Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,894

This is the grave of Gilda Radner,

Born in 1946 in Detroit, Radner grew up in a upper middle class Jewish family there. She was named after the movie with Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth, so her going into show business seems right. Her cousin was Steve Ballmer, presently the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. Anyone who thinks they can win a championship with James Harden gets what they deserve, but I digress. From the time she was young, Radner dealt with serious disorders and wild weight fluctuations. Then her father, who began to take her to Broadway shows when he was in New York for work, died of a brain tumor. She was 14. Sadly, cancer would run in her family. She held it together, graduated from high school, went to the University of Michigan, and did some work for the campus radio station.

But Radner dropped out of Michigan before her senior year, following her boyfriend, the sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff (who became a big deal in that world) to Toronto for his work. She started doing comedy up there and Canada at that time had a big comedy scene. She was hired for the musical Godspell in 1972. The cast for this locally produced musical was ridiculous–her, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, and Paul Shaffer, among others. What? She got notice pretty quickly too. She had a small part in the The Last Detail, the excellent Hal Ashby-directed 1973 film with Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, and others.

In 1975, Radner was hired for a new show known as Saturday Night Live. Now, SNL is the most overrated show in the history of television. The vast majority of it is terrible. For one, 90 minutes a week is too much time to fill with good comedy. People remember the past of SNL as the “good years” because they see the highlights and not the horrible 11 minute skits that go nowhere and that fill the last half of the show. The political comedy is just bad imitations for the most part and the show has used imitations as a crutch for anything remotely passing for interesting observations for about 35 years now. But none of this has to do with Radner, who was pretty great in those early years. To say the early years of the show were inconsistent is a huge understatement, but again, that’s the show all the time.

In fact, Radner was the first person Lorne Michaels hired to star on SNL. She wrote most of her material too. One of her big skits was making of Barbara Walters. Much later, Walters claimed that Radner invented the subgenre of comedy making fun of news anchors, which may well be true, I hadn’t considered the point before. But Radner continued struggling with her mental illness and eating disorders during these years, suffering pretty heavily from bulimia. Her influence, especially among a couple of generations of female comedians navigating the unbelievable levels of sexism in the comedy world, cannot be overstated.

Radner stayed on the show for five years, from 1975-80. This made her a pretty big star, among the most successful to ever come out of the show. During it, she started her own one woman show, titled Gilda that was successful on Broadway in 1979 and was adapted into a film in 1980, with Mike Nichols directing. I have not seen it and I’d be curious to hear comments from those who have.

Radner basically dated every man involved with SNL and evidently found watching Ghostbusters impossible since she had to deal with all three of the stars being ex-boyfriends. She also married SNL musical director G.E. Smith for awhile. The level of instability and drugs and everything else in this scene was notoriously intense of course.

In 1982, Radner was cast with Gene Wilder for the first time. Sidney Poitier of all people directed them together that year in Hanky Panky, which was poorly received. The film was poorly conceived anyway. It was supposed to be a sequel to Stir Crazy but Richard Pryor didn’t want to do it so they rewrote his character for Radner and yeah….It might have been a terrible film, but she and Wilder started dating during it and it would stick. She divorced Smith and married Wilder in 1984. That year, they made The Woman in Red together, though her role was pretty small and which is probably most remembered today for the Stevie Wonder song “I Just Called to Say I Love You” that he wrote for the film. They then made Haunted Honeymoon together, with Wilder directing and costarring Dom DeLuise in 1986. Evidently, it is terrible.

Sadly Radner’s later years were dominated by the cancer that killed her. She started feeling bad on the set of Haunted Honeymoon and she went to the doctor. In fact, she went to a number of doctors but it took over a year for the cancer diagnosis to show up. Finally, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1986. But by this time, it was at a Stage IV level. She spent her last creative days working on an autobiography titled It’s Always Something, which came out shortly before her death. She used it to promote the normalization of cancer and the hope that people would take inspiration from her struggles for themselves. Wilder did a lot of the work to promote her wishes.

Radner went into remission in 1988 and tried to restart her career, both as a comedian and as a cancer survivor. She talked openly about it on talk shows and such. She went on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and did this, for instance, even if that was technically a fictional show. She was supposed to host SNL later in 1988, but there was a writer’s strike and so it didn’t happen. She was pretty much cancer-free through 1988, but was diagnosed again in December. There was no overcoming it this time. She went into a coma during a CT scan in March 1989 and died a few days later. She was 42 years old. As it happened, this was a Saturday evening. Steve Martin was hosting SNL that night. He did not do his monologue. Instead, he told the world of Radner’s death and then played a video of a skit they had done together on the show back in 1978.

I know nothing of Radner being a ballerina. Not sure if this was a metaphor for something or a literal thing.

Gilda Radner is buried in Long Ridge Union Cemetery, Stamford, Connecticut. This is where she and Wilder lived. But he chose not to be buried at all, which is kind of too bad really.

If you would like this series to visit other Saturday Night Live cast members, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Jan Hooks is in Cedartown, Georgia and Phil Hartman was evidently cremated but there is a stone for him in Thief River Falls, Minnesota and by God that’s good enough for me if I can talk about Phil Hartman. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.