Farewell Rivers Creator of a new Television genre

New York: “I want my funeral to be a big showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action. I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I don’t want some rabbi rambling on.”

Joan Rivers’s directions for her own funeral service were printed and handed out on Sunday at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

After reading from Ecclesiastes, Rabbi Joshua M Davidson told the invitation-only audience that he was not about to be that rabbi. More than an hour of tributes and reminiscences followed’

Outside the temple, fans and photographers crowded the sidewalks behind police barricades. A Joan Rivers impersonator said Rivers had offered advice on how to be more like her (and a hairpin, to look more like her).

Rivers was “brassy in public” and “classy in private,” said a close friend.  “A troublemaker, trail blazer, pioneer for comics everywhere, never apologizing and never caring what people thought.”

“She did everything on her own terms,” said another friend.

“She fought the stereotypes that women can’t be funny, they should stay in their place, stay home,” he said. “Courageously, she fought to save her family after her husband’s suicide; she fought to rebuild her career after Johnny banned her from ‘The Tonight Show’ and the Fox show was cancelled. She fought the bigotry toward gay people.” She was also a tireless defender of Israel, he said.

While Rivers could be scalding, scathing and even acidulous, “Joan’s jokes were never ever meant to be hurtful”.

“There was the Joan who was the creator of an entirely new genre of television, red-carpet commentary.”