Joan Rivers still vacuums

By Earl Wilson

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NEW YORK-Joan Rivers is ageless (She won't tell you how old she is).

"I'm a star now," Joan says, "but I still wonder if Barbra Streisand counts the sheets, and if Katharine Hepburn vacuums. And I have a feeling that Liz Taylor doesn't put that contact paper on the wall herself."

JUN

Joan got fired from so many clubs for her supposedly funny singing act be fore she became a headliner at the Las Vegas Riviera and the Hollywood, Fla., Diplomat that she's a bit stunned realizing that she's supposed to pack these not a superstar yet, just a star.

rooms

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Joan Rivers

libbed and found out I could write.

"I was an Office Tempos rary typist and I used to type for Marty Erlichman who's now my manager” he's also Barbra Streisand's. "I got fired in Springfield, Mass., in Boston and in Atlantic City. After how many “shows? Usually one. I played a lady drunk and a girl left at the altar. That was material I bought. finally said 'Put her on at 10 When I got so broke I couldn't buy material, I ad

"The Johnny Carson show auditioned me 8 times and

minutes to 1.' What did I do

the first show? I stuttered a

lot. The next day everything 'first franchised barbecued beef dining spot this month started...." in N.J. (with 60 more to follow) .. Author Dale Wasserman, who sold his entire interest in "Man of LaMancha" for $1,500,000 will write the screenplay in Spain next month.

Joan, now at the Downstairs at the Upstairs, almost bursts with confidence. "I go out there feeling, "I'm here because I'm a headliner and you're going to get your money's worth. Instead of shivering and saying 'I'm lucky to be here.""

It took her 12 years-that included playing for nothing in Greenwich Village, along with some other unknowns named Dick Cavett, Rodney Dangerfield and Joanne Worley.

And at what age did she make it? "I never discuss my age,” she claimed. “Not even my husband"-Edgar *Rosenberg "knows age. When anybody mentions age, I run from the room and put on the radio."

my

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Today's Best Laughs: The B'way musical "1776," about the Revolutionary War, opens in London in June. Producer Stuart Ostrow thinks the British’ll flock to it, "if only to see where they went wrong."