Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Joan Rivers Confidential The Unseen Scrapbooks Joke Cards Personal Files and Photos of a Very Funny Joan Rivers’ old jokes about Palm Beach discovered by author. While Scott Currie was co-writing "Joan Rivers Confidential: The unseen scrapbooks, joke cards, personal files, and photos of a very funny woman who kept everything" with Rivers’ daughter Melissa, he discovered these jokes about Palm Beach in her files. An interview with Currie follows. JOAN’S PALM BEACH JOKES. Christmas in Palm Beach is different. The nativity scene in front of Neiman Marcus has a concierge, a room service cart, a manicurist… Palm Beach is one of only a few places where plastic surgery falls under the category of "City Beautification." Contrary to popular belief, money does not grow on Palm Beach trees. Gold leaf does, though. I love The Palm Beach Post. Their international coverage includes what’s going on in Riviera Beach. The temperature today in Palm Beach is (TEMPERATURE), which is also the average age of the people living here. Palm Beach is different. The cops here will ticket you for driving a car under fifty thousand. I got a ticket for driving without a chauffeur. Palm Beach has no traditions. The oldest historical landmark here is (OLD LOCAL CELEBRITY) The bad news is that one-third of the roads in Palm Beach need restorative work. Even worse is that one-third of the people do, too. "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God’s gift. That’s why we call it the present." Joan Rivers loved that quote. She’d recite it often while selling her jewelry collection on QVC. Perhaps she repeated it so much because the person she was cheering on was herself — little Joan Molinsky from Brooklyn, who claimed to have stolen a book from the Brooklyn Library called "Your Career In Show Business" when she was 8. By the time she died in 2014 at 84, Rivers had joked, scraped and climbed her way to the top of show biz, TV retailing and red-carpet fashion policing. She was a true "Piece of Work," as the 2010 documentary about her was called. One fascinating piece of the Joan puzzle: For a woman who cherished the present and seemed in a perpetual state of forward motion, she left a trail of bread crumbs to every part of her past. Well … more like a trail of bread trucks. Rivers saved everything. "After my mother died, I found myself swimming in boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of all her stuff … not to mention the storage bills and storage bills and storage bills and storage bills to store all those boxes," Melissa Rivers writes in the new book, "Joan Rivers Confidential: The unseen scrapbooks, joke cards, personal files, and photos of a very funny woman who kept everything." The ultimate Joan scrapbook: "Joan Rivers Confidential: The Unseen Scrapbooks, Joke Cards, Personal Files, and Photos of a Very Funny Woman Who Kept Everything" by Melissa Rivers and Scott Currie. Melissa co-wrote the book with Joan’s longtime friend Scott Currie, who spent more than a year sorting through the piles of memorabilia — every joke (typed and printed on index cards), every program, every note from a celebrity, every transcript from "The Tonight Show," and on and on. From the joke files: Joan Rivers kept voluminous files of jokes, all typed on index cards. Here are some of her wisecracks about a favorite subject, Elizabeth Taylor. From "Joan Rivers Confidential." Contributed. Currie pored through it all, creating binders of Joan’s stuff, one for each decade. "I picked things that moved me, things that told a story," Currie says. "Every day was like ‘Sophie’s Choice’ — it was very difficult to narrow down what we could fit in the book, and what would reveal a hopeful, inspiring story about a little girl who always wanted to be famous." "She was in on the joke" What Currie and Melissa created could be the funniest self-help book of the decade. Yes, it’s a self-help book — even though it’s not billed that way. If you look through it and don’t feel encouraged, you’re "dried up," as Joan might crack. Cue a Joan joke: "At my age, I drink a menopause cocktail. Vodka and estrogen. A Dried-Up Mary." Each of the 336 pages is filled with joke cards, photos and notes — it’s a real scrapbook, providing personality and context you can’t get from an email string. Currie was inspired by Rivers’ own scrapbooks — 55 of them! — which she had kept since she was a child. "Her first performance program is glued in there! Proof that she was going somewhere," he says. "And she kept so many things from the National Enquirer. It was so hysterical. She was in on the joke." Currie will be in West Palm Beach on Thursday to talk about his friend and sign books at the Kips Bay Design Show House. Rivers visited Palm Beach so often, she kept a joke file on the town: "Palm Beach is different … I got a ticket for driving without a chauffeur." Currie met Rivers at one of his first jobs out of college, when he became associate producer of her daytime talk show. "It was almost the lowest rung on the totem pole," he says. "I wore white socks when I met her. I dressed like I was going to a cocktail party." Still, the fashion police must have approved. Rivers sensed a kindred spirit in Currie — "we were on the same page" — and became a second mother to him. For the last 15 years of her life, they spent Thanksgiving, Christmas and all the Jewish holidays together, with Joan hosting soirees in her Marie- Antoinette-style Manhattan apartment. He’d also go for late-night snacks with her — her favorite? "Altoids" — after her regular Tuesday-night gig in New York. Rivers’ last chapter of life brought her new success and a "New York family" that would be by her side to the end, including Currie and style expert David Dangle, who now produces and sells the Joan Rivers jewelry and clothing lines on QVC. Joan and Johnny: The two had a close relationship and Joan was host of "The Tonight Show" when Johnny Carson was out of town — until they had a falling out that almost destroyed Joan personally and professionally. She kept every transcript from her "Tonight Show" appearances, and Scott Currie got permission from Johnny Carson’s estate to publish them in the new book. Contributed. She won the 1990 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show host, and her speech brought the audience to tears, because they knew her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, had killed himself three years earlier, and Johnny Carson had broken off his ties to her, after their longtime association on "The Tonight Show." "Two years ago, I couldn’t get a job in this business, and it was my husband, Edgar Rosenberg, who said, ‘You could turn things around.’" Her entire essence was about turning things around — a trait that changed Currie’s life. Party partners: Joan Rivers and Scott Currie at one of the many parties they attended together. Rivers became a mother figure to Currie, who was an associate producer for her talk show in the 1990s. Currie will talk about Joan and her love of Palm Beach, among other things, on Thursday at the Kips Bay Palm Beach Show House. Contributed. "She was very focused on moving on, moving ahead, having three irons in the fire," he recalls. "Every time things didn’t go right in my life, she’d tell me: ‘Deal with it. Cry a little. Then move on. You solve nothing by wallowing.’" "I still believe that life is like a movie…" Rivers’ ability to reinvent herself — and her face, thanks to her well-known plastic surgery — oozes throughout the book, even as she’s joking about celebs like Elizabeth Taylor: "Liz told me she ate something that disagreed with her. Kansas." "Oh, sure, Liz isn’t fat. Her dress model was the Hindenberg." "If Liz Taylor filmed ‘Cleopatra’ today, they’d have to widen the Nile." Of course, Rivers turns the same blade on herself: "I was a huge, fat baby. I was born June 1, 2 and 3." You get the idea. For young people who know Rivers only from NBC’s "Celebrity Apprentice" — where she was "hired" by Donald Trump — or from her red- carpet critiques on "Fashion Police," this book is a powerful tale of how tenacity, work and wit can propel a lifetime of success. "Your mother meant so much to me and touched so many people in her lifetime, and I knew there were some who didn’t know how much she had accomplished from her early days through to ‘Fashion Police’," Currie writes to Melissa in the beginning of book. Joan and Jimmy: The current host of NBC’s Tonight show, Jimmy Fallon, welcomed Joan Rivers back with love … just months before she died in 2014. He closes it with a photo of Rivers and Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show," with Fallon’s hand-written note — "Joan. Welcome back. We love you!" — and Currie gives his friend Joan the last word: "My alternate career has been pulling myself up from rock bottom," Rivers said. "I had survived being called a bitch, a no-talent and a has-been. I had survived being told that I was unfunny, that I was too funny, that I was too young, and that I was too old. I had even survived tumbling from the top of the world. I still believe that life is like a movie and you have the power to write your own script." Melissa Rivers' tell-all style book about mom Joan doesn't hold back. Everything to laugh with and cry about is in the soon-due book “Joan Rivers Confidential.” Subtitle: “The unseen scrapbooks, joke cards, personal files, and photos of a very funny woman who kept everything.” Co-authors are daughter Melissa Rivers and Joan’s PR buddy Scott Currie. They report: “Childhood insecurities” led to 564 “Parents hated me” jokes. Like: “I was born ugly. After the doctor slapped me, then nurses took a shot” . . . “My first birthday present was luggage” . . . “Bath toys? They gave me a toaster and a radio” . . . “My childhood memory was them loosening the wheels on my stroller” . . . “When I wet the bed, my mother bought me an electric blanket” . . . “They’d take me to the subway and throw candy bars on the tracks.” Joan Molinsky Rosenberg threw out nothing. Kept is a 1938 Brooklyn Ethical Culture School teacher report stating her “keen desire to succeed. She enjoys recognition.” Kept is a nursery school play that formed her thinking that “fat or thin, rich or poor, a theatrical career makes you a fairy princess.” Age 8, she stole a “Your Career in Show Business” library book. She memorized it and thus began her “tunnel vision.” In the intro of the book, which is set to be released in October, Melissa “swimming in boxes and boxes” of Joan’s stuff ponders the task of examining 55 boxes plus more in un-air-conditioned storage plus a separate Bubble Wrapped sealed cache labeled “‘Tonight Show’ 1960s to 1986.” Says PR guy Scott: “After starting to work on this last August, I went down a whole dress size.” Melissa Rivers’ new book ‘Joan Rivers Confidential’ tells the story of her mother through the artifacts the late entertainer saved. “Joan Rivers Confidential” is a new coffee table book by the late comedian’s daughter Melissa Rivers and co-author Steve Currie. It tells the story of her life through photos, letters, and other artifacts collected by Joan Rivers before her death in 2014. Melissa Rivers is an actress, TV personality, producer and author of the new book “Joan Rivers Confidential,” a coffee table book about her late mother’s life. (Photo by John Russo) Joan Rivers greets the audience at the “Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers” in Los Angeles in 2009. (Dan Steinberg, Associated Press) British singer Tom Jones, center, blows out candles at a surprise birthday party at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas, June 6, 1974. Guests include, from left to right, Joan Rivers, Sonny Bono, Jones, Debbie Reynolds, and Liberace. (Associated Press file photo) Joan Rivers, left, and her daughter Melissa blow kisses as they arrive for the 57th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards in this Sept. 18, 2005 file photo(Kevork Djansezian, Associated Press) Joan Rivers interviews First Lady Nancy Reagan on “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers” in October 1986. It was the first-ever late-night talk show hosted by a woman. (Reed Saxon, Associated Press) Melissa Rivers says that the year that followed her mother Joan Rivers’ unexpected death in September 2014 passed in a grief-tinged fog. There was the late comedian’s opulent Upper East Side penthouse to pack up and sell. “The Book of Joan,” a collection of fond and funny memories of mom to write. “Fashion Police,” the TV series that Joan Rivers launched and Melissa oversaw to manage. And there was so very much fascinating stuff, the well-organized accumulation of Joan Rivers’ 50-plus years in show business, to sort through, from the comedian’s storied joke files to dozens of scrapbooks, transcripts of her many late-night TV appearances, newspaper clippings, photographs, and on and on and on. “We had so much storage it was ridiculous,” Rivers says. “And as we started going through it, Scott (Currie, a longtime colleague and friend of Joan and Melissa both) kept saying, ‘You should do a book.’ I’m like, ‘No. No, no, no.’ But he kept working on me.” When she finally agreed, and Currie worked up a proposal, it sold in a single day. “Then we actually had to do it!” Rivers says with a laugh. “Joan Rivers Confidential: The Unseen Scrapbooks, Joke Cards, Personal Files, and Photos of a Very Funny Woman Who Kept Everything,” is the quite specifically titled coffee table book that arrived in stores last month, and brings Rivers to Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach on Sunday, Dec. 3, for a talk and signing. 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In it, Rivers and Currie present a narrative of Joan Rivers’ life and career through the artifacts she left behind. “It’s really a history of pop culture from the late ’50s to 2014,” Rivers says. “My mother was so current and always wanted to stay current that she was talking about things as they were happening.” Both her parents were meticulous record-keepers, Rivers says, so the childhood report cards and family photographs, letters and jokes, reviews and newspaper clippings – some with hand-written comments such as “Not true!” written in the margins – were easy to understand once Melissa Rivers and Currie had sorted through the sheer volume of material. “Most of my mother’s career was in a non-digital age,” she says. “So you did save everything like that. You did save letters, you did save mementos. My mother didn’t want to be repetitive on the different shows so of course she kept records. The work didn’t so much reveal new information for her, she says – “My mother was not big on secrets, she said whatever came to mind” – but all those transcripts of her appearances on various talk shows stuck a chord in her as she read them, Rivers says. “It was the transcripts of ‘The Tonight Show’ and ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ that were so wonderful to go back through,” she says. “Because I can hear her voice so distinctly that when I would read through them it was her. So having to sit down and go through those was really, really meaningful.” In the three years since Joan Rivers died after a botched out-patient surgery on her throat, Melissa Rivers says she has worked through her grief while also working to honor her mother’s legacy. ” ‘Book of Joan’ saved my life,” she says of the 2015 book she wrote to share her memories of growing up with her mother. “It saved my life because (my writing partner and I) would sit in our sessions and laugh. He was very, very close with my mother, so we would laugh and cry and tell silly stories and be as loose and not judged as anywhere else I could be in my life at that time. “This (new book) was more of an emotional roller coaster and more difficult,” Rivers says. “One was telling stories and being funny and one was reliving a huge portion of my life. To have to go through this and read all of the things that were going on in the harder times. Or when my father passed. (Her father, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide in 1987.) Publication of the new book closes one chapter. Another ended Monday night when the E! network aired the final episode of “Fashion Police,” the comedic fashion commentary series Rivers hosted from its start in 1995 until her death in 2014, and on which Melissa Rivers also often appeared before and after her mother’s death. “It was hard, it was difficult, and it wasn’t by choice,” says Rivers, who was also an executive producer on the show for most of its run. “That being said, who in God’s name gets a show and gets to be a creative force in a show that’s on the air for 22 years? As sad as I am I look back with such pride and such gratitude that I was fortunate enough to be a part of something that lived on television where things change so fast for 22 years.” As for the legacy that the series, the books, and all of the other things Joan Rivers did in her life created? “It’s funny because my mother never saw herself as someone who’s comedy was social commentary, but if you go and actually look back at it, just by the nature of how she performed and by being in the moment, she was one of the greatest social commentators that we’ve ever known. “My mom was always annoyed. She’d say, ‘Nobody’s ever going to give me credit for anything until I’m dead,’ and boom, she’s dead, and everybody is going, “Oh, she was so great.'” The final page of “Joan Rivers Confidential” shows the note of condolence President Barack Obama sent Melissa Rivers after her mother’s death, and it’s placed there, she says, because it, too, sums up Joan Rivers’ legacy in a way her daughter views as true. “He said, ‘She made America laugh and she made America think,'” Rivers says. What greater legacy for my mom than laughter and making people think?” Melissa Rivers book event. When : 2- 4 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 3. Where : Barnes & Noble, Bella Terra shopping center, 7881 Edinger Ave., Huntington Beach. Joan Rivers Confidential: The Unseen Scrapbooks Joke Cards Personal Files and Photos of a Very Funny Woman Who Kept Everything by Melissa Rivers. Joan Rivers is an enduring icon of the 20th century, and her wildly popular humor has appealed to generations of fans. With a career that began in the late 1950s, Joan kept mementos over the course of her entire working life, and Joan Rivers Confidential is a compilation of never-before-seen personal archives. Assembled by her daughter Melissa with Scott Currie, the book contains scripts and monologues, letters from famous friends, exchanges with fans, rare photographs, as well as classic and never-before-heard jokes—many simply scribbled on everything from hotel stationery to airplane boarding passes. Touching on subjects from her 50 years in show business ( The Tonight Show , Las Vegas, Elizabeth Taylor, Heidi Abromowitz, the red carpet, and Fashion Police) , this is a revelatory and humor-filled insider look at the popular, multitalented comedian. Praise. About the authors. Melissa Rivers is the cocreator of the Red Carpet franchise and the host and executive producer of the E! Entertainment series Fashion Police . She is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Joan and Red Carpet Ready. Scott Currie began his career as a television producer on The Joan Rivers Show and now owns his own communications firm in New York City. To the Woman Who Kept Everything. If you stop by Maxwell’s Chophouse you’ll find even more of Joan River’s favorite jokes on the wall-mirrors around the restaurant. Why? Tuesday night the restaurant hosted the launch of Joan Rivers Confidential by Melissa Rivers and Scott Currie , published by Abrams Books. Owner Babette Haddad , known as the Queen of Steak, liked the decoration so much she’s decided to keep them up for a while. “I’ll cook when cake mixes have pictures of Betty Crocker in mink…” –Rivers. Released on October 24th the book shot to the #1 bestseller of photo-essays on Amazon, and sold out in one day. Sub-titled as “The unseen scrapbooks, joke cards, personal files, and photos of a very funny woman who kept everything” the bestseller includes letters from Tom Hanks, Sissy Spacek, Siegfried and Roy, David Letterman, Katherine Hepburn and Meryl Streep . “How old am I? I ran the hat check at the Last Supper…” –Rivers. The launch was hosted by the authors, Rivers and Currie, and co-hosted by Cindy Adams, Blaine Trump and Deborah Norville . Notably in attendance were Martha Stewart, Brian Atwood, Simon Doonan, Peter Som, Elie Tahari, Chris Benz, Jamie Drake, Ann Dexter Jones, Bob Colacello, Carson Kressley, Graham Norton and Rosanna Scotto . While the book sold out on the 24th the 336-page hardcover is back in stock on Amazon. “I don’t exercise. If god had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor…” –Rivers.