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Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American actress, comedian, writer, and singer. Radner was one of the seven original cast members of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from its inception in 1975 until her departure in 1980. In her routines on SNL, she specialized in parodies of television stereotypes, such as advice specialists and news anchors. In 1978, Radner won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show. She also portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979. Radner's SNL work established her as an iconic figure in the history of American comedy. She died from ovarian cancer in 1989. Her autobiography dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including her struggles with that illness. Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her wish that information about her illness would be used to help other cancer victims, founding—and inspiring the founding of—organizations that emphasize early diagnosis, attention to hereditary factors and support for cancer patients. Posthumously, Radner won a Grammy Award in 1990, was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003. Early life Radner was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Henrietta (née Dworkin), a legal secretary, and Herman Radner, a businessman. In Radner's autobiography she stated, “I was named after my grandmother whose name began with G, but 'Gilda' came directly from the movie with Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth.” Through her mother, Radner was a second cousin of business executive Steve Ballmer. She grew up in Detroit with a nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called "Dibby" (and on whom she based her famous character Emily Litella), and an older brother, Michael. She attended the exclusive University Liggett School in Detroit. Toward the end of her life, Radner wrote in her autobiography, It's Always Something, that during her childhood and young adulthood she had battled numerous eating disorders: "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 overate constantly. My weight distressed my mother and she took me to a doctor who put me on Dexedrine diet pills when I was ten years old." Radner was close to her father, who operated Detroit's Seville Hotel, where many nightclub performers and actors stayed while performing in the city. He took her on trips to New York to see Broadway shows. As Radner wrote in It's Always Something, when she was 12, her father developed a brain tumor. The first symptoms came on suddenly: he told people that his glasses were too tight. Within days, he was bedridden and unable to communicate, and remained in that condition until his death two years later. In 1964, Radner graduated from Liggett and enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where she planned to get a degree in education. Career In her senior year at the University of Michigan, Radner dropped out to follow her boyfriend, Canadian sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff, to Toronto. There, she made her professional acting debut in the 1972 production of Godspell, with future stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, Martin Short, and Paul Shaffer. Afterward, Radner joined The Second City comedy troupe in Toronto. From 1974 to 1975, Radner was a featured player on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a comedy program syndicated to some 600 U.S. radio stations. Fellow cast members included John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Richard Belzer, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Rhonda Coullet. Saturday Night Live Radner gained wide recognition in 1975, as one of the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", the freshman cast of the first season of Saturday Night Live. She was the first performer to be cast in the show, co-wrote much of the material that she performed, and collaborated with Alan Zweibel (of the show's writing staff) on the development of sketches that featured her recurring characters. Between 1975 and 1980, she created many characters, such as the obnoxious personal advice expert Roseanne Roseannadanna (modeled after a New York reporter, Rose Ann Scamardella), and "Baba Wawa", a parody of Barbara Walters. After Radner's death, Walters noted in an interview that Radner had been the "first person to make fun of news anchors, now it's done all the time." Another of Radner's invented characters was Emily Litella, an elderly, hearing-impaired editorialist who made irate, misinformed comments in interview sketches on SNL’s recurring Weekend Update segment. Radner also parodied celebrities such as Lucille Ball, Patti Smith, and Olga Korbut in SNL sketches. In 1978, she won an Emmy Award for her work on SNL. In Rolling Stone's February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Radner was ranked ninth in importance. "[Radner was] the most beloved of the original cast," they wrote. "In the years between Mary Tyler Moore and Seinfeld's Elaine, Radner was the prototype for the brainy city girl with a bundle of neuroses." Radner battled bulimia while on the show. She had a relationship with fellow SNL and National Lampoon castmate Bill Murray, which reportedly ended badly, though few details of their relationship or its end were made public. In her autobiography, Radner mentioned Murray only once, and in passing: "All the guys [in the National Lampoon group of writers and performers] liked to have me around because I would laugh at them till I peed in my pants and tears rolled out of my eyes. We worked together for a couple of years creating The National Lampoon Show, writing The National Lampoon Radio Hour, and even working on stuff for the magazine. Bill Murray joined the show and Richard Belzer ..." Alan Zweibel, who co-created the Roseanne Roseannadanna character and co-wrote Roseanne's dialogue, recalled that Radner, one of only three original SNL cast members who stayed away from cocaine, chastised him for abusing it. In 1979, the new president and CEO of NBC, Fred Silverman, offered Radner her own primetime variety show, but she turned down the offer. That same year, she was a host of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly. Radner also gave the commencement address, in character as Roseanne Roseannadanna, to the 1979 graduating class at the Columbia School of Journalism. Radner reportedly expressed mixed emotions about being recognized and approached in public by fans and other strangers. SNL historians Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad said she variously became "angry when she was approached, and upset when she wasn't". Work in theater, a record album and her first movie In 1979, Radner appeared on Broadway in a successful one-woman show, Gilda Radner – Live from New York. The show featured material that was racier than NBC censor.... Discover the Coralee June Raven Kennedy popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Coralee June Raven Kennedy books.