47 Facts About Gilda Radner

1.

Gilda Susan Radner was an American actress, comedian, writer, and singer.

2.

In 1978, Gilda Radner won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show.

3.

Gilda Radner portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979.

4.

Gilda Radner's autobiography dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including her struggles with that illness.

5.

Posthumously, Gilda 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.

6.

Gilda Radner was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Henrietta, a legal secretary, and Herman Gilda Radner, a businessman.

7.

Gilda Radner grew up in Detroit with a nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called "Dibby", and an older brother, Michael.

8.

Gilda Radner attended the exclusive University Liggett School in Detroit.

9.

Gilda Radner was close to her father, who operated Detroit's Seville Hotel, where many nightclub performers and actors stayed while performing in the city.

10.

Gilda Radner took her on trips to New York to see Broadway shows.

11.

In 1964, Gilda Radner graduated from Liggett and enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where she planned to get a degree in education.

12.

From 1974 to 1975, Gilda Radner was a featured player on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a comedy program syndicated to some 600 US radio stations.

13.

Gilda 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.

14.

Gilda Radner was the first performer to be cast in the show, co-wrote much of the material that she performed, and collaborated with Alan Zweibel on the development of sketches that featured her recurring characters.

15.

Gilda Radner parodied celebrities such as Lucille Ball, Patti Smith, and Olga Korbut in SNL sketches.

16.

In Rolling Stones February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Gilda Radner was ranked ninth in importance.

17.

Gilda Radner had a relationship with fellow SNL and National Lampoon castmate Bill Murray, which reportedly ended badly, though few details of their relationship or its end were made public.

18.

Gilda Radner gave the commencement address, in character as Roseanne Roseannadanna, to the 1979 graduating class at the Columbia School of Journalism.

19.

Gilda Radner reportedly expressed mixed emotions about being recognized and approached in public by fans and other strangers.

20.

Gilda Radner had romantic involvements with several male Saturday Night Live castmates, including Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.

21.

Gilda Radner met actor Gene Wilder on the set of the Sidney Poitier film Hanky Panky, when the two worked together making the film.

22.

Gilda Radner described their first meeting as "love at first sight".

23.

Gilda Radner made a second film with Wilder, The Woman in Red, and their relationship deepened.

24.

In 1985, while on the set of Haunted Honeymoon in the United Kingdom, Gilda Radner began experiencing severe fatigue, and pain in her upper legs.

25.

Gilda Radner sought medical treatment, and for a period of 10 months, various doctors, most of them in Los Angeles, gave her several diagnoses that all turned out to be wrong; meanwhile, she continued to experience pain.

26.

Finally, on October 21,1986, Gilda Radner was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer.

27.

Gilda Radner then began chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatment, as she wrote in It's Always Something, and the treatment caused extreme physical and emotional pain.

28.

Gilda Radner said that I had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, had surgery, and my prognosis was good.

29.

The Enquirer doesn't like good news, so the Gilda Radner story stopped running.

30.

Gilda Radner saw her Saturday Night Live castmates one last time at Laraine Newman's 36th birthday party.

31.

Gilda Radner was scheduled to host an episode of Saturday Night Live in the spring of 1988, which would have made her the first female former cast member to host the show, but a writers' strike forced production to shut down before the end of the season.

32.

In September 1988, after tests showed no signs of cancer, Gilda Radner went on a maintenance chemotherapy treatment to prolong her remission, but three months later, in December, she learned the cancer had returned.

33.

Gilda Radner was given a sedative and went into a coma during the scan.

34.

Gilda Radner did not regain consciousness and died three days later, on May 20,1989; Wilder was at her side.

35.

News of Gilda Radner's death broke as Steve Martin was rehearsing for his guest-host role on that night's season finale of Saturday Night Live.

36.

Martin's planned opening monologue was scrapped; in its place a visibly upset Martin introduced a video clip of a 1978 sketch in which he and Gilda Radner had parodied Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the well-known dance routine Dancing In The Dark from The Band Wagon.

37.

Gilda Radner was interred at Long Ridge Union Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut.

38.

Gilda Radner testified before a Congressional committee that Radner's condition had been misdiagnosed and that if doctors had inquired more deeply into her family background they would have learned that her grandmother, aunt, and cousin all died of ovarian cancer, and therefore they might have attacked the disease earlier.

39.

Gilda Radner's death helped raise awareness of early detection of ovarian cancer and the connection to familial epidemiology.

40.

The media attention in the two years after Gilda Radner's death led to registry of 450 families with familial ovarian cancer at the Familial Ovarian Cancer Registry, a research database registry at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York.

41.

Many Gilda Radner's Clubs have opened across the United States and in Canada.

42.

In 2007, Gilda Radner was featured in Making Trouble, a film tribute to female Jewish comedians, produced by the Jewish Women's Archive.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

On June 27,2003, Gilda Radner received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6801 Hollywood Blvd.

47.

Saturday Night Live alumna Molly Shannon served as Master of Ceremonies at the induction ceremony at which Laraine Newman, Gilda's Club founder Joanna Bull and Gilda's brother Michael F Radner appeared to present the honor.