#TBT: Joan Rivers and Funny Jewish Women
Love her or hate her, Joan Rivers, aleha shalom, was one of the most recognizable American Jews of the past half century and one of our most successful comics. By my count, she has been mentioned five times in Jewschool’s storied history, so today, for Throwback Thursday, here’s sarah‘s 2007 review of the San Francisco Jewish film festival, including a review of Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women, produced by the Jewish Women’s Archive and focusing on Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers, Wendy Wasserstein and Gilda Radner. All six of these Mt. Rushmorians of Jewish comediennes have left us now. Rest in…oh, who are we kidding? Joan Rivers isn’t resting any kind of way; she’s working some crowd to find the laughter and absurdity in the awfulness of something in olam haba.
On a personal note, though I’m the one who posted this, I actually always found Joan Rivers to be thoroughly obnoxious, insulting, and not funny. Like another renowned Jewish comic of her generation, Don Rickles, her comedy wasn’t just mean-spirited, but it depended on its mean-spirited-ness. I consider another bigoted, mean, and unfunny Jewish comic a generation below them — Andrew “Dice” Clay — to descend from them directly