 |
Gilda Radner Biography |
focusdep.com |
 |
||
| ~back to authors profile on focusdep~ | |||||
|
Gilda Susan Radner (28 June, 1946 – 20 May, 1989) was an United States comedian and actor, best known for her five years as part of the original cast of the National Broadcasting Company comedy series Saturday Night Live. Radner, who died at 42 of ovarian cancer, became an icon for public awareness of both detection and treatment of the disease. /b> Early life Born to well-to-do Jewish-United States parents, Herman Radner and Henrietta Dworkin, in Detroit, Michigan, Radner graduated from the prestigious University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe in 1964, and then studied drama at the University of Michigan, where she began her broadcasting career as the weather girl for college radio station WCBN. She moved to Toronto, Canada and had her first professional stage experience in a production of Godspell, after which she joined the Toronto The Second City comedy troupe. 1970s Radner was a featured player on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a half-hour comedy program syndicated to some 600 U.S. radio stations from 1973 to 1975. Fellow cast members included John Belushi, Richard Belzer, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. She first rose to widespread fame as one of the original "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" on Saturday Night Live. (Radner was the first actor cast for the show.) Between 1975 and 1980 she created such characters as Roseanne Roseannadanna (an obnoxious woman with wild black hair who would always tell stories about celebrities' gross habits on Weekend Update. Radner's first appearance as this character was not on Weekend Update, but a fake commercial called "Hire the Incompetent" about a temp agency that hires semi- and inexperienced workers for other companies); "Babwa Wawa", often misheard as "Baba" Wawa, a spoof of journalist Barbara Walters, exaggerating the latter's apparent difficulty at enunciating the letter "R"; and Emily Litella, an elderly woman, wearing a hairnet and an old sweater, who gave angry and misinformed editorial replies on topics such as "violins on television", the "Eagle Rights Amendment", and "protecting endangered feces" on the show's Weekend Update news segment. Once corrected on her misunderstanding, Litella would end her segment with a polite "Never mind" - or later on, she would answer Jane Curtin's frustration with a simple "Bitch!" She also famously parodied such celebrities as Lucille Ball (to whom her comic timing and gifts at physicial comedy were often compared), Patti Smith and Nadia Comaneci during SNL sketches. Radner projected an innocence into her lines that wouldn't have worked with other performers. "I guess in France, you don't order French fries," she said in one routine. "You just order fries. They'll know." Radner had a knack for combining extreme physical comedy with soft, caring characters that were easy to love. (There is a legend that Radner broke several ribs during one comedy sketch that required her to slam herself against a door repeatedly, but the next day she went on as scheduled.) Radner also battled bulimia during her time on the show (she once told a reporter that she had thrown up in every toilet in New York City), and had a relationship with co-star Bill Murray, which ended badly. In 1979, incoming NBC President Fred Silverman offered Radner her own prime time variety show, which she ultimately turned down. That year, she was one of the hosts of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly. 1980s In her final season of Saturday Night Live, Radner appeared on Broadway theatre in a successful one-woman show that featured racier material, such as the humorous song "Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals". This show was captured on film in 1981 as Gilda Live! and co-starred Paul Shaffer and Don Novello. The play was also released as an album recording -- the play was a qualified success, the film and album were failures. She spent most of the next decade keeping a surprisingly low profile, aside from appearances in such films as Hanky Panky (film), The Woman in Red, and Haunted Honeymoon. In the late 1980s, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Even with the support of her second husband, actor Gene Wilder, whom she had met while co-starring with him in Hanky Panky (she had previously been married to Saturday Night Live band leader G.E. Smith), she suffered extreme physical and emotional pain as a chemotherapy and radiation patient. Eventually, she was told she had gone into remission, and she wrote a memoir about her life and struggle with the illness, called It's Always Something. The book was written by Radner in tribute to cancer sufferers everywhere, and she used humor to overcome tragedy and pain. The book's title came from a common catch-phrase of her Saturday Night Live character Roseanne Roseannadanna, who would often quote an elderly relative by saying "It just goes to show ya...it's always something! If it's not one thing, it's another!" In 1988 she guest-starred as herself on It's Garry Shandling's Show to great critical acclaim. (When Garry asked her why she had not been seen for awhile, Radner replied "Oh, I had cancer. What did you have?") She planned to host an episode of SNL that year but a writers' strike caused the cancellation of the rest of the season. She wanted to host the next year, but in 1989 doctors found that her cancer had recurred and had spread to other areas of her body. She died in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, on May 20, 1989, where she had been admitted for a CAT scan. She was given a sedative and passed into a coma. After three days, she died without regaining consciousness, with Gene Wilder at her side. After Death Wilder has since established the Gilda Radner Ovarian Detection Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to screen high-risk candidates (such as women of Ashkenazi Jews) and run basic diagnostic tests. He testified before a Congressional committee that her condition was misdiagnosed and that if doctors had inquired more deeply into her family background they would have found numerous cases of ovarian cancer and might have attacked the disease earlier. Through these efforts and the efforts of others, ovarian cancer awareness has spread, and there is more widespread awareness of the symptoms of ovarian cancer. Wilder continued his involvement in both detection and treatment of ovarian cancer. In tribute to Radner, Gilda's Club was founded. These are places where cancer patients and their families can go to be around other people in the same situation to share support, coping and wellness strategies. There are multiple locations throughout the United States. In 1992, Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame for her achievements in arts and entertainment. In 2002 the American Broadcasting Company television network aired a TV-movie about her life, starring fellow Midwestern Jewish American actress Jami Gertz. 
Courtesy of: http://www.wikipedia.org/ |
|||||
|
|
Random Biographies |
focusdep.com |
|
|
|
||||
