Fashion, film and comedy stars joined grieving relatives on Sunday to say goodbye to comedy legend Joan Rivers at a New York funeral that fulfilled her last wish for a showbiz send-off.\nFilm stars Whoopi Goldberg and Sarah Jessica Parker joined Rivers\u2019 daughter Melissa and grandson Cooper at the hour-long, private service at Temple Emanu-El on 5th Avenue.
\nComedian Kathy Griffin, who has paid tribute to Rivers for blazing a trial for women comics, also attended alongside tycoon Donald Trump, TV legend Barbara Walters and Rivers\u2019 co-host on TV show \u201cFashion Police\u201d Kelly Osbourne.
\nThe service at one of America\u2019s oldest reform synagogues was by invitation only. Police shut down the sidewalk and PR women armed with clipboards checked guests\u2019 IDs.
\nA huge scrum of paparazzi, TV cameras and journalists camped out across the street and hundreds of fans lined the street five or six deep to watch guests arrive from behind metal railings.
\nRivers (81), died on September 4 in hospital a week after she stopped breathing during a medical procedure on her vocal cords at a private clinic.
\nIn her 2013 book \u201cI Hate Everyone … Starting With Me,\u201d she said she wanted \u201ca huge showbiz affair with lights, camera, action\u201d – the paragraph of which was re-produced on the inside of the funeral programme. \u201cI want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way,\u201d she wrote.
\nActor Hugh Jackman sang – reportedly \u201cQuiet Please, There\u2019s a Lady on Stage\u201d from his musical The Boy From Oz – as did Broadway actress Audra McDonald also performed.
\nThe service opened with the New York City Gay Men\u2019s Chorus and closed with the bagpipe band of New York City Police Department.
\nTributes came from Melissa, friend Margie Stern and gossip columnist Cindy Adams. Melissa, wearing a black dress and large black sunglasses, was cheered by Rivers\u2019 fans as she pulled away in a black limo after the service.
\nOne police officer estimated the crowd, many of them women, at around 1,500.
\nThe bagpipe players were given a roar of applause as they streamed out of the synagogue, closing off a portion of 5th Avenue as the mourners departed.
\nIn the crowd there were complaints that a huge screen was not erected outside to broadcast the funeral. \u201cThe way she was, she would have wanted it,\u201d muttered one woman.
\nRabbi Joshua Davidson led opening prayers. He previously announced: \u201cWe mourn with her family, friends and all those millions to whom she brought laughter and joy.\u201d
\nNo specific cause of Rivers\u2019 death has been made public and New York State Health Department said it was investigating the circumstances that surrounded her reported cardiac arrest at Yorkville Endoscopy Centre.
\nThe daughter of a well-off Jewish family, Rivers enjoyed a stunningly successful career that lasted decades and worked right up until falling ill last week.
\nBorn Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, she graduated from New York\u2019s Barnard College and worked in the fashion industry before starting out in stand-up under the stage name Joan Rivers.
\nShe spared no one her razor-sharp wit and was considered one of the best at delivering a cutting one-liner. She took aim at celebrities and public figures, joking about modern America\u2019s obsession with image and neuroses. Her second husband, producer Edgar Rosenberg, died in 1987.
\nIn later years, Rivers became as well-known for her love of plastic surgery and reinvented herself as the host of \u201cFashion Police,\u201d a show that offered running critiques of the red-carpet attire worn by the glitterati at A-list events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"