Joan Rivers

Joan Alexandra Molinsky became Joan Rivers, born in Brooklyn in 1933, died in 2014, and spent five decades being ruder than the room expected. The act was blunt, self-deprecating before it was anything else, and merciless about celebrities and politicians, all of it in a New York accent she never filed down. She is credited as a pioneer for women in comedy, and she holds an Emmy and a Grammy along with a Tony nomination, plus a Daytime Emmy for hosting.

The television record is the career. She guest-hosted The Tonight Show for Johnny Carson, which is where a national audience learned her timing, and she spent the decades afterwards on the panel-and-podium circuit: The View, Say Yes to the Dress, The Soup, Billy on the Street, Live at the Apollo.

The acting is scattered and better than its reputation. She is Joan in the 1968 drama The Swimmer, Dot Matrix in Spaceballs, a fussy gold robot voiced with her own rhythms intact, Edie on Suddenly Susan, Queen Zonthara on Dave the Barbarian, and a series of appearances as herself in Shrek 2, Iron Man 3 and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, where the joke is that she needs no introduction.

She also worked behind the camera and on the page. Rabbit Test in 1978 is hers as director, and the books deserve more attention than the cameos: Enter Talking in 1986 and I Hate Everyone, Starting With Me in 2012.