie Mandel thanks her for personally getting him on the “Tonight Show” and jumpstarting his career, and so many of the women, on stage and off, thank her for paving the way for women in the business. Oswalt calls her a “feminist trailblazer” and “Jewish icon.” Rivers, Margaret Cho says, gave women the freedom to say what they want. Buteau quotes a joke of Rivers, saying that women should “always carry a little sledgehammer in your purse in case you hit the glass ceiling.”
Handler calls her a “beacon of success and determination.” Joan broke that glass ceiling by becoming the first female late night host with “The Late Show with Joan Rivers,” and Handler, almost two decades later, became the second with “Chelsea Lately.” Handler jokes that she and Joan were both blonde Jews, “the third rarest type of Jew after uncircumcised rabbis and Tiffany Haddish.”
“She walked so that we could run,” Handler says. “My entire career I have been compared to Joan Rivers and all I can say is: I should be so lucky,” Handler tells the crowd.
We are all so lucky to have had Joan Rivers, who was unapologetically Jewish and unapologetically herself. It is so moving to get a reminder of her brilliance in “Joan Rivers: A Dead Funny All-Star Tribute” and of the living embodiments of her legacy: so many funny Jewish women who get to take the stage because of the trail she paved for them.
