'Her greatest joy was to make people laugh': Joan Rivers dies, aged 81

Outspoken and opinionated, Joan Rivers is being remembered as a trailblazing comedienne.

The acerbic US stand-up comic and television presenter died in a New York hospital, at the age of 81.

"It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my mother, Joan Rivers. She passed peacefully at 1:17pm surrounded by family and close friends," daughter Melissa Rivers said in a statement.

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"My mother's greatest joy in life was to make people laugh. Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon."

The Brooklyn-born Rivers had been at Mount Sinai Hospital since she reportedly stopped breathing during a medical procedure on her vocal cords at a private clinic on August 28.

Joan famously let fly at the Logie Awards in 2006 when she called the pink trophy the ugliest award she’d ever seen, and proclaimed “I don’t know why I’m f*****g here”. Photo: Getty

Her daughter Melissa and grandson Cooper flew immediately from Los Angeles and kept a vigil at her bedside ever since.

They thanked hospital staff for the "amazing care" they provided the Emmy award-winning comedian and TV host.

"My son and I would like to thank the doctors, nurses and staff of Mount Sinai Hospital for the amazing care they provided for my mother.

Outspoken and opinionated, Joan Rivers will be remembered as a trailblazing female stand-up comedian. Photo: Getty

"Cooper and I have found ourselves humbled by the outpouring of love, support and prayers we have received from around the world. They have been heard and appreciated.

Rivers stopped breathing and slipped into cardiac arrest during throat surgery on August 28 at the out-patient clinic Yorkville Endoscopy (which is being probed by the New York Health Department).

She was rushed via ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she remained in a medically induced coma throughout weekend but was not breathing on her own.

On Wednesday, Melissa announced Joan had been "moved out of intensive care and into a private room where she is being kept comfortable."

JOAN'S BEST ONE-LINERS: Click through for Rivers' top zingers

According to family friend Cindy Adams, the room was professionally decorated with flowers, bows, plants, while show tunes played on CD and a white faux mink blanket covered the bed. Her hair and makeup were kept immaculate — just as Joan would want it.

Joan Rivers, a native New Yorker and relentless worker, had been planning a fall tour of the United Kingdom, Before They Close the Lid, and had a slate of QVC and stateside comedy-show appearances booked through Thanksgiving while also fulfilling her duties as host of E!'s Fashion Police. She last appeared on stage, at New York's Laurie Beechman, on August 27, the night before her throat procedure.

Indeed, Rivers was a pioneering entertainer and comic who kicked in walls, ceilings, and anything else that got in her way during an up-and-down, 50-plus-year career.

"We wanted to do it, and we did it, and we don't give a damn," Rivers once said. At the time, she was talking about her 1978 big-screen comedy, Rabbit Test, which she wrote, directed and willed to life, but she could've been talking about any stage of her show-business run.

Comic and television presented Joan Rivers told People she never wanted to retire. Photo: Getty Images

On stage, Rivers insulted her way to the top of the comedy world, connecting to fans with her catchphrase, "Can we talk?" On the awards-show red carpet, she spoke her mind on fashion and celebrity, helping define E!'s network brand and creating a spectator sport and making "Who are you wearing?" part of the pop-culture vernacular. On late-night TV, she crashed the boys' club as Johnny Carson's first permanent guest host on The Tonight Show, and, later, as the host of her own show on the then-fledgling Fox network.

Rivers reinvented her career about as many times as the outspoken advocate of plastic surgery freshened her look. She was so tireless you could get tired just thinking about the calendar she kept. The title of the 2010 documentary about her life said it all: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.

"When I die.. I want a wind machine so that even in my casket my hair is blowing just like Beyonce's," Joan famously said.

Born June 8, 1933, Rivers anchored E!'s Fashion Police, a spinoff of the Live from the Red Carpet coverage she began doing for the network in the mid-1990s. She hosted the online talk show, In Bed With Joan. She appeared with daughter Melissa, her only child, in the WEtv reality series, Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best? She appeared on — and won — The Celebrity Apprentice. She hawked jewelry on QVC. She guest starred on an episode of the Louis C.K. comedy series, Louie.

And that's only a sampling of her credits from the past five years.

Prior to her run as the doyen of the red carpet, Rivers was best known for having her career launched and temporarily derailed by Carson.

Anointed by the late-night king in the 1960s, Rivers was a Tonight Show favourite who went from frequent guest to frequent guest host to, in 1983, permanent guest host. In 1986, she signed to host a rival late-night show for Fox. The move took her to the next level, but alienated Carson, who banished her from his show and from his life — until the end of his life. (Carson died in 2005.)

"I kept saying, 'I don’t understand, why is he mad?'" Rivers wrote in a piece for The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. "He was not angry at anybody else. I think he really felt because I was a woman that I just was his. That I wouldn’t leave him. I know this sounds very warped. But I don’t understand otherwise what was going on."

Melissa Rivers (right) says Joan's greatest joy in life was making people laugh. Photo: AP

Her Fox show, The Late Show, went very badly. Low ratings led to Rivers' firing only seven months into her run; three months later, in August 1987, Rivers's husband and longtime manager, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide. Rivers career and life was in shambles. Then, just weeks after Rosenberg's death, she accepted a presenter's gig at that fall's Primetime Emmy Awards.

"I don't want a warm hand on my shoulder," Rivers told People magazine at the time. "I don't want sympathy audiences."

Rivers kept on keeping on. From the ashes of The Late Show, she put in time on Hollywood Squares. She launched a morning talk show, The Joan Rivers Show, that brought her a 1990 Daytime Emmy. She joined E! in the early 1990s when it didn't take much to get the exclamation-point network excited.

"The first time we got a 1 rating at E!, the room was filled with flowers," Rivers told the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

It was in 2004 that Rivers and daughter Melissa jumped to the TV Guide Channel for a big-money deal and the chance to create a red carpet franchise on that fledgling network. (It didn't take; the Rivers women were out by 2007.)

Though her humour was caustic — she did Elizabeth Taylor no favors during the actress's weight battles — Rivers was no bridge-burner. She reached out to Carson (though, no, he never did reach back out to her).

She returned to the Tonight Show at the invite of Jimmy Fallon. She returned to the E! fold as the once-again host of Fashion Police. Basically, she was too pragmatic to turn down work — work is what she did. When Spaceballs, the 1987 Mel Brooks big-screen spoof, went the animated-series route in 2008, she was back as the voice of Dot Matrix. Her last tweet was a plug for her Fashion Police special on the Emmys and the Video Music Awards.

"I'm never gonna retire," Rivers told People last year.

True to her word, she didn't.

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