Page 7 - Pop History: Gilda Radner

Episode Date: May 12, 2020

We laugh and we cry as we explore the life of Gilda RadnerWant even more Page 7? Support us on Patreon! Patreon.com/Page7Podcast Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

you guys have your crying hats on? Do you have your boo-hoo shoes on? And your laughter, and your laughter panties on. Yes, your laughter jackets. Yes, your laughter jackets and panties. You have to make sure you are covered on the top as well as on the bottom or else you can't go into the yuck restaurant. And I mean yuck in a yuck-yuck way.

This is a great, this is solid. Solid start. Guys, I've been crying for hours. A yuck, yuck laugh and not a yucky grow. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Because it's Gilda Radner. It's a song usually. Touch me, baby, with your clothes on.

Come on. Kiss me, honey, with your mouth closed. I forget the rest of it, but I just know that part. Gilda Radner, if you are not familiar with her, go live under a hole. That's not true. I'm glad that you're here today to learn along with us. Gilda Radner for me is obvious. One of my biggest inspirations.

I've been obsessed with her since the second I was born. I couldn't even walk yet and I loved Gilder Radner. My first words were Gander Ronda. And my mom was terrified. She didn't know why I said it first. In 1989, Jackie Zabrowski learned to love Gilda Radner at the early age of two years old. Growing up in Queens, New York. Oh my God, you know what year I was born?

You said what year or year you were born literally yesterday at page 7. You remembered. Oh my God. In 1887 right year, but also two years before Gilda Radner died. Yep. She died prematurely. Those are related, are they? Can we do the fun part before we get to the sad jazz part?

Yes, this episode was one of those trickery episodes where we went into it being like, God, I'm so excited to do Gilda Radner. She's such just a bright, joyous inspiration. And then you reel it quickly, really like, oh, right. And then there's that whole incredibly tragic death part. And we will get to that part. But come on, there's so much to love here. She is such an inspiration to so many people.

I think every, not just female too. I think many male cast members who ended up on SNL were greatly, greatly inspired by Gilda. Oh, yeah. The Bill Hader and the documentary, which I'm going to go ahead and say, please, on Hulu, love Gilda. Love Gilda. It is a wonderful. I mean, it's all of these old videos of them,

old recordings of her, and stuff that you would never see elsewhere that documents most of her life. And it is... You will need your cry hat. Oh, yeah, your boo shoes. But also your laughter panties. I know, and the jackets.

It is so many funny parts. Of course, Rosanne, Rosanna, Dana. You've got the nerds. Babwa-wah-wah. So, Babo-wawa-wa-wa. There's so, she's so funny, and I'd love to. I forget how incredible her physicality is.

She's such a great physical community. Oh, yeah. Her physical comedy is like one of the best parts about her, I think. Her characters were in every fiber of her being. And it was something that she created. What I love about this, too, is that she makes no bones about the fact that not only she always wanted to perform, and she's always thrown her whole body and the life and mind into it,

but it was also something that she, it wasn't like it just came to her naturally, all of this just kind of happened. She's another one of those people that hustled her fucking ass off in a time period when especially women in comedy were something that was not

even thought about. It was a novelty more than anything. Yes, and that it wasn't that she could have been, she never even saw that she was going to be the nonstop powerhouse of comedy that she was for the short amount of time that she was able to do it. She just wanted

to perform. She just wanted to make people laugh. And she goes on to say, no matter what career she had found herself in, all she wanted to do was be funny and to be able to be herself. And I will say, though, that always comes from somewhere, right? And that always comes from a childhood that has. I have no demons. I don't have any demon. I'm not one demon lives inside of me. I've never frowned before. I mean, that's what I love in a way about comedy communities, especially, you know, coming up in the New York City, stand-up comedy scene and now seeing all of the many not all of not nearly all of but many of the people we came up with being huge successes at this point i mean it's it's a community of broken toys

and i love that about it because it's so much more real and so much more interesting than let's say like a community of of like um i don't want to insult anybody's profession right now i'm going to say bankers but please if you're a banker i'm not insulting you i'm just saying there's a lot of problems as well. It's really just anyone... Sure, but it's like a lot of well-adjusted people, you know, they go to college, they join the fraternity or the sorority, they leave, they get a nice job, they have a nice family, and that's a great way to live. I'm not batching that way to live. Wow, congratulations. You have a happy life. Aren't you special? Right? But I'm just saying I'm always drawn to personally those people that have these,

that come from these places, that have this drive to entertain, have this drive to... And are a little bit of misfits. Yes, they're misfits. They're lost boys and girls. They're fascinating human beings. And Gilda Radner, I love in the documentary, she even says she's like, I know where my comedy came from.

Yeah. And being so open about it, and I think that's also another thing that I will always find, it is the best and the worst part about comedians, is that we are very open, for the most part, about what the demons are inside of us. I think that it is something that you'll see also with Gilda Radner. It was something that she wore on her sleeves. And essentially that, when people say she never cried out for help, though, that was the cry for help. The cry for help was putting these issues she was having and the disorders that were unnamed yet into her comedy.

It is a different form of crying out for help that I think that in the 70s and the 80s, they weren't really looking for just yet. You know, it's like, no, no, no, she's just funny. No, no, no, she just makes the jokes about eating all the time when, in reality, no one ever saw her ate. As you will get into her childhood, nobody knew what to do, including doctors with people struggling with mental health. They just put them on drugs and stuff. Oh, she's, I put her in the crazy house. Slap her in a crazy chair. Oh, no, she's got women's hysteria again.

Oh, God. Is she bleeding? Makes sense. So let's get into where this all came from. born a goblin in Halloween town. No, she'll rather yearn to be a comedian on the stage. She had to break the curse,

but the curse, of course, was held by a witch. Oh my God. Fucking witch. Again? Always back again. Is this the pop history about my life?

I'm sorry, witch. She'll do what she has to do. I'm the witch. I've always been the witch. I hate it badly. I'm scared of you. Why did we bring the witch in? I just do this podcast.

Oh, she's gone. Natalie, I don't want to scare you, but you were just filled with witch. And I think that we need to take you to some sort of doctor. That sounds exciting. Yeah, right? Fill me up a witch. That sounds like my college years. Let's actually go to sunny, sunny Detroit.

Back when Detroit was actually a really nice, I love the story of Detroit. Detroit was actually genuinely a fucking picture perfect American town. And it is, well, Detroit is still very, very nice. I love Detroit. Yeah. But it's had some hard times. Yeah. Are you talking about the packs of roving dogs that just sort of... I love puppies. I love puppies.

Puppies. Puppies. So, yeah, she was born in Detroit to Jewish parents who both worked, a legal secretary and a businessman, and therefore she spent a lot of time with her nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, which, who she called Dibby, who would later be the inspiration for her character, Emily Letella. But we'll get there later. And by the sounds of it, she has a nanny, she has working parents.

She came up fairly well to do. And was from a very young age, someone that wanted to perform. She says that she watched a lot of I Love Lucy and Charlie Chaplin movies and would act out versions of what she'd seen in her family's backyard. They had this sprawling estate, too. You see it in Love Guild. They had a big, beautiful house. She was raised with loving parents.

She adored her father. Now, before we get into her, another witch of a mother, her father actually made their family fortune by purchasing an Ontario brewery he had purchased in the late 1920s. Now, her mother, Henrietta, was an aspiring ballet dancer who essentially stopped her dreams to become a legal secretary. And I think that the ballet dancer part is very integral to the very strict rules she put on Gilda for what she could and could not eat. I also got from the documentary. It was never stated overtly, but the family, the siblings all seem to kind of say the mom, she did work, but she also kind of is just doing other things a lot of the time. Yeah, they said in Love Gilda, they were like, the mom was just off doing whatever she was doing, which I was like, what is that I mean? It sounded like she didn't, maybe she wanted to be an artist or a performer and she kind of just then did this other thing and wasn't like fully there.

Somehow checked out. Yeah. I don't know. But she didn't seem to be, I mean, clearly they needed a nanny. They had a nanny that Gilda became incredibly close to, which means the nanny was around quite a lot. Well, and also the idea that in her childhood, in the summers, for four months, inside of her school year, they would move them down to Florida and just take them out of school, put them in Florida because her mother just didn't like the Detroit Winters.

Which is insane. You don't do that to your kids. And that's why Radner said she always had trouble making close friends because she wasn't around long enough. Not only that, imagine how disruptive that would be to like trying to learn anything. We're just like going to new schools every four or five months. Yeah, it sounds pretty rough and bizarre. But yes, that is exactly what they did.

She also, by the way, I should mention at an older brother named Michael. And this is, I mean, just immediately we get into her battle with eating disorders throughout her childhood and into her adulthood. Gilda said, I coped with stress by having every possible eating disorder from the time I was nine years old. I have weighed as much as 160 pounds

and as little as 93. When I was a kid, I over ate constantly. My weight distressed my mother, and she took me to a doctor who put me on dexedrine diet pills. when I was 10 years old. 10 amphetamines. Yeah.

Amphetamines. I had a friend in high school whose mother also put her on diet pills around the age of 13, but you know what we did? We took those diet pills. Party. We put them up our nose. Yeah. I tell you what, she didn't really lose any weight.

But we all smiled. Yeah, you had a good time. I'm not supporting that. No. I'm just saying it was, for us, it was a fuck you to her mother for trying to get her to lose weight. Please don't put your underage child on diet pills. Yes.

Or, I mean, honestly, any time in your life. No, no. Don't take diet pills. Not a healthy time to be on diet pills. Diet pills, though, of course, was such a norm back man. Like, oh, that's just a way you treat it. And Gilda said, when I would come home crying because somebody called me fat at school, she would tell me.

And she and this is dibby, by the way, her nanny. Yes. If they call you fat, just make a joke about it and laugh. I made them laugh before they hurt me. Before any kid could go, hey, you fat thing, I would say, hey, I'm fat. I can't see my toes. Which, man, if there is a quote in here, I can identify with the most, it might be this one. Give it to us, Jackie.

As someone that was, oh, no, no, it's that. It's the fat part. It's the being fat. Oh, I thought it was this next quote. And then I realized what comedy is, it's hitting on the truth before the other guy thinks of it, which I think is perfect. Yes. It is a barrier, and I think that that's when we were talking about comedians being a community of broken toys. It is a defense mechanism.

Humor is unfortunately. It's not unfortunately. Fortunately. It is one of the best defense mechanisms you can create within yourself. It was my shield. It still is my shield. For sure. And, you know, I feel like that's the natural journey, right?

It starts as a defense mechanism. And then once you start getting really good reactions to it, it becomes an addictive. for the rest of your life. And at least it's a healthier addiction than most, but it's definitely an addiction. It's something that I struggled with. When I tried to do stand-up for a short amount of time, I realized that I was so scared of being on stage

and being myself rather than hiding behind a character. And I think that that's something that, I mean, it's something you see in Gilda Radner, that you get to a point where you're just becoming a character, not only of yourself, but all of the other characters that you play, that you forget who you are and what you like and what you think because you're so busy

having the shield up and donning the costume of being someone else that it's almost uncomfortable to be yourself and you feel like no one knows you anymore and that's why you push people away I'm not going to start crying yet but I'm not going to lie to you guys I'm on the precipice

there's parallels here for sure I could definitely see that also let's talk about her father her father operated Detroit's Seville Hotel which housed many performers passing through the city which she was fascinated by

also when Broadway shows would come into town he would take her to see them and that really really set her off she absolutely absolutely loved it up until the age of 12 though Jackie what happened when Gilda was 12 well she was very close to her father

and her father developed a brain tumor and the symptoms began so suddenly that he told people, he made a joke, he said told people his eyeglasses were too tight. But within days he was bedridden and unable to communicate and remained in that condition until his death two years later.

If your question is, did she ever get to say goodbye? The answer is no. And she said about his death, the timing of his death arrested her. She says, I just never went into being a woman. Yeah, right. Which is in a funny way of just like, well, I guess I'm just going to be a kid for the rest of my life.

Exactly. All of us have been stunted in some way where being an adult is a little hard for us. But I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. But like with the father, he also was an older father. Right. I don't think the mother was the same age as him, right? No, but he was in his 50s when he had Gilder. Yeah.

Yeah. So when he had Gilda, but you know what I mean? He wasn't, he wasn't old, old, but he wasn't a young man whenever. She was growing up. Because he was the one that she would put on all the different costumes and go out in the backyard. And there's all these amazing home videos in the documentary. He was the one that would sit with her in the backyard and be her audience. He was the one that loved that she wanted to live life to the fullest.

And those videos too are really interesting because you see her looking like a chubby little kid and she's cute. But it shows you the drasticness of as an adult that wiry thinness. It's not like a natural look for her. It's like you can see that she actually has probably been struggling this whole time because some people are just naturally like wiry like that. And it seems like she had to kind of force that. And I connect to that a lot because I had a lot of eating issues when I was younger. So it's like painful to see her never really.

And knowing that at that time period too, that that's what's going in her mind is that I'm not good enough like this. I'm not good enough like this. I need to do drastic things to change. Right. I'm sure to, you know, again, one of the things I learned eventually about, you know, bulimia and all these sorts of things is eating disorders largely, of course, and I'm sure a lot of our audience, this is no new news, are based around control. And I'm sure losing your father at the age of 12 like that is that being so completely out of your control and so devastating definitely feeds, pun intended, into that. I imagine also her wanting her mom to pay more attention to her probably played a role in that where she, her mother wanted her to be a skinny little bean. And so trying to please her mother probably in the back of her head played out for the rest of her life.

Which is also kind of fun like the mental issues because my mom did the opposite of that. And yet still, throw up, throw up, throw up, baby, man. For so many years. Good Lord. See, it's a defense. Mechanism. Radner went to the University of Michigan after her traumatic child in 1964 to get a degree in education, but also studied theater and improv for a bit.

Now, this is when, I will say, this is a bit of a juicy nut for you to swallow, Jackie. I don't want to swallow it. What if I choke? I was talking about semen. Oh, I was thinking of more of like a hazel nut. One of those big ones, the macadamian nuts. Juicy nut because the guy in my theory is eating a bunch of pineapples and stuff the day before. But also this dude was fairly, he was a very beautiful man.

So I get it. I drop out of college too. Well, what I was going to say, though, as it being a juicy duck for you, this episode is romance after romance after romance. I mean, what a whirlwind of relationships. And she does attribute this to her father passing away too young. But she had so many. And usually I'm a little more career focused when we do research. Jackie's a little more personal life focused when we do research.

And so I feel like there was just so much here for you to drool over. And this is the first one. And to, and to, I had read it's always something when it came out. Which is her autobiography. Her autobiography. Yeah. And it was something that I didn't even realize that I identified with even more, where it's the weird hand in hand of someone that not only is suffering from lots of mental issues.

And I am diagnosed manic depressive, but I imagine that she probably would have. have been as well if it was something that she was going to therapy or women's hysteria. Yes. Women's hysteria. But that it is a part of that of going from man to man to man to make yourself feel whole. Because you're not happy with yourself and you think that you will find, if you just find the perfect partner that you will for the first time be the person you were supposed to be. Especially back then when there wasn't a lot of resources and a lot of operations.

opportunities for women that was sort of, you were more guided into a marriage being like, this will make you whole. But I've got to say, what a love life. Wow, we know, you all see. But I'm saying, Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, are you fucking kidding me? And she said she couldn't even watch the movie Ghostbusters because there was always an ex-boyfriend on the screen. And Harold Ramos, yeah, she said she did Harold Ramos. I'd watch and be like, yeah, I got them all.

Woo! Yeah, that one, that one, that one. Go get them all, girl. except for Rick Moranis, which again makes sense because she was never drawn to the man that probably would have treated her right. Until Gene Wilder. Right, until Gene, of course.

But even with Gene Wilder and... She had to wrangle him. We go through the whole story, but he had to kind of work with her because I think a lot of the issues, I don't want to just blame her for why all these relationships didn't work out, but a lot of the issues it seems time and time again

was she was just way too needy in these relationships. And again, I sure is. that's yeah I'm sure that's because to the point where Gene Wilder even had to like the big breakthrough in their relationship was they were supposed to go in a trip together but she had a sick dog she needed to take care of and she just said to him you know what just go without me and that was the first time where he was like I think I can finally marry Gilda because she was actually able to be separate and not you know and not have this issue where she needed him with her at all times which I think is what was going on in these different relationships which is part of the reason

Also, she was going after some, I'm just going to call them vagabonds. Yes, vagabond is a very good way to describe them. Before she started carousing with all of these comedians, she went to Canada, right, with the sculptor guy? Yes, we sort of are jumping way ahead by talking about a relationship. But yes, this all starts with her getting together with a sculptor named Jeffrey Rubinoff at University of Michigan. She drops out of school her senior year And she just follows him Thinking in Toronto I'll just do the housewife thing

She was ready to be a housewife She was just gonna give it all up While he was sculpting Yes And she did it's so weird she was in her senior year of college And just didn't finish it Like you made it all the way to end Yeah it's always insane to me when people do that

But whatever it's not like it really had a drastic effect on her life But either way She definitely was in that situation I don't understand and I went through one of these relationships. I don't, and it's always the worst. And this is what it sounds like this was, where every time she would be funny and silly, he would be, like, not into it and shut it down.

So she was just like- Why would you want to be with someone that doesn't nourish who you actually are? I don't know. I think because she was young and she didn't know. Yeah. I mean, same with me. I was in my early 20s and didn't know better. And she even said, I feel like it felt like there was just a part of me that, or she said,

quote, there was just a part of me that wasn't being used. And so she ends up getting away from him. She ends up first starting out. I didn't realize this until I was watching the doc. She first starts out in children's theater as like a ticket taker, which led to her being on stage. And apparently she ripped it up as a children's theater performer. Like they would just put her center stage.

She was still with him, right? At that point, like she was in Canada, but like sort of branching away from. him looking for her own spark thing yeah i'm not sure do you i don't have exactly where they break off but i just know that you know she she she goes to an audition for this hit musical i'm gonna assume they break off the morning she starts dating martin short i'm gonna throw that out there i'm gonna guess that's what happens it's funny that i always assumed she was canadian because of sctvian and everything because she was with all the Canadian guys.

Yeah. But she was only there because she was dating a sculptor. Yeah, it's so weird. And also, though, that makes sense because I think just from her being in Toronto for so long, her accent has a little bit of Canadian. Yeah. And also they were saying, I don't, I think it was in this doc that they were saying that Toronto at this time was a hubbub of especially comedy.

It was, it was really starting to boom at this point in time, that it was one of the bigger cities then that was a, akin to a New York or in L.A. It wasn't as much, but it was closer than it is now. I know that the, I know that there's a lot of shooting that happens in Toronto. Toronto is still a hub of entertainment creation for sure. And it is still a, he has a huge comedy community. Same as with Chicago, as you'll see with SCTV and the connections that they have there.

So she just happened to fall right into the epicenter of, of the creation of some of the best comedy. that has ever existed. And to lead up to that, this legendary cast for the musical gospel. Nuts! Crazy. Godsville is a hippie version of the Bible that is also based around clowning that originated at Carnegie Mellon University in 1970

as essentially as the writer's thesis project. It ends up going off Broadway and NYC. It goes to Australia. It goes to London. And then it goes to Toronto. She shows up at the audition. And she gets on stage and with not really much singing ability

just launches into Zippity-Doodah. So Martin Short had said, I found this awesome interview with Martin Short about this time. And he had said, when asked, why did she sing Zippity-Doodah? So she sang Zipidi-D-Dudah

in giant bib overalls and her hair was in two ponytails. And Martin Short said, Gilda later explained to me that she had actually seen the off-Broadway production of Godspell in New York, and therefore she knew exactly

what Schwartz was looking for. A certain looseness, an emphatic, lack of Broadway polish. But believe me, advanced knowledge alone did not account for the way this talented girl took control of that room. Yeah.

It was somebody diggers in other interviews short was like, she got on stage singing and sympathy dude and I was like, oh God. Yeah, no, no, no, no. Terrible short. And then just, or a terrible choice, and then just took, just with her physicality, with her just light

and sheer joy that she has in her, just took the whole room by charge. she gets cast in this production, and this is her big launching pad. There is a ton of Canadian talent. It's insane. I mean, it's launching pad for everybody. Victor Garber, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Martin Short, and the show's musical director was, of course, Paul Schaefer.

Eugene Levy said the first image of Gilda was at the final audition for Godspell. We were all there. They narrowed it down to about 80 people. I just remember this girl getting up on stage and singing Zippity Doodah as her song. I remember thinking, oh, this poor girl, she's so cute, but what a terrible song. And the entire room by the end of the song just fell in love with her. She was so adorable. We always referred to her as the zippity do-da girl in the beginning.

She was charming and sweet and loved to laugh. She went out with Marty Short for most of the run. And Marty was my roommate. So we were all hanging out. I just remember her always being up and loving to laugh. Martin Short said I adored Gilda. She was probably the first big love of my life. She was also just filled with a lot of joy and laughter.

I thought that this was actually a very fun little, little story from Martin Short, something that he kept saying again again is that he had never met a woman so comfortable in her strangeness. He said that they had had a big cast party for everyone to get to know each other after they got in. And he said, the way she walked into a room filled it, both with her big personality and the bags she encumbered herself with. Gilda typically carried two bags, ones that she'd knitted herself. The bigger one contained her knitting materials and personal effects. The smaller one, more like a little pouch, contained her bingo chips and cards. Gilda loved her bingo and indulgent it with the zeal of a retiree,

bundling off to bingo halls whenever she could get her fix, sitting among all the old folks and smoking her Virginia slim cigarettes. Her great pride was that she could keep 18 bingo cards going at once. Her mind agile enough to maintain her grids No matter how fast the collar parked out the numbers It's like she had a retro hipster pastime Before retro or hipsters existed And isn't that great because she didn't care what

She didn't except for on the inside But on the outside She didn't give a fuck what anybody thought about her She was there to have fun She also I love too that Martin Short And Eugene Levy's house during the run Was the party house That made me think of the Murriff's house

I know it really did like It's really striking to watch that documentary and see the photos of all of those guys hanging out together because as at our age group, we grew up with them just being these giants, our whole lives. And they were kids. You get to see them be kids that look like you and your friends when they were making stuff, you know? It's always just so exciting and amazing when all of those people are together in a production well before they got big and, you know, how exciting that is. because that's magic. I mean, for the most part, everybody does different productions separately, and then they get cast in a thing, and then they're in the big thing together.

But to see them all in this, still, you know, it's a pretty big deal in Toronto at the time. But still, I mean, just so well before all of their times. Yes, and when you meet someone that is this electric, Martin Jordan Jordan-Jour also said she had this attractiveness to everyone. Women wanted to have her as her best friend, and men wanted to take her out. She was funny and original. She was vulnerable. No one had met anyone like Gilda.

So after Godspell, Radner ends up going to the Second City, Toronto. Right when it opened in 1973, it was that wing of it, is originated in Chicago, and performed in the first three reviews the theater put on alongside cast members Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O'Hara, Joe Flaherty, and John Candy. Man, those in, also in the doc, John Candy was hot as fuck. You're really cute. Wowie, Maui. I mean, I always and forever have, obviously, it's John Candy. But the pictures of him young and on stage, yeah. You hit it?

I take some. Give some of that candy. Even just myself thinking back at our time at UCB and the pit, it's like there was so many people that passed through that never amounted anything. The fact that this was the original crew of Second City is so just astound. These names are so big. Also, get the DVDs of SCTV. You will thank me for it. It is still a DVD set that I will still put on every once in a while.

So this is where she starts developing her character, Emily Litella, the elderly woman with a hearing problem, just like her dibby had the nanny. This would end up appearing in S&L's weekend update segment 26 times. But before that, this is also where she gets her first taste of sex. in the comedy game. Gilda said, the guys would want to work together and the girls would say, okay, let's do this idea this way. Then the girls would realize they needed somebody to serve the coffee in the scene. Well, that's the thing. And it's just Jane Curtin had said, there were a few people who just out and out believed that women should not have been there

and that women were not innately funny. I mean, not a shocker to me just because we have, recently, that was like, air quotes, I'm using debate on like social media, you know, It still happens, yeah. Yeah, it's still, that was one of the first big, like, comedy, online, big comedy, splashy debates that you would see, like, on Twitter. And it was such a weird one where it's like, what? What do you? Why is this still a thing?

How is this possibly still a thing? When you go to the deep south and encounter a person that's super racist, you're like, oh, right. You're like, oh, this is still, this still happens. Yeah. I can't believe it. Jesus. It's such a bizarre thought.

So, of course, this was like, way more. cemented back then. And this is also the time that she and Dan Aykroyd were a couple for quite a little bit. Very fun. Couldn't find anything about the two of them dating though. He said all I've read about. Oh no, I meant the fact that she wasn't talking about it. I can't imagine they had a great time. Akroyd said, you know, they were friends, then they became lovers and then eventually friends again all through the time between here and S&L. And that at least they were very much so able to patch things up and maintain a friendship while working together on SNL. I think that was the same with Bill Murray, right?

I don't think they really patched it up. Her and Bill, well, we'll get to a sweet moment near the end of her life that says that they definitely patched things up enough. But her and Bill had a bit more of a tumultuous relationship that we'll get into when we get to SNL. They weren't together during this time. That was more of an SNL thing. But she then joined folks like John Belushi, Bill Murray,

Harold Ramis and Chevy Chevy Chase on the National Ampoon Radio Hour which aired for 13 months in 1973 and 1974 followed by a series of albums. Belushi just called her on the phone and said it's John Belushi, do you want to be the girl in the show? And that of course is no exaggeration. I don't understand. I've never felt that before

in my entire life. Now, Gild had actually become fast friends with the writer and director of the National Ampoon Radio Hour, which I think is interesting because a lot of those dudes had issues. Never Harold Ramos. Harold Ramos is perfect in every single way. I love him.

It was interesting that one of the writer-directors of the National Lampoon Radio Hour was a woman, Janice Hirsch in 1973. She describes Radner as so delightful and so sweet and so funny, but she also notes that her eyes were always sad. She had the saddest eyes and the happiest smile. You just wanted to make her less sad. I think that's also what made people want to take care of her. And I think that that is something that she was always searching for.

was searching for someone to take care of her. And she was searching for a father figure. She was searching for a mother figure. She was searching for someone. I'm not going to cry yet. Yeah. We're so far away from the cry part. This is the happy part.

All of it is sad. It's happy. She's doing so well. She got on the big, look. She got on the big TV. I know she gets on the pig TV. The pig TV. I did say big sleep because you're having weight things

going on. We're having to get away from that. Okay, I'll make you laugh. Look at me. It's the silly hands man. Oh, that's scary. I'm sorry, was that? Now I'm frightening Natalie.

All right, let me try you go and something else. Oh, ooh. This is the noises I make when I'm excited in the bedroom. You look like a webcam girl. I'm sorry. I don't know how to make people happy today. No, you're doing a very good job. You're not being a John Belushi about this.

Whoa. I hate. I love and I hate it because at the same time, I'm happy that this stuff has been outed. A lot of, I dug deep into, because one of my favorite books on comedy is live from New York, the Saturday Night Live oral history. I think it's just, it's got, oh, God, it's so good.

It was so much fun to jump back into it. That's why I wanted to do an episode just on SNL, but it's like, you know what? A four-parter. That book is so good. Yeah, it's just so perfect. And I pulled a lot from that book. It is so comprehensive.

and so amazing. And shout-outs to my lovely wife who went and hunted down a first edition of it for me because it's actually quite hard to find like a nice hardback of that and she got that for me for my birthday. So was that better or worse

than the Purple Rain album that you bought for your brother for Christmas? So I got my brother this really fancy box set of Purple Rain for Christmas. I also got a Nintendo mini and a Super Nintendo mini. Yeah, but how small is it?

Holden, can he even play the games. It's such a small box. It's tinier than yours, Jackie. Oh my God. And mine's very tiny. So tight. Yeah, it's my tight Nintendo. All right. Can we please be human beings for a millisecond?

All right. Radner was the very... I love this. Gilda Radner, very first person hired by Lord Michaels to be a part of the sketch team, the not ready for primetime players in 1975, though to appear, and a new show called Saturday Night Live. Now, why would they be called

the not ready for primetime players? Largely because Saturday Live was like not primarily a sketch show when it started. In fact, it was all over the place. If you go out of curiosity and pick up, I remember when the first season DVDs hit and all the people in the comedy community,

like many different people picked that up. And I remember throwing that on and just being like, what was this show? Because they didn't know yet. They didn't know. There was like an entire show that was just a Paul Simon concert

with like one sketching it. There was so many weird things about the first season. And there were like short films. The Muppets were on, or not the Muppets, but Jim Hinson's had a version of Muppets on it. It was so all over the place. It was like sort of like a variety show a little bit.

Yes. It was much more like a laughing kind of, it was like anti-Laughin, but still very much a variety show. We should do a laugh in episode. But that's the sign. That'd be fine. Right. Okay.

So anyways, but she was also the large, largely the reason. why Lauren, who was reluctant at first, finally hired John Belushi, one of the last people to join, which is odd, only because Belushi seemed to have a total disdain for female comedic performers, but for some reason they got on. A lot of that, I saw some quote from Gilda saying, they loved me because I would just laugh and laugh and laugh at everything they said and did until tears rolling down my face and that she was, you know. And also, it's because she never fought them on being the girl in the group.

It was something that she embraced. It was something that she just, like, all right, fine. If I'm going to roll with the boys, I'm going to do whatever I can do, but then I'm going to be the best at it. So I'm not going to pin them against the wall because they want me to be the girl in this. I'm going to embrace it and run with it then. And I'm going to be the best comedian that you can see because John Belushi would say things like how women were just fundamentally not funny. And apparently, he also didn't like to be in sketches with women. He told Jane Curtin that women were written by women. And Chevy Chase said it as well. And Jane Curtin says, I just found it stunning. Yeah. And I totally get how that could be

obviously very stressful and make you a little bit aggressive in like the feminist standpoint. Like maybe like the way Jane Curtin handled it. That seems completely plausible. But I think the way Gilda Radner handled it made it so that they, she almost tricked them into understanding that women can like do cool shit. Just by like going along. And not just, it wasn't that she was talking about having, being a wife and having kids, or, oh, I bleed once a month. That is, you look at all of her characters. And in fact, the most, like, her features, her characters are so based in being strong women.

But it's all across the board of what she did. I also think the fact that she allowed herself to be so silly. Yes. Also helped them accept her more where it wasn't, she wasn't playing stereotypical. feminine parts, but she also wasn't fighting against, she wasn't fighting, like, quote unquote, as a feminist. She was just being silly. No, she was a human Muppet.

Yeah. Yeah. She seemed to rarely get angry or almost never come off angry. But, all right, story time, story time. People do, do, do, do, do, too, too, too. So this is all from Alan Zwebel. Yeah. Alan Zweibel worked, worked with Gilda Radner on SNL from 1977 to 1979.

He was someone that would sit with her. He said in the dock, he said they would just go to coffee shops with a pen and paper and just start vomiting out ideas for characters and just writing shit down. And he helped create Emily Letella and Roseanne, Rosanna, Dana with her. And I love the way they met. And that's why I say Storytime. This is a little bit of a settle in for it situation. But here we go from Alan Zwebel himself.

The first day in Lauren's office, and it's God's honest truth, I was really intimidated. by what was going on in this room. There was Danny, Dan Aykroyd, O'Donohue, Michael O'Donohue, who was like a huge, huge part of the staff, and Belushi and stuff like that. And in the corner of Lauren's office was this potted plant.

And I hid behind it. I actually squatted down because Lauren was now going around asking people their ideas and I couldn't compete with this. So I'm here and I'm hiding when all of a sudden, through the leaves, I hear someone say,

can you help me be a parakeet? So I parted the leaves and it was Gilda. I go, what? she said I have this idea where I get dressed up like a parakeet and I'm on a perch but I need a writer to help me figure out what the parakeet should say can you help me I had no idea what she was talking about but she was a human being but she was a human being calling me a writer so I go oh yeah I'm great at parakeet stuff and she said why are you behind there you're scared aren't you look just look at this room it's

pretty intimidating all this talent that's here and so that's why you're here because you're scared I said yeah she said I am two. Can I come back? And she came behind the plant with me. So now we're both behind this plant and we get to talking and all of a sudden she says, uh-oh, he's calling on you. This is about five minutes later and I get tongue tied, you know, one of those things. Lauren's going, Alan, is Alan in here? She says, I'll take care of it. She gets up, goes around the plant to the front of the room and she says, Zwebles got this great idea where I played this parakeet and I sit on a perch. So she attributed her idea to me and I went, wow, I got up enough nerve to come out from a

the plant and Gilda said, wait a second, he's also got this funny, funny idea where I also play Howdy Dutie's wife, Debbie Dutty, and we're going to write this and all sorts of stuff. She said, like a team, that's how I found out that I was going to be teamed up with Gilda. She just took pity on this puppy behind the plant. Oh, I love it. And just to find someone that you can immediately connect with and write with, and especially these characters that, they're all parts of her personality. They're all a part of her and being able to share in that experience. with someone, you have to have a great connection to be paired up with a writer like that. Also, I will say maybe, I don't know if she had the foresight of this, but smart strategy, because you're going to go meet up with a guy that'll give you, therefore, the dumb... The male need, unfortunately. Yeah, the dumb need that these other sexists need, right, to have a guy involved in the writing. But the guy that's scared, that's not going to be like a macho dickhead to you.

that's going to work with you. So it's like two birds with one stone, right? And that's why he had said about her, she reached through the TV screen. Two parakeets with one stone. Yeah. She reached to the TV screen and drew you in. He said,

she was very revealing about herself. She displayed her vulnerabilities. She wasn't just someone putting on a Rosanne, Rosanna, Dana wig. It wasn't just somebody being Candy Slice or Emily Letella. It was Gilda. You felt like you knew the person who was doing it. It was an emotional invest.

for her. I should also say Rosie Schuster, another staff writer worked with her on these different sketches with Roseanne, Rosanna, Dana, Emily Lutella, Babua Wawa, a lot of that stuff too. Rosie loved how she would just explode on the stage. She said she watched every one of her live performances instead. Also, apparently Barbara Walters said about Babo Wawa. She stated in an interview that Radner was the first person to make fun of news anchors. Now it's done all the time. Yeah. And Rosie said about her on stage, I loved it so much. And it just didn't seem like it had been done the same way a dress or even, you know, a couple times before.

It just seems so amazingly live and raw. And she would do anything. She even talked about. And I think again, this comes from childhood need for the laugh for attention that if something wasn't working, she would just do anything to get the laugh. The best example from the documentary is her Debbie Doody bid where she comes on. No one's laughing. She's supposed to be, howdy, Judy just died. She's supposed to come on and do an interview with this news person.

No one's allowed to the episode. She literally just starts like jumping on Lorraine Newman, who's playing the reporter. And just like with these wires and stuff, she's just like throwing herself at Lorraine Newman. Lorraine starts laughing. The audience just goes crazy. And I'm going crazy sitting there watching it and hope as if it's happening for the first time just, you know, a few nights ago. I mean, it was brilliant. You weren't even born then.

Oh, my God. Well, not only was Gilda, one of the first people to make fun of news anchors on the screen on the TV, she was also the first person to say the word bitch on national television. So by this time, the Emily Latella bit was getting a bit played. She'd go on. She'd defend violence on television, and it would be, no, it's violence. Oh, never mind. And, you know, presidential, what was it, the presidential erection.

Yeah. And, you know, after you do it a couple times, they even said it was essentially like a pity laugh or just an obligatory laugh at the end of that bit after a while. So Zweibel said, and now the laugh at, never mind was obligatory, and we wanted to get rid of it. So I wrote this Jane thing, Jane Curtin was the news anchor by that point,

replacing Chevy Chase, where she says to Gilda, you know, every week you come on and you get it wrong and you're disgusting, you're an insult to the integrity of journalism, and to the human beings and to human beings worldwide. Am I making myself clear? I don't want to see you anymore. And I had Gilda say back to her crystal clear. She took a beat and went, bitch.

Now this is 1977, okay? We do it in the dress rehearsal and the place goes nuts because bitch on television was groundbreaking. However, the sensors immediately go up to Zweibel and tell him he can't do that. But Zweibel convinces her that this is not a noun. It's an adverb. And at that time, people were able to say that someone was being bitchy.

And this was just the adverb instead of the noun. And then the censor was like, well, if it's the adverb, I guess it works. So the sensor bought it and she was able to have the honor to do it. And of course, the whole place goes crazy because, again, late 70s, definitely not a thing that was said on television at that point. So it was a huge, huge moment. It was in the documentary too. It's so fun. It's around this time, Bill Murray joins the SNL cast in its second season.

to replace Chevy Chase, and he and Gilda have a relationship for a while. A very contentious relationship. And you could even see in the characters that they play on screen, that they definitely brought a lot of their interpersonal problems into S&L and into their characters. Especially the nerds. Yes, I love the nerd. I love them. And Todd DeLamooka, who, you know, he'd give her nuggies,

and they'd always be messing with each other and stuff. And it was a bit of a mirror. She's so cute in those, man. She was so freaking cute. Rosie said, Todd and Lisa also became a medium for Gilda and Billy to work something through on television. There was definitely some of that going on. They went through different permutations where they were together and they weren't together. You know, you could probably track what was going on by seeing how they related to each other on the air.

So this is at a time period, too, when everything is just gaining traction and they're just becoming more and more famous. But they even say, too, that they were all working so much that they didn't even realize. how famous they were becoming at this time period because they're all working their asses off. So on top of it, you have this very contentious relationship that you don't even have the time to fight other places. I don't even know that they could have had like a genuine normal relationship

because their entire world revolved around the work of that show. Yes, but although that work did give her an Emmy that she won at this point in time. She won the Emmy in 1978 for Outstanding, continuing or single performance by a supporting actress and variety or music. And she didn't even realize what she was becoming and how inspirational she was for and what she was going to be too. Man, I feel like this never would have flown on S&L today.

Lorraine Newman's quote here is, Billy and Gilder's relationship didn't really affect me, except that I can remember them coming to read through and fighting. And she was furious with him. And she just told him not to talk to her and he'd be begging her. And this would be acted out in front of all. All of us. Everybody.

Yikes. Well, also, I think it was her co-writer said at one point. She was one of three people in that crew who did not do cocaine. Yeah. 24-7. So I think that probably also played a lot of the drama out. I mean, yeah. You know, so much can be said about the early years of Estenel.

I mean, they talked about how the elevator would open and clouds of weed smoke would just fill the elevator with all these network executives that that entire floor was. like a jungle, a different beast than the rest of the building. Like they were the rebels of the network. And I feel like they just, for some reason, I just feel like they were stinky. Oh yeah. I mean, everybody was stinky back there. It was before Deodorum was admitted.

They weren't ready for how big and famous they were about to come. And Gilda Radner also goes to say, celebrity and success doesn't quite go with comedy because there's something about being an underdog and a voyeur that makes comedy possible. So how do you keep

looking at everything going on, well, everybody's looking at you and make that funny. It's so true. And also, I think it's trickier for comedians to continue to be funny because you need to relate to people. The more successful you get and the more alienated from regular society you get and the more money you have. I know it's so hard for them whenever they get to that point. But it's someone that has so many issues with herself. And you can, I think that she never expected to be famous and didn't really know how to deal with it. And she says there was a time at the height of Saturday Night Live when I couldn't even walk down the street in New York because every single person recognized me. It got so that I didn't even go out because of that kind of attention. Now I'm someone

people shout, hey, you move at in the parking lot of a hospital. This was later on when she, how quickly she quote unquote wasn't famous anymore. A talent coordinator Neil Levy, by the way, had this to say, which I think goes back to what you were talking about, about bipolar. He had an interesting quote here. There was a profound sadness inside Gilda. The same time, there was this boundless joy and energy. She fluctuated. It wasn't like bipolar.

She didn't go on periods of horrible depression and then elation. They existed side by side. And sometimes she just disappeared. She would just go away. And maybe that's when she was sad. Thanks. She was also, I think, obsessed with just having stability during this time of turmoil. and I think this is a really sad but sweet anecdote about that.

Radner would often go to Jane Curtin's house literally to watch them like they were in a zoo be a married couple. Jane Curtin said, I'd invite her ever for dinner. She'd come and sort of sit there while I was cooking. My husband would be there and she wouldn't participate, wouldn't carry on a conversation. She just watched and wanted to watch us live. And she wouldn't participate, wouldn't carry on a conversation. She just wanted to watch us live. it was off-putting in the beginning

but after a while it got to be very funny you know it was Gilda so it was okay again she's okay with her strangeness she would even they would like go to watch a movie and she'd be like ooh interesting what are you two going to decide on you know what I mean like yeah that would be fun if they watched a movie and she

faced them behind the screen and just watch them watch the movie that would be fun wouldn't that be funny you guys and then the woman who had said my comedy was just to make things all right, which we had said earlier, now admitted pretending everything was all right got harder. So while she's doing this, she's trying to watch other people live their lives. She wants a true, a good relationship. She wants to have a family, but this is around the time that she is

hospitalized for her eating disorder in 1978. Yes. So essentially it seems like the diet pill era was her childhood. That was more the anorexia era. And that turns into bulimia while she's on SNL. Even sometimes apparently she would invite SNL cast member Lorraine Newman over to apartment and Lorraine Newman says, well Radner would binge and purge, Newman would snort heroin. She says there we were, practicing our illnesses together. She was still funny throughout it all. Lorraine Newman also said she was very open about it, not covert, which I always thought

was typical of people with that illness. They're usually very hidden. But she was so funny about it because she would really announce it to us. People have been talked about. It wasn't something that was talked about a lot. People, in the documentary they've been said, we didn't even know the word, believe me at that point. In fact, many people treated it like, wow, this is Gilda's brilliant idea, her, like, brilliant solution. That's what S&L writer Marilyn Susan-Miller said about it. She's like, we thought that it was a brilliant idea Gilda had brought up.

Nobody said it was a disease. We just thought it was a great idea, essentially to just eat and get rid of it. Well, yeah, I mean, especially with acting back then, actresses were pushed to do horrible things to look a certain way. Yeah. And it was just acceptable. And just the fame coming out of nowhere again, because they didn't expect this. She wrote in her journal, my pictures in the newspaper, but my body's in the garbage. And she just couldn't cope with having her image everywhere, I think, and mixed with all these issues. So while S&L is on hiatus in the summer of 1978, she checks herself into the New England Baptist Hospital in Boston,

where the doctors imposed a strict 1,200 calorie per day diet to get weight back on her body. which when Lexi saw that, she was like, that's like a diet amount of calories. Well, yeah, I think that maybe if it's because at that point, if you have an eating disorder. Yeah, that it's really hard to mentally to have a full amount of calories. So sometimes they'll start easing you back in. Yeah, 1,200 is not very much.

No. Gilda wrote, I weigh 104 pounds and I think I'm fat. I want to learn how to eat normally again. And then perhaps to love normally and accept being like. And her S&L performances would also play into her issues. Again, this is another way that she was crying out because in one skit, she sang a song called Goodbye Sackerin about how she would rather eat carcinogenic sweeteners than sugar because her fear of getting fat was marginally greater. They also did the what Gilda ate segment to fill time if they needed a few moments.

What a nightmare just to fill time. They would put, Lauren Michaels would put her out on stage and they, it's, and she would still make it funny. It was just what Gilded ate. Yes. Yeah. So she gets back to NYC later that summer writing. I am almost ready to tell food jokes again.

She goes back to S&L. She's doing that for about another year. And in the meantime, she's also in 1979. She gets her own show on Broadway called Gilda Radner Live from New York, which runs for 52 performances. Which was her dream. She wanted to be on Broadway. Directed by Lorne Michaels with Paul Schaefer,

the music. And it essentially allowed her to do stuff that was too racy for TV and therefore SNL. The prime example of this being the song Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals, which is very funny. And it is what got the film that would come out later in R rating. She sings, fuck you, Mr. Bunny, eat shit Mr. Bear, tell that chicken, suck my dick and give him chicken pox. It's very funny. When she was asked why she decided to write and perform this one woman show, she responded, I don't know why I'm doing it. Except for some reason, I've chosen to scare myself to death. It feels like for years, for my whole life,

I was packing my suitcase with all this stuff. Now it's time to go. I might get chills and pass out on the first laugh, and that'll be it. Finally, I'll be getting enough attention. Finally. Yay, we did it. But it was fascinating to see her say

at the end of all of that that she didn't actually, she realized that's not what she wanted. She didn't want to be the star of her own show. She just wanted to have fun and be characters and create and do things and didn't necessarily want to be the absolute focal point. She liked being in an ensemble more. I think so. I think so, yeah.

The Guilda Live filmed version you can get really easily. Yes. I think I found it on YouTube for like $2 or something. She's amazing. I do love this quote about that. She says, I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity. Which I get. Yes.

Definitely. And in the show she does Roseanne Rosanna-Danna, Emily Letella, Candy Slice, which was her parody of Patty Smith, Judy Miller,

which is her energetic little girl character, Lisa Lupiner, the nerd, Nadia Comenechi, the, I believe that is the gymnast, and Rhonda Weiss,

the model for Jewish genes, which is a hilarious S-N-L sketch. And unfortunately, that film and album were released in 1980, and they both flopped, which I don't understand

because it's such a sweet it's such a sweet show maybe it was just kind of weird to go to the theater to see a one woman show Yeah I think maybe there just wasn't a lot of precedent for it at that point in time But what she definitely was was carving herself a marriage out of

nowhere when she got married to the lead guitarist of her Broadway show G.E. Smith Which is the S&L guy in the 90s. He was a guy always had the striped jacket on. Yeah, he's the musical director of S&L and Lorraine Newman said I think that was her version of a

on the wild side because they were so different. And Jane Curtin said, I didn't even know they were dating. Everyone was surprised. It's really cute to see her as Candy Sliced, or as Candy Sliced, parody Patty Smith. She like jumps on his back. He's like rocking out on the guitar. Which is great. You know, that's probably like the only clip they have of evidence that they were an item.

And even though it flopped, she did say that she did this show for her father. She says it's stuff like this show that truly makes me think of my dad. I'm keeping him alive. He owned a hotel and all the road show companies used to stay there when they came to Detroit. From the time I was a little girl, I got the best seats at the theater. I always wanted to be a chorus dancer in Broadway musicals because they look so happy. I always thought they were looking at me. So this is also near the end of her reign on S&L.

She, along with pretty everyone, leaves. Her last episode was May 24th, 1980. This was this big changeover time. during Guilda Live, there was a ton of backstage turmoil going on with Lauren, NBC, and the staff of S&L. Ackroyd, everybody's getting a little too big. Accroyd goes off to film Blues Brothers with Belushi. The rest of the cast was burnt out. Lauren desperately wanted to take a year off.

Also, at the time, President of NBC, Fred Silverman, was getting pissed off because the show, especially after Al Franken did a sketch lambasting him, there's just a lot of weird turmoil. And so everyone walks away for a year. Which is natural, I think, you know. Yeah, so she doesn't know what to do with herself at this point. And she's like, well, I want to act. I want to, you know, I want to be silly. So she tries her hand at being in the big picture shows. It's the natural, either TV or film for people leaving S&L.

But who does she meet? Who does she meet? Dom Deloese. Well, I mean, eventually yes. Oh, but also Gene Wilder. He doesn't kiss Dom Deloese. No. Yes, she meets Jean Wilder in 1981.

They are co-stars in the set of a film called Hanky Panky, directed by Sidney Poitier. It is a road trip film centered around Wilder's character being on the run for a crime he didn't commit, and Radner's character searching for her brother's killer. Wilder approached her to introduce himself, and as he wrote in his book, Kiss Me Like a Stranger. Gilda said that I rubbed my crotch against her knee when I asked her if I could bring her some tea or coffee. When she told me the story, I said, you're nuts. And she said, no, they were your nuts. I love it. But I will say, unfortunately, she was still married to G.E. Smith at this point in time.

Of course. And Radner wrote in her book, My Heart Fluttered. I was hooked. I felt like my life went from black and white to technicolor. On set, there was a chemistry that was palpable and an electricity in the air. Radner's friend Pam Katz told people, they hadn't been together yet, but there was no chance that they weren't going to be. They do seem, I don't know if it's because we see them as a couple on screen,

but they seem like the perfect, like they seem like they fit together, like puzzle pieces. Yes. And apparently Gilda had written that around Wilder, this brash and feisty comedian turned into this shy demure ingenue with knocking knees. Because at this point, Gene Wilder's huge right at this time. It's right after Blazing Saddles. It's after Willie Walker.

He's a huge movie story. He's also a good deal older than her and had been divorced, what, three or four times before this? I think it was the Wolliwanka that did it for her. I kind of find that character sexy. Is that weird? No, not at all. I think a lot of people find that. Yeah.

But what Gene Wilder said about the first time meeting her is that she was always funny and she loved doing what she was doing. She made fun of me because I didn't know who S&L character Roseanne Rosanna Dana was. And she laughed. She said, you never saw. my and then she made me see every single one of the sketches she had done so I love that too when she's like oh you didn't see but well then you're gonna sit and you're gonna watch him let's go let's watch him so it took two weeks before gilda finally threw wilder on his hotel room bed and said i have a plan for fun but wilder turned her down because of course she was still married to gis smith so the

next day she told him she knew she would be leaving her husband for him wilder said gilda you're talking like this is a fairy tale and you're going to meet Prince Charming and everything's going to be all right and we'll both live happily ever after. To which she responded, so what's wrong with that? And I bring back up the tale of, you know, they did have issues though for a while. And again, it was, he largely attributed it to her neediness. And he didn't want to get married again. And she was like, I, she even said, I made it my career to be his wife.

And so she fought really hard for it, but also worked really hard. And it was that moment that he, they were. going to go on this trip and she said, you know what, just go without me that he realized like, oh, she's, she's figured it out. She's, she's gotten into the headspace that we can totally be together for the rest of our lives. Right. And so was that they get married while they were, it was right after the release of their film, The Woman in Red, which is a great movie, by the way. I don't actually think I've seen that movie. It's, it's, it's, the two of them to, it's just, that's why I hate that haunted honeymoon gets such a bad rap. I know. I love watching the

two of them together. Definitely. Totally. And so Wilder and Radner flew to of France together and wed in a private ceremony. Sparkle the dog was in attendance and he had said, I wanted candlelight, she fluorescent. We were temperamentally wrong for each other and divinely right. And also that this was 1984 when this happened. Let's get into the sad stuff. Let's talk about it. She wanted to have a baby with him. She wanted to have a baby with him. And she said that she said, She said the hair alone would make people squeal with delight. She had a baby with him. Yeah, I know.

She said that. And then she wants a baby, but she can't have the baby. They were struggling to have a child. She didn't have the baby. She said, for me, the issue became less whether I wanted a baby or not, and more my inability to accept not being able to have one. She has a procedure done. To assess the function of her fallopian tubes and it showed that she was infertile.

Then they did one cycle of in vitro fertilization, which was brutal for both of them. And after no pregnancy happened from it, Wilder said no to another round of it. In fact, she had said about the fallopian tube, when they put the dye through her fallopian tubes to see if they were functioning. She said, I saw the dye running through my reproductive system on a closed circuit screen in the examining room. There I was, lying on a table with my legs spread apart, watching the worst show I'd ever seen on television. The show was called My Tubes Were Closed. I didn't even know they did IVF back then. Yeah, but I don't think it was...

It wasn't that. It wasn't very easy either. And this is something that now we will see in this decline of her health is that she was still desperately had this shield up of, at least I can still be funny. Right. And so after, she also has a risky surgery done to have her test tubes opened, but this also showed no results. Meanwhile, Jean Wilder writes directs and stars in... haunted honeymoon in 1985, which is a, quote, comedy chiller about two radio murder mystery actors who decide to get married in a very supernatural mansion. It also, of course, stars Gilda Radner as

his wife to be, and Dom Deloese as Wilder's characters, aunt. Yeah, and I love Dom Deloise so much. And during this time, Radner misses her period. And so she took a pregnancy test on the set, and then later at home, and both were positive, so they took a walk down the street, Wilder said, Did you, when they were taking this walk, she said the weather was warm and we'd held on to each other and sang quietly while our brains darted through this new phase of our life. We like to sing the song Ohio in harmony when we were happy, mainly because I've got the harmony down for the whole song except for one line near the end. I never get it right and that always makes us laugh. But unfortunately, a few weeks later she starts bleeding heavily, which was chalked up to a miscarriage. after having extreme fatigue, not leaving her bed for days and pain in her upper legs while on the set of haunted honeymoon, she seeks medical treatment.

And unfortunately, they fuck that up royally for 10 months. Man, they fuck it up royally. To the point where when she gets diagnosed, she actually is happy in a sense because she said, finally someone believes me. One doctor literally said, you're full of shit. Well, because her gynecologist said that she had Epstein Bar and also Middle Schmerts. Middle Schmurs? I don't know how to pronounce this properly. Which is essentially, I believe, a Yiddish word, or at least it seems like it, but it's like what women, it's like having PMS.

Women's hysteria. Which is like, this is 1980, what, five, 1986? What are you fucking talking about? And so she wrote that it was fitting diseases for the queen of neurosis and making jokes about this. when in reality it was a misdiagnosed and she kept saying she's like, but something else is wrong with me. There's something else this isn't right.

It's so crazy. I don't understand because they could do IVF and see inside her body, but they couldn't see this giant tumor? I don't know, man. So eventually in 1986, she is diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, which immediately had her put into surgery to get a hysterectomy. Of course, that's where they remove your uterus,

which meant definitely, obviously, there's no baby. And she said, my jokes are my only weapon against this fucker. Yep, I love that quote. Also, surgeons removed a grapefruit-sized tumor from her abdomen. Good God, that must have been painful. The National Inquirer then, of course, runs a headline asserting the Radner is definitely dying, using a picture of her looking scared from an SNL sketch.

Radner said what they did probably sold newspapers, but it had a devastating effect on my family and friends. Yeah. She had Gene Wilder put out a press release explaining what was going on and saying that there was hope and that things were progressing to try to put people at ease. She goes through chemotherapy with Wilder right by her side, staying with her in the hospital bed. Especially in the dock you watch that she,

because this carcans back to her and all of her characters. What's Jackie doing? Is she laughing? Is Jackie having fun right now? Yes, I'm having fun. Stop talking. Then in the dock, when they were filming her going through her chemo, because she felt more comfortable if there was a camera on her, because then she could be funny while it was

going on, and then she could pretend that it was a character that was going through it, and not her going through it. And that is really special footage, by the way. They had a full cut of the documentary done, and then she got access, the woman who made the documentary got access to a storage facility in Michigan that was like for the Radner family, and that had that videotape in it. They thought that was lost footage. And it also had a bunch of stuff

that they ended up incorporating into the documentary as well. And that was like, yeah, it's kind of amazing that you can actually go and watch that in Love Gilda. There's apparently another video that wasn't in the documentary that apparently one day in the midst of her chemotherapy treatments, Radner puts on a raincoat and goes walking on the street. A car comes by and splashes her with mud. She says, that's me, loudly to herself.

Cancer Woman. You can do anything to me. I can walk through storms. I can get splashed by cars. I can have millions of treatments. You can radiate me. You can give me poisons. But you can't destroy me because I'm cancer woman. She also did. She did clearly battle with staying positive in things. And one thing that greatly helped her was this community of cancer patients that she found that completely turned her around in so many ways. Especially after she lost her her signature hair. that it's just so hard. That was the part that made me cry the best. I don't want to talk about it too much.

But that is so sad. Okay. Geez, now you got me, damn it. All right. She got to see all of her old castmates one last time in March of 1987 at Lorraine Newman's 35th birthday party. When they realize,

oh, great. Now I'm fucked up. It's sad. Matt, Natalie be the witch. I can't. I'm going to cry too. When they realized she was leaving Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd carried her around the house to say goodbye to everyone over and over again. All right, fine, I made it through without crying.

But also, there was a little bit of light here around the end of 1987 and the beginning of 1988. She was told she had gone into remission. And she ends up making an appearance on It's Gary Shandling show, which is hilarious. Well, because, yeah, because Zwebel had co-created it. And she went to him and was like, Zwebel, please help me make my cancer funny. And he had said when she did the Shandling show, oh my God, that clip of it. of the talk. So good.

There was a live audience there. It wasn't only the crew. There were 300 people in the studio. She had the best time in the world. She fed off of the audience. It was amazing like when she, you know, it was really amazing when she walks out.

Because she thought that everyone was going to forget about her. And they, of course they didn't. And in fact, right afterwards, it went so well. Zwebel and Gary Shandling started developing a TV series

for her at HBO. But as we know, the disease caught up to her again, Zweibel says, and obviously it won out in the end. But she got a taste of TV again. She got a taste of performing in front of people and hearing immediate laughs. There's more. It's worse than the Joan episode. There's more. It's way worse because Gilder-Redder was too young to go.

Yeah. And Gene Wilder was just, man, he was there for her through all of this. And apparently at one moment he recalled. called in his memoir when Radner would take her, she started getting angry and he would take her, she would take her anger out on him and he would explode in kind saying, I don't know how to help you any more than I'm doing. Very sad. Is that the end of the quote?

That's the end of the quote. She's sad. I will say, though, too, the Gary Shannon appearance was also really important because this, again, so we've got a first for everything, making fun of news anchors, saying the word bitch, and also openly joking about cancer. And I love that he asked her where she'd been, why she'd been away from the public eye. She said, oh, I had cancer.

What did you have? What did you have? And Chandler answers a very bad series of career moves. And it was just so funny. And so, of course, in May of 1989, she goes in the hospital for a CT scan after the cancer return and went into a coma after given a sedative,

and she passed away three days later with Wilder by her side. Apparently on her way to the CT scan, she was fighting to get off the gurney because she felt like she shouldn't go in with it and she pleaded with Gene Wilder to help her get out of there. Can you imagine that that was the last time that he talked to her and then while she was unconscious, she passed away and Wilder never got to say goodbye. Well, I think that's a funny joke.

Oh my God, is the hands man back? Oh, bring a handsman back. No, it's funny. Silly handsman's back with silly handsmiths back with silly handsmiths. He's just very sad. Silly husband is definitely crying and not scary anymore. He's just very sad. I think that's even scarier.

So that same night, Steve Martin was getting ready to host the season finale of S&L. And when the news broke, they scrapped the opening monologue to instead show that clip from 1978 of him and Radner doing the big dance number parody from the bandwagon. Did you watch that? Did you watch that clip? It's so good. I definitely, it's so good. It wasn't on YouTube, but I found it on some other weird site.

And it's so emotional. It's, he's just, like, you can see that Steve Martin just is still processing this information. He has to go out there. And he says, Gilda, we miss you at the end. And it's so, it's so emotional. Natalie, you were supposed to be the emotionless vampire of the show. Can you please stop crying? Because you're the one.

You're not supposed to break. I'm not emotionless I'm not emotionless I was just like reading through it I was like what does Sparkle the dog die now too When does Sparkle the Dog die So there is a little bit of right from this Wilder would go on to establish

The Gilder Radner Hereditary Cancer Program at Cedars Sinai Because she didn't have to die And this was something that he fought He fought he fought He fought he says he said I was shouting at the walls I kept thinking to myself

This doesn't make sense he came to realize that her cancer might have been caught in time to save if her doctors had given her a particular diagnostic blood test or if they'd asked her about her family's health history. Her grandmother, her cousin, her aunt all died from ovarian cancer and then her father also died from a tumor that they found inside of him. And apparently Gene Wilde said all along, I kept hearing Gilda saying, don't just sit there, dummy. Do something. So he started the Guild, he started Guild's Club. And he appeared before a House subcommittee to testify about ovarian cancer, prompting a commitment of $30 million for research. He established the Gilda Radner Ovarian Detection Center at Cedar Sinai and co-founded Gildes Club,

which has grown to be the largest cancer support network in the country. And he did that with Joe Siegel and Gilda's psychiatrist, Joanna Bull. It is a clubhouse for people with cancer, family, and friends to. learn how to live with it. It's very fun and not fun at all because Holden and I put the same very beautiful quote at the end of both of our research.

Who's going to read it? Who's going to read it? Who's going to read it? All right. I will try and if I fall off, someone's going to have to pick up. I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way. This is Gilda Radner.

This is what she wrote She wrote this down while she was undergoing chemo. I'm not going to, I can't read it. You have to keep going. I can try it. I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Life is not about knowing having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. delicious ambiguity. Delicious ambiguity and that's the way it is. That's the way it is. And can you imagine Gene Wilder's next wife?

Because he marries someone else. Can you imagine? I can't. I can't imagine going to do that. Well, I'm glad he found that again. Me too. I think she would be happy for us. I know the story generally was like

He had this romance with her. He stepped away from acting afterwards. I was so scared to see that he went to some castle somewhere and lived at the top of it alone for the rest of his life. And I'm glad he found love. He did. I mean, he needed it because you're right. I think that she would have been, support that fully.

And just watching her in the end, especially when she would put, when she was like, I could put wigs on when she lost all of her hair. And she put that head covering on instead. and she was trying to be a character. She tried so much to just to put that shield up again. Well, I think that's why it's so sad is that it was, it didn't feel right that she went.

She wasn't supposed to die. She was supposed to go yet. And it was a preventable death that just the people failed to her. And they didn't do what they were supposed to do. But I am just, I'm proud of Gene Wilder. So have fun at your workday person listening to this. I'm fucking enjoying it. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're trying out of your control that you can't do anything about. I think the takeaway from that. I think the good, the way that you ended it is good because the takeaway is that you just have to embrace what's happening and make something good out of it. She did that every time she had problems, like she did her whole life.

And you just have to. take what you have and it's not always even a curse like your challenges can be a blessing and it can have ripple effects in ways that you can't even understand. Was that like the witch's curse or are you saying that

you just curse all of us you witch? It might be a witch's curse all of this. All right we have to be done. I really did appreciate doing this episode. It really did answer a lot of questions that I had about her, about her and Gene Wilder about all of these things.

I never got around to seeing Love Gilda until just now. Love Gilda, check it out. It is on rentable, right? I think I rented it on. It's on Hulu. It's on Hulu, yeah. But you can also rent it on YouTube. Yes.

But yeah, you can rent it on, I think, anything. It's so good. And yes, of course you'll probably cry. But I will say, they were pretty delicate with it. I didn't feel like they didn't do the thing at the end of the movie where they were really just hammering at home. Like, they handled it with care. It was lighter than I thought it was going to be.

It was more about the rest of her life. It was lighter than I thought I was going to be, and I appreciated that. So watch that and enjoy that. Thank you guys for sticking here. Who cares about the Patreon at this point? It doesn't matter. None of it matters. My name's Holden-McNeely, and you can find me on Twitch.com.

Or just whatever. We can cry. We can cry together this Friday if you want. Patreon. thread.com forward slash page 7 podcast if you'd like to support us further. We're not just doing an episode a week anymore. There's all this extra stuff that Jackie's pumping out. It's kind of amazing.

Check it out. Am I like Gilda? Can I be like Gilda? Yeah, I want you to be just like Gilda because that'll be really fun for me in a few years. Jackie and Natalie, what's your pointless social media stuff? No, go watch Trilville on the LPS podcast. That's not pointless. That's fun.

It's free. We're putting out an episode a week and, you know, page 7 LPN on socials. I'm at the Natty Jean and I promise next week we won't do a cry episode. Yeah, we're gonna do happy stuff for a while and then we'll get back to the cry stuff later. Oh yeah, don't worry. The cry stuff is never too far away. My name is Jackie Zabrowski. You can follow me on Instagram at Jack That Worm.

Go hug someone you love today. Go hug someone you don't love today except don't because we're not supposed to touch anyone right now. We should mark the cry stuff podcast with like a cry stuff warning in our... Ooh, I like that. We'll start putting it at the top of this. Just a single tear job. You probably will cry. Just like a little cry face emoji, just so that you know,

cry stuff happens in the episode. All right. We love you guys. We'll talk to you next week and I promise we're only going to smile and laugh next week. Yeah, no sats up. Bye. Bye. This show is made possible by listeners like you.

Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.