57 Facts About Gilda Radner

Gilda Susan Radner was an American actress and comedian.

Gilda Radner was one of the seven original cast members of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from its inception in 1975 until her departure in 1980.

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

Gilda Radner portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show Gilda, Live on Broadway in 1979 and later on film in 1980.

Gilda Radner worked on stage, appearing in the play Lunch Hour with Sam Waterston in 1980.

Gilda Radner continued to work on network and premium cable television, making appearances on Lorne Michaels' The New Show and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

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.

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

Gilda Radner grew up in Detroit and spent the winters in Miami Beach, Florida along with the family's nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called "Dibby", and an older brother, Michael.

Gilda Radner attended the University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods.

Gilda 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.

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

In 1964, Gilda Radner graduated from Liggett and enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Sources vary on what she majored in; Gilda Radner said in her autobiography she majored in public speaking, while other sources said she majored in drama or education.

Gilda Radner took part in theater productions both on and off campus.

Gilda Radner appeared in a small part as a Buddhist group member in the 1973 film The Last Detail, starring Jack Nicholson and future film luminaries Randy Quaid, Carol Kane, and Michael Moriarty.

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.

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.

Gilda Radner was the first performer to be cast in the show, choosing the show over doing The David Steinberg Show in Canada.

Gilda Radner co-wrote much of the material that she performed and collaborated with Alan Zweibel on the development of sketches that featured her recurring characters.

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

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.

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

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

Outside of film, Gilda Radner continued to work in different mediums.

In 1981, Gilda Radner began appearing, with Sam Waterston in the Jean Kerr play Lunch Hour.

In 1984, Gilda Radner appeared on an episode of Lorne Michaels' The New Show, a sketch comedy show featuring Valri Bromfield, John Candy, and Dave Thomas among others.

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

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

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

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

Gilda Radner discovered that she was pregnant during the filming of Haunted Honeymoon, but miscarried early in the pregnancy.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 the writers' strike forced production to shut down before the end of the season.

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 that the cancer had returned.

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

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

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.

Martin abandoned his opening monologue, and he tearfully 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.

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

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

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

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.

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 a cousin had all died of ovarian cancer, and therefore they might have attacked the disease earlier.

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

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

In 2015, for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special, Gilda Radner was honored with other deceased cast and crew members over the show's history.

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 1978.

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

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

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