Gilda Radner

Big Gilda fan here. “Love, Gilda” was hard for me to watch given I knew the outcome.

Have you ever seen "Gilda Live!" (1980)? It has all of her SNL characters including Emily Latella ("Tiny Kingdom"), Rhonda Weiss (singing "Saccharine": "Most guys I know prefer skinny women with cancer over healthy girls with bulging thighs", an ironic line), and of course, Roseanna Roseanna Danna.

I even like "Haunted Honeymoon", considered a major flop at the time.

Andrea Martin tells a great story about their audition together for the national tour of "Godspell". Andrea had given what she thought was a great audition, and then Gilda showed up and blew her out of the water. Andrea was cast in a smaller part, but she was completely overwhelmed by Gilda's talent, and Andrea's no shrinking violet!

She wrote her autobiography during her cancer struggle, and finished it three weeks before she died. It is called "It's Always Something."

In it she describes falling in love with Gene Wilder, doing everything in her power to be his ideal woman, making him seem like the most wonderful man. It was the sweetest thing i have ever read. Her cancer battle was heart-breakingly moving and emotional. You just wanted to reach into the book and fold her into a loving hug. Smother her with kisses and assurances that everything will be all right.

Then years later, while battling his own cancer (a lymphoma of some kind), he describes his views of Gilda as being a life-sucking pain in the ass, so needy that he was forced to satisfy his "needs" in an affair, while Gilda was months away from death.

His book is bitter, complaining, self-pitying and crass. He was not worthy of her gentle soul.

Sobering, to see both sides of that story.

I walk by here all the time, and every time I do, I feel her spirit. No tears, just laughter. Just the memory of her with Madeline Kahn (another uterine cancer victim) as BaBa WaWa and Mawena Doitwech makes me smile.

They could have played sisters on a TV sitcom, and it would have run for years.

SNL at its best R5 and R6.