By Jenny Song
America’s Funny Girl
Gilda Radner’s death 20 years ago raised new awareness of a disease that women still face too frequently today
By Jenny Song
“Whenever she was onstage,” says her brother, “somewhere in the back of the audience, she imagined that her father was there.”
After her father’s death, Radner’s passion for performing grew. She was involved in theatrical productions in high school and throughout her six years at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 1969, she dropped out of college and followed her boyfriend to Toronto to pursue her fantasy of becoming a wife and homemaker. When the relationship ended, Radner could deny her calling no longer and began working at a children’s theater company performing pantomimes.
In 1972, when the musical Godspell held an open casting call for its Toronto production, Radner auditioned by singing her favorite song, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” She was one of the first cast members hired for the show.
“As far as I know, she never auditioned again,” says her brother, with the exception of an SNL tryout that was essentially a formality. She already had the job. “From Godspell, they came to her to open up Second City in Toronto and from Second City, the National Lampoon Show came to her. Then when Lorne Michaels was looking to cast for Saturday Night Live, I’m told he knew he wanted to put her on his list.”
In fact, Radner was one of the first cast members recruited for SNL, in 1975, before the format of the show was even decided.
“Nobody knew SNL would be so big,” says Radner’s brother. “It was frustrating because here in Detroit, the major NBC affiliate didn’t even pick up the show for several months.”
Even Radner herself was surprised by the show’s success. “We were television underdogs, nobodies, bad kids, but we made history,” she wrote in her book. “Our names became household words. Lorne used to say we were the Beatles of comedy.”
After rising to fame at SNL, Radner went on to record a comedy album, star in a Broadway show called Gilda Live, and make several movies. In 1980, the year she left SNL, she married G. E. Smith, the guitarist for Gilda Live and, later, the lead guitarist on SNL. But the couple amicably divorced after Radner met and fell in love with actor Gene Wilder in 1981, on the set of the film Hanky Panky. After an on-again, off-again dating relationship, the two were married in the south of France on Sept. 18, 1984.
A Case of Misdiagnosis
A year into her marriage to Wilder, Radner began experiencing flulike symptoms though she never actually developed the flu. In January 1986, she recalled in her autobiography, extreme fatigue rolled in like a “fog.” She made an appointment with her internist, who diagnosed her with Epstein-Barr virus—a virus associated with mononucleosis and chronic-fatigue syndrome. However, he told her he believed her symptoms might be due to depression.