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 Shakespeare Joan Shakespeare Joan Shakespeare (baptised 15 April 1569 – buried 4 November 1646) was the sister of William Shakespeare. She is the only member of the family whose known descendants continue down to the present day. Joan was Shakespeare's younger sister. She married a hatter named William Hart with whom she had four children, William (1600–1639), Mary (1603–1606), Thomas (1605–1661), and Michael (1608–1618). Little is known about Joan's husband, William, apart from the fact that he was sued for debt in 1600 and 1601. He died in April 1616, and was buried 17 April, a week before William Shakespeare died.