OF COMEDY AND TRAGEDY
Gilda Radner’s battle with cancer, life as a funnywoman examined in new doc
Gilda Radner died in 1989 in what was, by her own ironic admission, the middle of her life. She was 42. The former Saturday Night Live star left a husband, Gene Wilder, and a generation of female comedians who would learn from her.
Lisa Dapolito’s documentary, Love, Gilda, features interviews with family and friends, but it also draws from a trove of Radner’s own journals, and audio cassettes that allow her to speak in her own words. Here are five things we learned from it.
She based one of her famous characters on her governess
Young Gilda once wrote that her best friend was “Dibby” (Elizabeth Gillies), who helped raise her. Years later, her hardof-hearing SNL character Emily Litella — “What’s all this fuss about the 1976 presidential
erection?” — was an homage to Dibby, who had told her that if anyone at school insulted her, to make a joke about it. Radner framed the advice as a definition of comedy: “It’s hitting on the truth before the other guy thinks of it.” As Emily, Radner claimed she was the first person to say “bitch” on television. “The censors let me do it because ... it was a nice sweet old lady saying it.”
She struggled with weight and body image her whole life
At the age of 10, Radner was taken by her mother to a doctor, who prescribed Dexedrine (an amphetamine now used to treat narcolepsy and ADHD) as a “diet pill.” Years later, she had to check into a hospital for eating disorders; she weighed barely 100 pounds and “still felt fat.” It was only late in life that Wilder seemed able to convince her to enjoy food.
She succeeded through talent, but also force of will “Because I’m not a perfect example of my gender, I decided to be funny rather than worry about it,” Radner wrote. And she was neither a classic beauty, nor a great singer (says composer Stephen Schwartz, who hired her for the Toronto run of Godspell anyway), nor the best at improv, according to Second City executive Andrew Alexander. “But she always found a way to endear herself to the audience,” he says. And whenever some bit of comedy was flagging she would double down, getting louder or more frantic or more physical until it worked.
She once got a bizarre fan letter
After a physical examination, Radner received a letter from the lab with the results of her blood and urine tests. Attached was a note that read: “Dear Gilda, I’m a big fan and I wanted to take this opportunity to say that it was an honour analyzing your urine. — Thomas Olen.” Probably against some medical code of ethics, notes Melissa McCarthy in an interview, but Radner saw the humour in it.
She found it hard to watch Ghostbusters
The reason? She had dated so many of the cast, including Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd — though not, the film points out for some reason, Rick Moranis. Radner fell in love many times, dropping out of college to follow sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff to Toronto, and in 1980 marrying guitarist G.E. Smith. Soon after she met Gene Wilder, her co-star in the movie Hanky Panky. By all accounts theirs was a true love and one for the ages, or at least for the time she had left.