Joan Rivers television critic Jack Gould called Rivers "quite possibly the most intuitively funny woman alive". In 2017, "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked her sixth on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time, and in October the same year, she was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Joan Alexandra Molinsky was born on June 8, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman) and Meyer C. Molinsky. She had an elder sister named Barbara Waxler. Rivers spent her early life in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights in Brooklyn, where she attended the progressive
Joan Targ settled in her favor shortly before her death. Joan Fischer Targ died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Portola Valley at the age of 60 in 1998. Joan Targ Joan Fischer Targ (July 8, 1937 – June 2, 1998) was an American educator who was an early proponent of computer literacy and initiated peer tutoring programs for students of all ages. As a child, she bought her younger brother, Bobby Fischer, his first chess set and taught him how to play the game. Joan Fischer was born in Moscow, Soviet Union in 1937 to Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German-born biophysicist, and his