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After closed-door deliberations, Broadway executives have decided not to dim the lights on theater marquees – an industry honor – to pay tribute to Joan Rivers, the comedian and television personality who also appeared on Broadway three times and earned a Tony Award nomination in 1994.

A committee of the Broadway League, which represents theater owners and producers, considered dimming the lights for Ms. Rivers, who died on Thursday, but concluded that she did not meet the criteria for the honor, according to Charlotte St. Martin, the executive director of the league.

“Under our criteria people need to have been very active recently in the theater, or else be synonymous with Broadway – people who made their careers here, or kept it up,” Ms. St. Martin said in an interview on Monday.

“We love Joan – she was very supportive of Broadway and came to a lot of show openings – but she hasn’t acted on Broadway in 20 years,” Ms. St. Martin added. “When you say Joan Rivers, you don’t think comedy, television and Broadway. You think comedy and television. It’s certainly nothing against her.”

On Broadway, Ms. Rivers was a writer and performer in the 1971 flop “Fun City”; a replacement performer in the role of Kate Jerome in Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound” in 1988; and a writer and star of the play “Sally Marr…And Her Escorts” in 1994. Ms. Rivers was nominated for a best actress Tony for “Sally Marr,” losing to Diana Rigg in “Medea.”

In recent years Broadway theaters dimmed their lights for James Gandolfini (a Tony Award nominee in 2009 for “God of Carnage”), Lauren Bacall (a two-time Tony Award winner) and Robin Williams (who made his acting debut on Broadway in 2011 and had an earlier stand-up show there). There have occasionally been exceptions to the league’s criteria, as Ms. St. Martin herself acknowledged; the nine Broadway theaters owned by the Nederlander Organizations dimmed their lights in honor of George Steinbrenner after his death in 2010 because the Nederlanders were minority partners in the Yankees.

Asked if the decision on Rivers was a close call, Ms. St. Martin declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of the committee’s work. She also declined to identify the committee members.