The Travel Detective

Travel Detective Blog: A Joan Rivers Story You Haven’t Heard

Locations in this article:  Los Angeles, CA

joanAmidst the outpouring of stories following Joan Rivers’ death, I’m reminded of my own experience with Joan. As sharp and cutting as she was on stage, in person she was kind, caring, and remembered everything.

I had interviewed her a number of times for Newsweek, and she even insisted on setting me up on a blind date. The date didn’t work out, but my relationship with Joan survived.

Then, a number of years later, she called me and wanted to get together for dinner. It was me, Joan, and her husband, Edgar Rosenberg. Joan had just started her new talk show on Fox, and the main topic at dinner that night was about a continuing problem she was having booking A-list guests.

The other talk shows (Carson in particular) had put out the word that if a celebrity did Joan’s show then they were banned from The Tonight Show.

Joan wanted someone, she needed someone—a newsmaker—a real headline personality that would draw a huge audience…even if it was a stunt.

I thought for a moment, then told Joan I had an idea. Not just a little idea, but a mega-ratings idea. It wouldn’t be easy to pull off; it involved a number of crews, satellite time, and remote broadcasting. But I told her that if she gave me the green light I’d make it happen. So I laid it out for her, and she LOVED the idea.

She agreed—it was a television event if we could get the commitment, and she told me to set it up. I made the call, and talked to the “celebrity.” I knew this global front page person because I had just returned from doing a third interview with her myself,  and I had the access when no other journalist did.

At the time, every media outlet wanted her, but she hadn’t talked to anyone but me. When I explained the idea to her, she initially refused. But when I gave her all the details, she warmed to it.

The next day, she called me back. She was in.

I called Joan with the good news. The broadcast would happen in five days. I would fly out of the country to be at the remote location. It was secretly put on Joan’s schedule as Project X.

“This is a publicist’s wet dream,” she told me. Anyone who needed to know was then briefed and kept the secret. But everyone was poised to announce it just before air time.

But what I didn’t know—as I was getting ready to get on the plane for the long flight—was that Joan’s husband, Edgar, was in the middle of a fight over the future of the show itself with Barry Diller, then head of Fox. Diller didn’t like the show, and apparently liked Edgar even less.

Then it happened.

imelda marcosTwo hours before takeoff, Joan told Barry Diller about Project X. It was to be a live, one-on-one interview/conversation/humor fest with Joan Rivers in Los Angeles and…Imelda Marcos in the Philippines, talking about shoes and everything else in Rivers’ comedy repertoire.

But instead of being happily excited by it, Diller apparently went into a rage about spending additional money on the show. Then I got the call. Don’t get on the plane. Not only was the segment dead, but Diller had also canceled the show.

It was all depression from there, and three months later, Edgar committed suicide.

As for Joan? In later years, she always laughed about the Imelda episode, and in fact joked about it. She never let that incident bother her—she even told a few off-color shoe jokes!

Even Imelda found it funny. A few years later, when I interviewed her in Manila, she smiled and said “I was always thought of as the Dragon Lady. But I had no idea I had the power to kill an American television show!”

In fact, it’s hard to imagine that my Imelda plan was the catalyst for canceling Joan’s show. In retrospect, I’m sure that if it wasn’t the Imelda idea, Diller would have found another reason to kill the program.

It’s also hard to imagine that this incident happened nearly 30 years ago.

By Peter Greenberg for PeterGreenberg.com