CUT THE RIBBON: GILDA RADNER

Posted on January 7, 2013 by admin

“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 about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”
Gilda Susan Radner, was an American comedienne and actress, best known as one of the original ribbon cutter of NBC’s Saturday Night Live show, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1978. Radner started her broadcasting career as the weather girl for college radio station and later featured on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a comedy program. During that time, fellow cast members included John Belushi, Richard Belzer, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Rhonda Coullet. Radner was a part of the freshman group on the first season of Saturday Night Live. She was the first performer between 1975 and 1980 and created characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna, Baba Wawa, a parody of Barbara Walters, and Emily Litella. On her sketches she would also parodied celebrities as Lucille Ball, Patti Smith, and Olga Korbut. During her youth she had a relationship with fellow actor Bill Murray, and in 1984 married actor Gene Wilder whom she had met on set. In 1986 she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and unfortunately to us all, died in 1989 at age 42. Radner’s star is on the Hollywood Walk of fame. The biggest names in comedy today have come through the ranks as cast members of Saturday Night Live. The list is endless, but Gilda Radner was, and will always be the first stand-out female performer on Saturday Night Live and pure comic gold.