Gilda Radner

Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American actress and comedian.

Radner was one of the seven original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from its inception in 1975 until her departure in 1980. In her sketches on SNL, she played various original characters on the show's Weekend Update segment, such as the elderly, hard-of-hearing Emily Litella and the advice specialist Roseanne Roseannadanna, who rarely offered advice but often provided disgusting, off-topic stories. Radner won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show in 1978. She also portrayed those characters, among others, in her one-woman show Gilda, Live on Broadway in 1979 and later on film in 1980.

After leaving Saturday Night Live, Radner appeared in various films, including three with her future husband Gene Wilder, with whom she first appeared in 1982's Hanky Panky. She also worked on stage, appearing in the Broadway play Lunch Hour with Sam Waterston in 1980. She also continued to work on network and cable television, making appearances on Lorne Michaels' The New Show and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

After nearly a year of misdiagnoses, Radner was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1986 and died from the disease in 1989. Shortly before her death, she published her autobiography, It's Always Something, which dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including her struggles with the illness. Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her wish that information about her illness would be used to help other people living with cancer, founding—and inspiring the founding of—organizations that emphasize early diagnosis, attention to hereditary factors, and support for cancer patients.

Posthumously, Radner won a Grammy Award in 1990, was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003. Other comedians have cited Radner as an influence on their work.

Early life

Radner was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents Henrietta (née Dworkin), a legal secretary, and Herman Radner, a businessman. In Radner's autobiography, she stated, "I was named after my grandmother whose name began with G, but 'Gilda' came directly from the movie with Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth." Through her mother, Radner was a second cousin of business executive Steve Ballmer. She grew up in Detroit and spent the winters in Miami Beach, Florida, along with an older brother, Michael, and the family's nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called "Dibby" (and upon whom she based her famous character Emily Litella).

Radner was close to her father, who operated Detroit's Seville Hotel, where many nightclub performers and actors stayed while they were performing in the city. He took her on trips to New York to see Broadway shows. When Radner was 12, her father developed a brain tumor. Within days, he was bedridden, and he was unable to communicate. He remained in that condition until he died two years later. Radner's father was known to say "It's always something," the quote that would become associated with Radner's SNL character Roseanne Roseannadanna and the title of her autobiography.

Radner traced her sense of humor to her family growing up, describing her father to be "real funny", "loved to sing [...] and tap dance. I feel that some part of my father is back alive in me, back doing what he always wanted to do." She said her mother "[wasn't] consciously funny, but almost the only thing that gets through to her is to make her laugh. She has an infectious response to humor so it was a way of getting to her when nothing else worked." Radner also said her nanny "Dibby" helped her develop her sense of humor, teaching her to laugh at herself before other kids could.

As a child, Radner developed eating disorders, and would eat large amounts of food before going on diets. She wrote in her autobiography that she "coped with stress by having every possible eating disorder from the time I was nine years old. I have weighed as much as 160 pounds and as little as 93. When I was a kid, I overate constantly."

Radner attended the University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods from 1957 to 1964. In 1964, Radner graduated from Liggett and enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Sources vary on what she majored in; Radner said in her autobiography she majored in public speaking, while other sources said she majored in drama or education. While in college, Radner did weather reports at WCBN, the university's radio station. According to her friend David Saltman in his book Gilda: An Intimate Portrait, she would report on the weather in humorous ways, such as imitating a radio static. She also took part in theater productions both on and off campus.

Career

Moving to Toronto and The Second City

In 1969, Radner dropped out of university to follow her boyfriend, Canadian sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff, to Toronto. Radner was quoted in 1973 as saying that Toronto was "the answer to my dreams. It's a young city, open to new ideas and there are incredible opportunities for creative people." Initially, she intended to be a stay at home wife to Rubinoff, but Radner grew depressed, as she felt she wasn't able to perform like she wanted to, and was reduced to little more than helping prepare Rubinoff's art shows. Her friend David Saltman recalled that she would call him, complaining that she and Rubinoff would fight all the time. Eventually Radner left Rubinoff but remained in Toronto. During this time, she took classes at the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin's correspondence school to complete her degree.

Shortly after her break-up, Radner went to see a show at a theatre and decided to pursue acting. She worked at the theatre doing children's plays and also did pantomime performances at elementary schools across Toronto. Radner made her professional acting debut in the 1972 production of Godspell, with future stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, Martin Short, and Paul Shaffer. In 1973, Radner joined The Second City comedy troupe in Toronto and appeared in various productions there alongside comedians such as Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Joe Flaherty and Catherine O'Hara.

She had one line of dialogue as a Buddhist group member in the 1973 film The Last Detail, starring Jack Nicholson and also appeared on various children's shows on CBC. Radner would also appear in The National Lampoon Radio Hour and the off-Broadway production of The National Lampoon Show.

Saturday Night Live

Radner gained wide recognition in 1975 as one of the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players," the freshman cast of the first season of Saturday Night Live. She was the first performer to be cast in the show, choosing the show over doing The David Steinberg Show in Canada.

Radner co-wrote much of the material that she performed and collaborated with writer Alan Zweibel on the development of sketches that featured her recurring characters. Some of Radner's characters included:

• Emily Litella, an elderly, hard-of-hearing editorialist who made irate, misinformed comments in interview sketches on SNL's recurring Weekend Update segment. She would often rant about a topic (often mishearing the initial topic, such as hearing violence on television as "violins on television") before being corrected, to which she would then say, "Never mind." Litella would later appear on Gilda Radner's episode of The Muppets Show.
• Judy Miller, a hyper eight-year old girl with an overactive imagination. Sketches would consist of her bouncing off the walls of her bedroom, reenacting soap operas, and hosting a make-believe television program called "The Judy Miller Show." Radner based the character on her own childhood.
• Roseanne Roseannadanna, originally a character in a separate sketch, Roseannadanna became a regular on Weekend Update, usually receiving a question from a Richard Feder in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and subsequently answering Feder's questions with long, off-topic, and frequently disgusting answers. Jane Curtin would cut her off; she would end by saying, "It's always something." The character was based on Rose Ann Scamardella, a New York City reporter for WABC.
• Baba Wawa, a parody of Barbara Walters who spoke with a speech impediment that changed L's and R's to W's. In a 1978 interview with CBC, Radner said she listened to Walters and noticed that they both spoke with a sibilant, and that if she changed the L's and R's, she could imitate her. After Radner's death, Walters noted in an interview that Radner had been the "first person to make fun of news anchors, now it's done all the time."

Additionally Radner parodied various celebrities such as Lucille Ball, Patti Smith, and Olga Korbut. Radner was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Continuing Or Single Performance By A Supporting Actress In Variety Or Music" in 1977, and won in 1978.