When Joan Rivers died in 2014, ending one of the greatest careers in modern comedy, several groups were interested in acquiring her archives, which included a meticulously organized collection of 65,000 typewritten jokes.
Her daughter, Melissa Rivers, recalled a conversation with a representative from the Smithsonian Institution who wanted the catalog of jokes but said it would not be on permanent display.
Her mind instantly went to the final tracking shot of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in which the golden Ark of the Covenant is locked inside a crate and placed in a vast warehouse with hundreds of other crates.
“I couldn’t do that because so much of who she was is in those files,” Melissa Rivers told me on a video call from Los Angeles.
The fact that the jokes will be accessible is only one of the reasons for Melissa Rivers’s decision.
Persons:
Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers, Rivers, George Carlin, Carl Reiner, Melissa Rivers’s
Organizations:
Smithsonian Institution, “ Raiders, National Comedy Center
Locations:
Los Angeles, Jamestown, N.Y