Gilda Radner

Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American comedian, actress, and one of seven original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. In her routines, Radner specialized in broad and obnoxious parodies of television stereotypes, such as annoying advice specialists and news anchors. She also portrayed those characters in her successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979. Radner died from ovarian cancer in 1989, and her life and legacy from SNL established her as an iconic figure in the history of American comedy. Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her personal wish that information about her illness would help other cancer victims. 2Early lifeEdit Radner was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Jewish parents, Henrietta (née Dworkin), a legal secretary, and Herman Radner, a businessman. 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 named Michael. She attended the exclusive University Liggett School in Detroit (it began its relocation to Grosse Pointe later that year). Toward the end of her life, Radner wrote in her autobiography, It's Always Something, that during her childhood and young adulthood, she battled numerous eating disorders: "I coped with stress by having every possible eating disorder from the time I was nine years ol