Until recently, the well-preserved queen of catty commentary and long-time Hollywood Squares fixture was celebrities' worst nightmare on the red carpet. Fortunately, she has a chintzy jewelry and beauty line and E!'s Fashion Police to fall back on.

Joan Molinsky graduated from Barnard and began her career as a stand-up comic and gag writer before working on Candid Camera, as a popular headliner in Las Vegas, and as guest host of The Tonight Show. The bitchy, bawdy Rivers landed a short-lived late night show and then a daytime show from 1989 to 1994 and also cashed in on her fame, launching a line of gaudy costume jewelry with QVC in 1990. But in 1996, the gods at E! intervened and hired her to interrogate award show arrivals, and her biting fashion critiques became the stuff of legend. Rivers and daughter Melissa moved their red carpet antics to the TV Guide Channel in 2005, but E! came a-knocking again for the panel fashion critique Fashion Police. Melissa executive produces the show and Joan makes the jokes on camera. The two also notoriously costarred as themselves in Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story and appeared together on Celebrity Apprentice, which Joan won. She's also expanded her QVC empire to include beauty products (despite being major plastic surgery fanatic) and was the subject of a documentary, 2010's critically-lauded Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.

Rivers has been married twice. She divorced her first husband, Jimmy Sanger, after six months, but tragically her second husband, the British-born TV producer Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide by overdosing on Valium three days after Rivers ended their 20-year marriage. She has one daughter/partner in crime, Melissa, from her marriage to Rosenberg. Joan hasn't remarried since. [Image via Getty]