Federation Star - January 2018

12B Federation Star January 2018
ARTS & CULTURE
Book reviews and
author information
H
Rev
Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses,
and Liberation of Joan Rivers, by Leslie Bennetts
Review by Patti Boochever, Jewish Book Festival committee member
Leslie Bennetts’ biography of power – also became a lifelong obsession.
It was a long and arduous journey
Joan Molinsky, aka Joan Rivers,
begins when, almost 55, Rivers filled with years of rejection until a
finds herself contemplating suicide magical night on The Tonight Show.
after her husband’s suicide, her public Born in 1933, Rivers’ life also coincided
with the changing roles of women
humiliation after being fired from her
TV show, and the discovery that she was in society, the workplace and entertainment.
In this sense, Bennetts’ book is
$37 million in debt. The collapse of her
life and career after achieving marriage, more than just a biography. Bennetts
motherhood and astounding fame and chronicles the undulating highs and
wealth was stunning and almost too lows of Rivers’ 60-year career while
much to bear. Her dog jumping on the also trying to reconcile the concept of
gun in her lap allegedly stopped her, but, Rivers as a feminist, all along essentially
as Rivers herself stated, “Even in my conducting a psychological autopsy of a
darkest moments, I knew instinctively woman pathologically driven to succeed
that my unyielding drive was my most and be loved.
important asset.”
What was the source of that drive?
Bennetts traces it to Rivers’ upbringing
and an unhappy childhood. Her parents
were obsessed with money, and Rivers
felt unloved, ugly and inferior to her
beautiful older sister. She didn’t have
friends or dates. And then there was the
pressure to be perfect, marry and have
children, like all good Jewish girls. But
at age five, Rivers discovered the first
secret to her happiness that sparked a
lifelong addiction to seeking adulation
and love: the applause she received as a
kitty cat in a preschool play. Her second
secret to happiness – that money was
While some of the inferences and
conclusions about the psychological
underpinnings of Rivers’ character
seem trite and predictable, there is no
question that her history influenced her
complex personality and her obsessions
with success, wealth and beauty,
the latter morphing into an addiction to
plastic surgery. Yet nothing completely
explains her extraordinary and manic
drive to succeed.
And succeed she did. Rivers was
so much more than a comedian. She
was a wife, a mother, a grandmother,
a widow and a loyal friend. She was
the bestselling author of 12 books, a
Monday, January 29, 1:00 - 3:30 pm at Hilton Naples
playwright, screenwriter and movie
director. She performed on TV, in film
and on Broadway. She won an Emmy, a
Grammy (posthumously) and was nominated
for a Tony. She was a radio and
talk show host, reality TV star, corporate
CEO and jewelry designer. She was an
AIDS champion and philanthropist. She
was a self-made woman and a paragon
of the American work ethic; she had
even performed the night before her
ill-fated surgery. Whether you loved or
hated Joan Rivers, you can’t help but
admire her achievements and Bennetts’
account of her life.
Leslie Bennetts is the author of the national bestseller The
Feminine Mistake as well as a longtime Vanity Fair writer and
former New York Times reporter. She was the first woman to
cover a presidential campaign at The New York Times.
Appearing with Leslie Bennetts will be Susan Silver,
author of Hot Pants in Hollywood.
This program is being generously sponsored by U.S. Bank
and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF).
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