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Gilda Radner
Gilda Radner's "Live From New York" cover
Birth name	Gilda Susan Radner
Born	June 28, 1946 Detroit, Michigan, USA
Died	May 20, 1989 (aged 42) Los Angeles, California, USA
Years active	1973 - 1986

Gilda Susan Radner (28 June 1946 – 20 May 1989) was an American comedian and actress, best known for her five years as part of the original cast of the NBC comedy series Saturday Night Live. Radner, who died at 42 of ovarian cancer, became an icon for public awareness of both detection and treatment of the disease.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 1970s 1.3 1980s and Marriage to Gene Wilder 2 Legacy 3 Awards and Honors 4 Television work 5 Filmography 6 External links

She was born on June 28, 1946 to well-to-do Jewish-American parents, Herman Radner and Henrietta Dworkin, in Detroit, Michigan. Her mother named her Gilda after the title character played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda. She grew up in Detroit with a nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she affectionately called "Dibby" (and on whom she based her famous character Emily Litella) and an older brother named Michael. She was very close to her father Herman who died of brain cancer when she was 12 years old. This may have been a factor in her history of bulimia and anorexia which reportedly began at around the same time as her father's death. Radner was enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she began her broadcasting career as the weather girl for college radio station WCBN, but dropped out in order to follow her then-boyfriend to Toronto, Canada. There she debuted in the 1972 production of Godspell with fellow SNLer John Belushi and afterward joined the Toronto Second City comedy troupe.

Radner was a featured player on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a comedy program syndicated to some 600 U.S. radio stations from 1973 to 1975. Fellow cast members included John Belushi, Richard Belzer, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray.

She first rose to widespread fame as one of the original "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" on Saturday Night Live. Radner was the first actor cast for the show. Between 1975 and 1980 she created such characters as Roseanne Roseannadanna, an obnoxious woman with wild black hair who would tell stories about celebrities' gross habits on the show's Weekend Update news segment. Radner's first appearance as this character was not on Weekend Update, but a fake commercial called "Hire the Incompetent" about a temp agency that hires semi- and inexperienced workers for other companies. Radner's SNL characters also included "Babwa Wawa", often misheard as "Baba" Wawa, a spoof of journalist Barbara Walters, exaggerating the latter's apparent difficulty at enunciating the letter "R"; and Emily Litella, an elderly woman, wearing an old sweater, who gave angry and misinformed editorial replies on Weekend Update on topics such as "violins on television", the "Eagle Rights Amendment", and "protecting endangered feces". Once corrected on her misunderstanding, Litella would end her segment with a polite "Never mind" - or later on, she would answer Jane Curtin's frustration with a simple "Bitch!" She also famously parodied such celebrities as Lucille Ball (to whom her comic timing and gifts at physicial comedy were often compared), Patti Smith and Olga Korbut during SNL sketches.

Radner projected an innocence into her lines that wouldn't have worked with other performers. "I guess in France, you don't order french fries," she said in one routine. "You just order fries. They'll know." Radner had a knack for combining extreme physical comedy with soft, caring characters that were easy to love. There is a legend that Radner broke several ribs while rehearsing one comedy sketch that required her to slam herself against a door repeatedly, but went on that evening as scheduled. Radner also battled bulimia during her time on the show - she once told a reporter that she had thrown up in every toilet in New York City. Another scandal surrounding Radner was that she had had a relationship with co-star Bill Murray which ended badly. In 1979, incoming NBC President Fred Silverman offered Radner her own prime time variety show, which she ultimately turned down. That year, she was one of the hosts of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly.

In her final season of Saturday Night Live, Radner appeared on Broadway in a successful one-woman show that featured racier material, such as the humorous song "Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals". This show was captured on film in 1981 as Gilda Live! and co-starred Paul Shaffer and Don Novello. The play was also released as an album recording -- the play was a qualified success, the film and album were failures. During the production, she met her first husband, G. E. Smith, a musician who also worked on the show whom she married in a civil ceremony in 1980.

Gilda met her second husband, Gene Wilder, on the set of the Buck Henry film Hanky Panky between 1981 and 1982. She described their first meeting as "love at first sight." She soon divorced Smith in 1982 and went on to make a second movie, The Woman in Red, in 1984 with Wilder. The two were married on September 18, 1984 in the south of France and made a third movie together, Haunted Honeymoon, in 1986.

After being severely fatigued and suffering from pain in her upper legs on the set of Haunted Honeymoon, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in October 1986. Even with Wilder's support, she suffered extreme physical and emotional pain as a chemotherapy and radiation patient. Eventually, she was told she had gone into remission, and she wrote a memoir about her life and struggle with the illness, called It's Always Something. However, she had a recurrence a few months later and underwent multiple procedures to retard the growth. She finished the book just 7 months before her death in 1989.

In 1988 she guest-starred as herself on It's Garry Shandling's Show to great critical acclaim. When Garry asked her why she had not been seen for awhile, Radner replied "Oh, I had cancer. What did you have?" Shandling's reply: "A very bad series of career moves." She planned to host an episode of SNL that year but a writers' strike caused the cancellation of the rest of the season. She wanted to host the next year, but in May 1988 doctors found that her cancer had recurred and had spread to other areas of her body. She was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California on May 17, 1989 for a CAT scan. After fearing she would never wake up, she was given a sedative and passed into a coma. She never regained consciousness and she died three days later at 6:20am on May 20, 1989, with her husband at her side. Gilda Radner is buried at Long Ridge Union Cemetery, Stamford, Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Gene Wilder had this to say about her death:

She went in for the scan – but the people there could not keep her on the gurney. She was raving like a crazed woman – she knew they would give her morphine and was afraid she’d never regain consciousness. She kept getting off the cart as they were wheeling her out. Finally three people were holding her gently and saying, "Come on Gilda. We’re just going to go down and come back up." She kept saying, "Get me out, get me out!" She’d look at me and beg me, "Help me out of here. I’ve got to get out of here." And I’d tell her, "You’re okay honey. I know. I know." They sedated her, and when she came back, she remained unconscious for three days. I stayed at her side late into the night, sometimes sleeping over. Finally a doctor told me to go home and get some sleep. At 4 am on Saturday, I heard a pounding on my door. It was an old friend, a surgeon, who told me, "Come on. It’s time to go." When I got there, a night nurse, whom I still want to thank, had washed Gilda and taken out all the tubes. She put a pretty yellow barrette in her hair. She looked like an angel. So peaceful. She was still alive, and as she lay there, I kissed her. But then her breathing became irregular, and there were long gaps and little gasps. Two hours after I arrived, Gilda was gone. While she was conscious, I never said goodbye.

Her funeral was held on May 24, 1989 and in lieu of flowers, her family requested that donations be sent to The Wellness Community, a support system for Gilda while she was battling her illness.

Wilder has since established the Gilda Radner Ovarian Detection Center at Cedars-Sinai to screen high-risk candidates (such as women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent) and run basic diagnostic tests. He testified before a Congressional committee that her condition was misdiagnosed and that if doctors had inquired more deeply into her family background they would have found that her grandmother, aunt and cousin all died of ovarian cancer and might have attacked the disease earlier. Through these efforts and the efforts of others, ovarian cancer awareness has spread, and there is more widespread awareness of the symptoms of ovarian cancer.

Wilder continued his involvement in both detection and treatment of ovarian cancer. In tribute to Radner, Gilda's Club, a comfortable center where cancer patients and their families can go to be around other people in the same situation to share support, coping and wellness strategies, was founded in 1994. (The center was named for a famous quip from Radner, in which she said "Having cancer gave me membership in an elite club I'd rather not belong to.") Many Gilda's Clubs have opened nationwide and in Canada and continue to do so.

In 2002 the ABC television network aired a TV-movie about her life, Gilda Radner: It's Always Something, starring Jami Gertz as Radner.

Won an Emmy for "Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in Variety or Music" for her performance on Saturday Night Live in 1977.

She posthumously won a Grammy for "Best Spoken Word Or Non-Musical Recording" in 1990.

In 1992, Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame for her achievements in arts and entertainment.

Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 27, 2003 at 6801 Hollywood Blvd.

• Jack: A Flash Fantasy (1974)
• The Gift of Winter (1974) (voice)
• Dr. Zonk and the Zunkins (1974-1975) (voice)
• Saturday Night Live (cast member from 1975-1980)
• The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978)
• Witch's Night Out (1978) (voice)
• Bob & Ray, Jane, Laraine & Gilda (1979)
• Animalympics (1980) (voice)

• The Last Detail (1973)
• Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979)
• Gilda Live (1980)
• First Family (1980)
• Hanky Panky (1982)
• It Came from Hollywood (1982) (documentary)
• The Woman in Red (1984)
• Movers & Shakers (1985)
• Haunted Honeymoon (1986)

• Gilda Radner at the Internet Movie Database
• Gilda's Club
• Gilda Radner Cancer Detection Program
• Find A Death - Gilda Radner
• Jewish Women in Comedy - Gilda Radner
• Gilda Radner page at Godspell.ca