Joan Alexandra Molinsky, known by her stage name Joan Rivers, an American actress, comedian, writer, producer and television host, best known for her stand-up comedy, for co-hosting the E! Fashion Police.
Rivers was undergoing surgery on her vocal cords at a clinic in New York City on Aug. 28 when she stopped breathing and had to be transported to Mount Sinai Hospital. Melissa Rivers and Joan Rivers' 13-year-old grandson, Cooper, who live in Malibu, California, rushed to her bedside.
"My mother's greatest joy in life was to make people laugh," Melissa Rivers said in a statement. "Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon."
Raspy-voiced and brassy, Rivers was always self-deprecating, foul-mouthed and politically incorrect. A master of reinvention, she endured in show business because of her tenacious work ethic — which she credited to her "immigrant mentality."
Comedians typically push the edge of the envelope, but Rivers proved time and again that she didn't even see the envelope. To her fans, she was as shocking as she was endearing.
"The way she is funny, she tells the truth according to herself," the late film critic Roger Ebert wrote in 2010. "She hates some people. She has political opinions. Her observations are so merciless and her timing so precise that even if you like that person, you laugh. She is a sadist of comedy, unafraid to be cruel — even too cruel."
May her soul rest in peace --- Team Howwe.
Thanks For warming up our hearts with the laughs. you will surely be missed -- R.I.P pic.twitter.com/M6pLCeOEo8
— Howwe Entertainment (@HowweEnt) September 4, 2014
