i’m getting
married
by Douglas
Messerli
Unknown director,
Lypsinka (performer) The Joan Rivers Show / c. 1993
From 1989 to 1993 Joan Rivers, after
leaving her longtime association with Johnny Carson and after the failure of
her own late-night talk show, began a morning talk show. As opposed to the others
at that hour, Rivers invited popular celebrities from both stage and theater
including Kim Novak, Bob Hope, John Travolta, Roddy McDowell, Anthony Quinn,
Whoopi Goldberg, Pee Wee Herman, Elizabeth Ashley, Little Richard, Zsa Zsa
Gabor, Debbie Reynolds, Brooke Shields, the Chippendale strippers, Betty White,
Rita Moreno, James Earl Jones, Lily Tomlin, Dudley Moore, Eva Marie Saint,
Marla Maples, Janet Leigh, Donald Trump, Valerie Harper, Jaime Lee Curtis, Tyne
Daly, Robert Blake, Bobby Rydell, Della Reese, and so very many others. She
even devoted an entire show to the gay, transgender film Paris Is Burning,
seriously discussing with its major performers and director the various contests
weekly held in Harlem. It remains today as one of the most innovative
and original talk shows that ever existed on TV. And I can almost forgive all
of Rivers’ course and often thoughtless jokes for this series.
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Sometime in 1993 she invited onto her show
John Epperson, better known as Lypsinka, who performed a series of her various imitations
of cinematic telephone conversations which included everyone from Bette Davis
to Joan Crawford and several others before she broke into a truly innovative
rendition of “I’m Getting Married in the Morning.”
It is still one of the best of TV and
general performative moments in history.
Los Angeles, March
15, 2025
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).
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