Rivers Remembers Richardson on Larry King Live

By: Mar. 19, 2009
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Tony Award-winning stage actress and member of the famed Redgrave acting clan, Natasha Richardson died Wednesday from injuries suffered in a ski accident. She was 45.

Comic actress and author Joan Rivers remembered Richardson as having "such a family."

Wednesday night's "Larry King Live," featured comedian Joan Rivers, she spoke of Richardson's marriage to actor Liam Neeson and her love of family.

King: Have you seen her work on Broadway?

Rivers: I've seen her work. I love actresses who go back and forth. I always have such great respect for someone who goes to Broadway and then film and goes back again. I saw her in "The Philadelphia Story" years ago in London when she won an award. She was very young in a musical version of that.

King: What was your read on them as a couple that day?

Rivers: Totally happy, totally devoted to each other. That's what kills me. I mean [it] just shouldn't have happened. ... And they made such a good-looking couple, too. He doted on what she said, she doted on -- it was just perfect. 

To read more from the segment on the CNN website click here.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Joan Rivers "made the rounds" in New York during the '50s, appearing in a few off-off Broadway plays (including one where she played a lesbian opposite an equally unknown Barbra Streisand), surviving sleazy agents, tawdry clubs, and hostile audiences. A 1965 booking on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" led to her hosting one of the first syndicated talk shows on daytime TV, "That Show with Joan Rivers" in 1968. In the '70s Joan wrote the TV-movie The Girl Most Likely To (starring Stockard Channing) and then wrote and directed her first feature film Rabbit Test, casting Billy Crystal in the lead. In 1983 Joan became the permanent guest host on "The Tonight Show." Later, she headlined in Las Vegas, sold out Carnegie Hall, produced a Grammy nominated comedy album, and wrote two best-selling books. In 1989 the Tribune Corporation launched Joan in her own syndicated daytime talk show. She won an Emmy and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1994 she wrote and starred on Broadway in Sally Marr and Her Escorts, for which she received a Best Actress Tony nomination. Since then, Joan has written three more best-selling books, maintains her own jewelry line on QVC, provided fashion commentaries for E! and The TV Guide Channel, and filmed a special for Bravo. She will be a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice 2 beginning March 1st. Later this year, she will also host the new reality TV series How'd You Get So Rich? on TV Land.

Rivers' new books are MEN ARE STUPID...AND THEY LIKE BIG BOOBS...A WOMAN'S GUIDE TO BEAUTY THROUGH PLASTIC SURGERY and MURDER AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS...A RED CARPET MURDER MYSTERY.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.



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