She was my all time favorite..who didn't want her as a friend or a big sister..just a tragic loss.
She was my all time favorite..who didn't want her as a friend or a big sister..just a tragic loss.
She was so fantastic . . . just last night I saw a clip of her doing Roseanne Rosanna Danna. It's such a shame that nowadays, they have one simple test that would have diagnosed her cancer and she could have been treated and possibly survived, but back then they couldn't figure it out and it just grew and grew.
RIP, Baba Wawa.
I read her book "It's always something" what a great read! It went into detail about what she went through trying to get diagnosed so sad!
Loved Gilda. Anyone else remember her Patti Smith impression? Hilarious.
Haha, yeah, spot on - hiliarious!
She was the greatest! And I also read her book, it was terrible the crap she had to go thru to get the medical attention she needed.
I read her book, and it's just such a tragedy that she's gone. What a wonderful woman!
She was definately someone i'd have liked to have known. what really struck me as sad was whe nher husband, gene wilder, was diagnosed with cancer some years after her death. i can only imagine how he must have felt.
Love Gilda Radner... what a great talent she was. So sad she had to die so young.
The story Gene Wilder told of her last days is so sad.
How is Gene Wilder these days I heard he was pretty sick a while back but havent heard anything for ages? I agree Gilda was terrific, it was tragic.
I LOVED when she would dress as a Brownie and jump all over the stage singing. I can't remember the character's name though. I was young when SNL started.
It's the Judy Miller Showwwww!!!
I saw her when she guested on the Gary Shandling show after her chemo. Everyonr thought she had it beat but sadly she didn't. She looked so happy to be on Shandlings show.
I loved Gilda...she was the funniest woman!!! I think if I remember right She and Gene thought she had beaten it too but the lab evidently messed up the numbers on her bloodwork
When I think of Gilda this huge smile always comes across my smile, who didn't love her? Such a funny woman, I loved her, she was amazing, always wanted her to be my sister or something.
He wrote a book a few years ago and it was really great. He has since remarried (to a mormon woman -- he jokes how weird it is to be the only jew in a room full of mormons at Christmas). He is doing okay healthwise, although I saw a recent picture of him and he doesn't look very good.
Any day above ground is a good day.
I cried when I was reading about Gilda on FAD. How she didn't want to go to the hospital because she knew she wasn't coming back out, and thats what happened...its scary to have the sixth sense about something. How sad....
I attended a preview of 'Young Frankenstein' the musical on Broadway last week and I sat right behind Gene Wilder. I almost freaked as he is comic genius. Anyway, he actually looks quite well. When the audience started to notice he was there they all stood and gave him a 5 minute standing ovation. He stood up with tears in his eyes and took a brief bow. He then sat down and laughed like hell...just like the rest of the audience at the Musical. By the way, it is a must see if you are gonna see a Bway show. It actually kinda made me sad that Peter Boyle isn't around anymore to see his 'monster' come to life on Bway.
She was a very funny lady and apparently was very nice to her fans. I think that she and a lot of the other original SNL gang would be appalled at what today's celebubrats (notably Brittney et al) are like.
God, her book was fantastic. I was so depressed to find out she died before it ever got published
LOVE LOVE LOVE Gilda. Are there any clips of her show on Youtube yet? Last time I checked I couldn't find many.
And I love Gene Wilder too. He just seems so kind.
There's some on youtube from her Gilda Live special but NBC usually removes SNL vid clips pronto.
Sue
I loved the old "Todd and Lisa" skits she and Bill Murray did! I agree, the golden age of SNL has long passed. The original "Not ready for prime time players" were cool, funny and irreverent. Today's and the recent casts are a bunch of actor wannabe's.
Last edited by suzycreamcheese1; 03-13-2011 at 02:13 PM. Reason: adding
Gilda passing was a huge shocker for me almost as big as Karen Carpenter.
Such a sweet funny spirited woman brought down with cancer. That was just too much I think thats what really started my curiousty about death. Because it didnt make sense to me why the lord would take such good people.. but than someone sent me a poem and it made sense to me.
God saw you getting tired and a cure was not to be
So he put his arms around you and whispered come to me.
A golden heart stopped beating, hard working hands at rest.
God broke our hearts to prove to us, he only takes the best.
RIP GILDA!!!
When I went on Findadeath and read about her final days it made me cry...why did she have to suffer she was such a good person.
What a great person, friend, wife, everything.
I dont think there is anyone who could say a bad word about her.
I bought a couple of her the stuffed dogs at Hallmark a few years ago, they are modeled after her Yorkie, Sparkle to whom she was so attached. All the money went to her foundation, I think.
http://www.gildasclub.org/
Looks like they still sell the dogs here....
http://www.gildasclubdenver.org/gifts.htm
They are super cute. Mine is on my shelf and I gave the other one to my Aunt.
This is one of my favorite quotes in the whole world:
"Some stories don't have a clear beginning middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity...--Gilda Radner
i think that is such a beautiful statement
Since cancer ran in her family, I know that Gilda had a higher chance than normal of getting the disease, but Gilda was a smoker too. I remember seeing a pic of her in the past where she was at a party talking to NBC head Fred Silverman while she was smoking a cigarette.
Wonder if she a light or heavy smoker?
For a laugh sometime, I should post my extremely hostile review of the TV movie "It's Always Something" here... It was this really horrible cash-in movie that ABC made a few years ago, starring Jami Gertz as a rather insulting, unrepresentative exaggeration of Gilda.
It's just a shame she had to leave us so soon; she was actually supposed to host SNL shortly before her death, but the show was pre-empted by a strike. I wish she would've stuck around after her five years were up, because she really would've been a bright spot in the dreary few years that followed.
Check Youtube now, I found quite a bit on her................
http://youtube.com/watch?v=S8EN67QwT-Y
http://youtube.com/watch?v=afi2xeM5ZSI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=m9uNsHrkr3g
Here is one of the oldest, weirdest, but oddly compelling web sites ever: the Female Celebrity Smoking List. Gilda Radner's page is here.
These kind of web sites blow my mind. Somebody puts a lot of work into that stuff. I've been lucky enough to be able to quit alcohol, all types of drugs and tobacco. I know, what a loser. Tobacco by far was the hardest to put down. The affects aren't real time is my feeling on it.
Last edited by Chunga; 05-21-2008 at 01:21 PM.
A couple of good Gilda clips here:
Not only is there no preventative test (that spam e-mail going around is misleading a lot of people), it's also very difficult to diagnose. Most women don't have symptoms until the cancer has spread, and those who do have early symptoms may have nothing worse than backache, bloating and fatigue - things most women in their 50s have.
Family history is one of the most important diagnostic aids, but too often nobody knows what Great-Aunt Tillie died of 75 years ago - or even that Great-Aunt Tillie existed. Had Gilda been able to give her doctors an accurate family history they might have been able to diagnose her earlier. But she didn't have one, and the doctors treating her didn't even think of ovca because she was much younger than the average.
Ovarian cancer sucks so hard. I had a friend die of it a few years ago and there is nothing worse.
I can actually add to their "smoking review"... the last set of opening titles for the 70's (the one with the hand-colored stop-motion shots of the subway station) had this really unattractive, uncharacteristic shot of her smoking with a 'come hither' expression. Didn't suit her at all, IMHO.
That's not saying she couldn't be attractive though, certainly! (Rent Season Two and watch the "Video Vixens" sketch... yikes! :-))
Oh, here's my review of "It's Always Something"...
Every now and then just for laughs, I pull out my video of "It's Always Something", the two-hour bullshit extravaganza about Gilda Radner, as played by Jami Gertz. Sure, there have been a number of bad movies that tried to exploit SNL and those who worked on it ("It's Pat" is one), but they merely exploited the characters... this one took aim at a real person.
And what does it accomplish? Well... it reinforces an unwritten rule - don't fuck with Gilda Radner.
Instead of a realistic portrayal, the 'Gilda' we get is a chain-smoking, vodka-swilling, joyless woman with an exaggerated 'oot and aboot' Canadian accident, completely dissimilar to how the REAL Gilda spoke. She's not exactly a perfect match in terms of looks either, with a thin, long, bony face that is completely incapable of pulling off Gilda's cuteness.
Of course, in TV movie style, the events of the person's life are completely distorted for dramatic effect - Dibby's first line includes "never mind", Herman Radner's first line is "It's always something" (which completely comes out of nowhere), and we even get a totally maudlin scene of Herman crying while watching his daughter go to school... for no apparent reason but to make the cancer he develops by the next very shot more dramatic. (On a related note, to really build up Gilda's sickness at the end of the movie, we're reminded CONSTANTLY of the cancer-causing saccharine... her vodka has saccharine in it, her candies have saccharine in them, and, get this, "Goodbye Saccharine" is used to score one of the scenes where she's dying! How more blatantly tasteless can you get?)
The casting is completely bizarre - to represent the SNL cast, the creators simply hired a number of no-name actors that don't resemble the SNL cast in the least, save for a semi-decent Bill Murray impersonator. The biggest joke of all is Michael O'Donoghue, who is depicted with long hair and no moustache - in fact, if the viewer wasn't aware that he was "the other guy" in the Wolverines sketch, they would be completely oblivious to who that strange-looking man was supposed to represent. Of course, the depiction of SNL itself is completely off - as in "Man On The Moon", the show is called 'Saturday Night Live' from the start; the man presumably meant to be Michael O'Donoghue opens the first show (even though they apparently cast someone who has no lines as Chevy Chase); and the studio in which SNL is filmed doesn't even *attempt* to look like Studio 8H. ("Man On The Moon", on the other hand, actually made an attempt!)
As I said before, Gilda's life is portrayed as absolutely joyless, to the point where it seems as though this was an extremely intentional move on the creators' part. Her beloved father is given a quick, unceremonious offing; her Second City experience is represented by John Belushi punching her in the face; the whole point of covering her childhood seems to be 'look, she was fat, and this is why she ended up bulimic, that sucks' (and in fact, "What Gilda Ate" is used as an example of her bulimia); and then there's the portrayal of Gene Wilder not as the kind man he actually is, but rather, as a mood-shifting short-tempered exaggeration of Willy Wonka.
Of course, it should be expected that a made-for-TV movie with a mostly no-name cast should distort the truth - but this is all the more magnified when the subject of the movie is someone as well-known and beloved as Gilda. It is my understanding that, outside of its lone airing, this movie never saw commercial release; and for the sake of Gilda and all how knew her and respected her, I hope it remains that way.
I just realized at the tail end of yesterday that we have just passed the 20th anniversary (can ya believe it?) of Gilda's passing.
May 20, 1989
To Gilda, who has one of the coolest/cutest headstones ever:
I like the font, and I like how it looks like a torn piece of paper at the bottom. I also like the word "ballerina." Very simplistic and pretty. Very Gilda.
I was only nine years old, but I remember Nick At Nite's "Tribute To Gilda Radner" night well, when they played old SNL episodes in tribute to her all night.
It's not been lost on me that Rebecca Schaeffer's 20th is coming up also. That's another one I remember very well.
I'm almost certain that "Ballerina" would've been Gene's idea... that just seems like something he'd do. :-)
Incidentally, a while ago, I was considering putting together a homemade SNL title sequence featuring my own sort of 'fantasy cast'; and I decided that, since it was my fantasy show, it could have any host I wanted. I chose Gilda, as if she were alive today. While looking for an appropriate picture on Google, I found this photo, from when she was ill - just think, more competant doctors, and we might've been seeing this face on Leno nowadays.
(Incidentally, my fantasy cast also included the deceased Charles Rocket, but he's another forum topic entirely. :-P)
I remember when it was announced that Gilda had passed away. I was on my senior class trip. To a local bowling alley. Lucky us. Other high schools sent their seniors to interesting places...
MTV was playing on the TVs at the bowling alley, and a VJ announced Gilda's death. If my day hadn't been already crap, that just put the icing on the cake. I miss Gilda.
My brother, who was a big fan of modern comedy, died in an accident in August 1989, smack-dab between Gilda Radner and Graham Chapman of "Monty Python" (October 1989.) Sometimes it consoled me to think that he might have found them somewhere in the hereafter.
Heaven's not only gotta a helluva band, but also a helluva comedy troupe. (Lucille Ball also having died that year, in April.)