E! EntertainmentJoan Rivers is getting the last laugh, per usual.
When she was a fledgling comic, Johnny Carson told Tonight Show viewers she was "going to be a big star" after she performed her stand-up routine on Feb. 17, 1965. At Bill Cosby's insistence, Carson had agreed to take a chance on Rivers, who would later guest host the late-night show from 1983 to 1986.
When Rivers left to host Fox's Late Night, she called up Carson, who reportedly hung up on her. She was subsequently banned from The Tonight Show, a decision respected by Carson's first two successors, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. Rivers did not appear on The Tonight Show again until Feb. 17, 2014, when the comediene made a cameo in Jimmy Fallon's first episode. She returned to the show on March 27, 2014.
After she died Thursday at age 81, however, she was given a well-deserved late-night salute.
Jimmy Kimmel was equally reverential in his tribute. "Besides being a pioneer for women in comedy—for everyone in comedy—she was a very lucky person because Joan loved her job so much. She never wanted to stop, and she didn't have to stop because she was so great at it," he said. "I had the good fortune of having Joan on the show, I think, like six times." Kimmel then showed a clip from Rivers' final appearance on his show in 2013, where she joked about her daughter and grandson. "She was something else," Kimmel said. "My thoughts go out to Joan's daughter, Melissa, and her grandson."
Kimmel's ex, Sarah Silverman, spoke fondly of Rivers later in the episode. "I am broken inside," she confessed. "She was a hero to me and I loved her very much. I think a lot of people, when they die at 81, you go, 'Well, she was 81. She had an amazing life.' But she wasn't done! She's, right now, was at her most vital...I tuned in to Fashion Police every Friday because they were the most hardcore jokes on TV. You just can't believe that she's saying them...I know that if she was here, she would want us to be here and to be funny and she'd probably want me to say, like, 'Nice tie! Who made it...Calvin Clown?' 'I like that shirt...does it come in men's?' 'Oh my God, Jimmy! I love your hair! You have to tell me where you bought it.' That's for you, Joan." Kimmel fired back, "You know where? I bought it from your back!"
"I think this is the way Joan would have wanted it, yes?" he asked.
Silverman received an e-mail from Rivers last Tuesday after winning an Emmy. "She loved with her whole heart and she also hated with her whole heart, which I loved," the Masters of Sex star recalled.
Letterman had only kind words for the late legend on The Late Show. "Here's a woman, a real pioneer for other women looking for careers in stand-up comedy. And talk about gut. And by the way, she was indefatigable. She would come on this show—she would be on all the shows—and she would work about 300 dates a year. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of travel," the comedian said. "And she would go at it—she was 81 years old out doing it—and [was] as funny today as she was when she first got into show business. And talk about guts! She would come out here and sit in this chair and say some things that were unbelievable, just where you would have to swallow pretty hard and twice, but it was hilarious. And she stood behind her jokes, and to my knowledge, would say these things and never apologize because she always felt, 'Hey, I'm a comedian. These are jokes. There are no victimless jokes.' And she was harder on herself than anyone, really. She would tell these God-awful jokes about herself."
Letterman marveled at her accomplishments, noting that she designed a QVC jewelry line and wrote 12 best-selling books. He also praised Rivers' whip-smart sense of humor. "When her show went away, she would start being a guest on our show, and I can remember the first time she came out and sat down. I was stunned and surprised, because...the force and power of her comedy was overwhelming," he recalled. "I said to people, 'I didn't remember that she was that funny,' but by God, she was all her life."
"We always talk about Barbara Walters being a pioneer and role model for young women, and there used to be a time when young women were not getting into broadcast journalism," he said. "Well, Barbara Walters changed all that, and I think the same can be said for show business and Joan Rivers."
On TBS' Conan, O'Brien's guest remembered Rivers. "I actually got to see Joan open for Johnny Carson when I was a kid in Vegas...I got to be friends with her a couple years ago," Chris Hardwick remembered. "I would get a call from her every once in a while. I would get a message like, 'Chris, it's Joan...I want to know about the internet.' Which is one of the reasons I think she was relevant for six decades," the @midnight host said. "She wanted to know how everything worked and how people were communicating now and she wanted to understand digital content. I adored her and she was lovely and a pioneer. She never stopped working—such an inspiration. I've been heartbroken about it all day."
O'Brien himself honored the trailblazer, telling Hardwick, "When I was a kid and I would watch Johnny Carson, Johnny Carson would occasionally take some time off and he would have a substitute fill in. Joan Rivers would fill in for Johnny Carson, and when she did, it was an event. Everybody in the country would talk about it the next day. Media is so fractured now. There's so many thousands of different shows and everybody competing for attention. It's hard to explain to people today what an event that was...People would gather in the living room. Everyone would howl with laughter...At that time, she was so outrageous and her comedy. It felt so out of the bounds and people were just blown away."
Seth Meyers said during Rivers' Late Night appearance last month, she told more jokes faster than any guest he'd ever had. "She was a performer, a comedienne for half a century. As much as I loved her as a performer, I had so much respect for her as a writer. She wrote every day, and to write every day for that long is just so impressive to me. [She was] the nicest person in the world when I got to talk to her backstage...I wish she were here right now, because if she were here right now, she would make a joke about how she just passed away—and she would get away with it, because it would be really funny."
Craig Ferguson called it "a sad day for us in the comedy community."
"We lost Joan Rivers today, one of the all-time greats," he said on The Late Late Show. "Yes, I know, it's terribly sad. I just hope that when Joan meets the man upstairs, he is wearing something she can insult."