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
“If they’d known [her family history] early on, as Gene Wilder pointed out, they could have then ordered a CA-125 early,” says Piver. “Rather than [diagnosing her cancer] at a very advanced stage, they could have possibly caught it earlier.”
Radner’s Legacy
Radner’s public struggle with ovarian cancer and her death, which shortchanged generations of Americans of her comic genius, spurred an increase in awareness about the disease.
“The fact that Gilda was not diagnosed at an early stage, even though she was reporting her symptoms, brought attention to the importance of women being paid attention to when they talked about symptoms that some physicians had been too willing to dismiss as ‘female troubles,’ ” says Joanna Bull, Radner’s psychotherapist.
After the comedienne’s death, Wilder and Bull made a video for physicians about living with cancer. Wilder also testified before Congress to ask for an increase in research funding for women’s reproductive diseases, saying, “If I knew then what I know now, or if the doctors knew, I think she’d be alive today.” In Radner’s memory, Wilder set up the Gilda Radner Ovarian Detection Center—now known as the Gilda Radner Hereditary Cancer Detection Program—at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles in 1991. That same year, he and Bull, along with several of Radner’s friends, founded Gilda’s Club, a free support organization for cancer patients, their friends and families.
Emotional and social support for cancer patients was something Radner stumbled upon during her treatment after Bull suggested that she attend a Wellness Community meeting. Although Radner initially didn’t want to go, “she found that it was a real comfort that there were people going through the same thing,” says Levy, her childhood friend.
At the time, the Wellness Community, a patient support organization founded in 1982, existed in only one location, in Santa Monica, Calif., near Radner’s West Coast home. “I wish there were a thousand more of them,” she wrote in her autobiography. When she returned to her house in Connecticut, she invited cancer survivors into her own home, because there was nothing like that community of support available, adds her brother.
“She really wanted everyone to have the ability to access the kinds of support services that she was able to access,” says Zakheim, who founded the Wellness Community’s Boston affiliate 17 years ago as a promise to Radner. Today, the Wellness Community has more than 100 locations worldwide, while more than 30 Gilda’s Club “clubhouses” and satellites are scattered across the U.S.
“The fact that we’ve created something in [Radner’s] name that allows for tremendous well-being as people learn to live with cancer, whatever the outcome, would make her very happy indeed,” says Bull. 