9 Things You Didn't Know About Joan Rivers

8. She Was A Pioneer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcFJtAb77b4 €œIf one more woman comedian comes up and says to me €˜You opened the doors for me€™€ and you want to say €˜Go f*ck yourself.€™ I€™m still opening the doors.€ Rivers became a part of the famed Greenwich Village scene of the late-fifties and early-sixties, hanging out in clubs and coffee shops and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. Surrounded by would-be actors, writers and comedians, she started moonlighting as a stand-up comedienne while still pursuing acting, but was the sole female presence in a male-centric world - a €œlittle college girl in a black dress who was playing strip joints!€ She started out under the stage name Pepper January but soon took on the surname of her agent Tony Rivers, performing in duos, trios and sketch comedy and learning improvisational skills during a spell with the Second City theatre troupe in Chicago. She struggled to make an impact trotting out the customary one-liners and zingers, but watching stand-up Lenny Bruce perform would have a profound impact on her career. Bruce€™s personal, confessional style of comedy was a revelation, and when Rivers adopted a similar approach she found doors opening that had hitherto remained firmly shut. Speaking about real-life experiences as a Jewish woman and singleton, Rivers started making an impression, but a number of auditions to appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson were unsuccessful until Bill Cosby put in a good word. She first appeared on the show in 1965, prompting Johnny Carson to pronounce: €œYou€™re going to be a star.€ He was right. Rivers€™ role as the first female confessional comic, breaking the male stranglehold on stand-up and riding roughshod over taboos dictating what women should say and do, paved the way for the likes of Roseanne Barr, Ellen DeGeneres and Sarah Silverman, and guaranteed an enduring legacy.
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I watch movies and I watch sport. I also watch movies about sport, and if there were a sport about movies I'd watch that too. The internet was the closest thing I could find.