Hi, I'm Gilda Radner and...
[Chuckling] Okay, now.
[Applauding]
[narrator] Gilda Radner created some of TV's
most iconic characters.
This is Baba Wawa at Large.
Committing to her comedy with total abandon.
People there they got these funny belly buttons,
like some go in, and some go out.
And showing America what a funny woman could do.
She's the first cast member ever of SNL.
She was number one.
Never mind.
Gilda Radner was one of my comedy goddesses.
Boom ba ba boom!
She permeates all things female comedy.
I am woman, hear me roar.
[Roaring]
She was ballsy, she was feminine, she was hilarious.
I nauseous, I'm constipated, my feet swell,
my gums are bleeding, my sinuses are clogged,
I got heartburn, I'm cranky and I have gas.
My brain cracked open.
She was being ridiculous and gross and
people were laughing.
She was fearless and she was physical.
You're idolizing this person and saying,
"If I wanna do it, I wanna be like Gilda."
But for all the jokes on stage...
I told everyone I was going to the bathroom,
but I really went to a coffee shop and had apple pie
à la mode and I ate the whole thing.
She was grappling with a darker reality
behind the scenes.
She was very conscious of what she looked like.
I think she had some serious demons.
She was addicted to love and attention and food.
While this fame is happening, your wildest dreams,
you look in the mirror and you have body dysmorphia.
She said, "I'm gonna teach you how to eat as much as
you want and not gain weight."
Gilda's life was in danger.
How did one of the greatest comedians of a generation
nearly die from the same struggles
she laughed about on screen?
'Eating disorder' wasn't in the zeitgeist then.
I don't think she understood how dangerous it was.
[Overlapping voices] Ladies and gentlemen!
You are about to be entertained!
Getting the laugh is the greatest addiction.
They want more of it, they want more of it.
He was getting death threats. It [beep] with your head!
He's out of his skull! That's what took her down.
This is a crazy story.
[Applauding]
Hi Fern, I'm home!
When 'Saturday Night Live' hit the airwaves in 1975,
Gilda Radner is a truly standout star.
...I could drink a horse.
She seems to have a magical ability to connect with
crowds and crack up a room.
You know, we all can't be brainy like Fern here.
[Laughing]
Gilda's inner child was very alive a lot of the time,
you know, so you could be very playful
and goofy with her.
I remember her being just funny and silly and big and...
everybody liked Gilda.
Growing up in golden age Detroit,
Gilda seems destined for showbiz.
When I was a little girl growing up in Detroit,
my dad used to take me to see shows when they'd come
into town, and we'd sit in about the third row,
and I'd look up on the stage and the people up there
just always looked so happy to be there.
I thought to myself that that's what I wanted to do
and that's where I wanted to be.
A successful businessman, her father runs a hotel that
hosts entertainers, and he encourages Gilda's talent.
She always said she got her sense of humour from her
father who was a great jokester and had a certain
kind of, you know, off kilter view of the world.
She was the apple of her dad's eye.
He just adored her and
she loved to make him laugh.
But for all her father's love,
Gilda's childhood is still unsettled.
My mother couldn't take the winters,
so every November my family would go to Miami Beach and
live for maybe four months, and then come back to Detroit.
My brother and I couldn't get attached anywhere.
I didn't have any friends.
Gilda takes refuge in her imagination and
over eats to cope with stress.
Then at age twelve,
her childhood is turned upside down.
Gilda's father was diagnosed with brain cancer,
and it was a very long, drawn out ordeal for Gilda,
probably very traumatic.
Gilda's father dies when she's only 14 years old.
It was too great and sudden a loss of a person
whom I adored, and who adored me.
I spent years trying to mourn my father's death properly.
A decade later, Gilda follows love to Canada.
No intention of a life in show business,
but her fate intersects with a special moment in time.
Toronto was an extraordinary city back in the 70s.
There was just a lot of opportunity,
from Second City to "Godspell" to TV series.
There were so many of us around and
Gilda somehow came into my life.
Surrounded by a generation of future stars,
Gilda follows her love for performance
back to the local stage.
I first met Gilda in the early 70s when we were both
cast in a children's show called 'Modern Fables.'
She found out that there was an audition coming up
for "Godspell".
It's basically the story of Jesus done as a musical
filled with clowns and hippies.
People were auditioning left, right and centre.
Gilda was not particularly a singer,
but she went in and sang "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah",
and she's Gilda, so she killed it.
That was the beginning of her stepping out of
sort of obscurity into the spotlight.
[Singing] ...description of the Promised Land,
maybe you could reach it.
That was the first professional job I'd ever had.
I don't, I can't speak for Paul.
-Is that the first? -Same for me, yeah.
Okay.
There were some really amazing people in there.
Yeah, Marty Short, Andrea Martin,
Eugene Levy, Nancy Dolman.
We all started out together,
didn't know what would happen.
We just spent a year jumping up and down.
On Godspell's crowded stage, Gilda shines.
The first time I ever laid eyes on Gilda was in
"Godspell" and there was this little beaming face in this
ocean of brown wavy hair, and your eyes just
went to her and stayed with her.
She was magnetic as hell.
She just had it, you know, whatever that thing was,
it was a stage full of really talented performers,
but Gilda just was standout right away.
Instant hit.
For Gilda, 'Godspell" whets a growing appetite for fame.
I think she got the taste of it.
I think she knew it was the pond
she was supposed to swim in.
I remember walking down the street with her one day,
and I was really well known in this city at that time,
and Gilda kept saying, "Everybody knows you.
I want people to know me."
And I went, "I have a feeling."
Gilda catches the eye of another rising star,
John Belushi, and is recruited to New York City
to co-star in a radio comedy hour.
♪ [Singing] ♪
You're listening to the National Lampoon Radio Hour.
Gilda hits the airwaves for the first time
with other future greats like John Belushi, Bill Murray,
and Harold Ramis, but in New York,
something even bigger is brewing.
A producer named Lorne Michaels sets out
to find the very first cast for a sketch comedy show
called 'Saturday Night Live.'
...and a double take to the left.
He has his eye on one performer in particular.
-Ladies and gentlemen. -Ah! [Laughing]
[Announceer] Gilda "Radnay"!
"Ner". Gilda Radner.
I'm not gonna talk about food,
and I'm not gonna talk about guys,
and I already did all my comedy material in the
first five minutes that I saw everyone
to win them over as my friends.
She's the first cast member ever of SNL.
She was number one.
The very first person cast on "Saturday Night Live",
Gilda is on the brink of life altering fame.
A pioneer in the making.
I think the thing that Lorne saw in Gilda is this
magnetic woman who's not afraid to be silly.
[Laughing] Leave me alone.
Gilda, are you wearing a wig?
Yes. [Laughing]
She brought such energy to the room.
-Gilda, that was great. -Thank you! Bye.
Gilda is on the edge of stardom,
but behind the scenes
she's battling lifelong demons.
From the time I was nine years old,
I have weighed as much as 160 pounds and as little as 93.
Throughout my teenage years stress caused me to overeat,
and the fear of being fat put me on
tedious and endless diets.
She obviously knew she had a problem.
She had difficulty with food.
Gilda told me a story once, you know,
at a really peak neurotic moment,
and calling the deli and pretending she had a
room full of people in her apartment,
and she would go around the room and ask these imaginary
people what they wanted to order from the deli-
[Laughing]- and she would put in this massive order.
It was all for her.
For Gilda, a habit of stress eating is colliding with the
pressures of performing in the public eye.
The phrase 'eating disorder' wasn't in the zeitgeist then.
I think it took some years to understand
exactly how dire it got.
[Applauding]
Live from New York, it's Sunday night!
[Cheering]
'Saturday Night Live' debuts on national television
on October 11th, 1975.
-Mr. Bee? -Yes?
Congratulations, it's a worker!
And Gilda is one of the very first to
connect with audiences.
Boom ba ba boom!
[Laughing]
Gilda Radner was
one of my comedy goddesses.
[Shouting over each other]
She was fearless and she was physical and
she was gorgeous, you know, cute as a button,
but also unfettered by whatever this was.
She was just bringing her whole self.
Here with an editorial reply is Miss Emily Litella.
What's all this fuss I keep hearing about
violins on television?
It was just a ponytail and a pair of glasses,
and the body changed.
-It's terrible the way things- -Miss Litella?
-What? What? -Miss Litella...
That was "violence on television",
not violins... violence.
-Oh. Well, that's different. -Yes.
Never mind.
"Never mind." [Laughing]
La la la la la!
As 'Saturday Night Live' becomes a national event,
Gilda introduces a series of iconic characters and
quickly becomes a sensation.
This is Baba Wawa at Large.
[Applauding]
She was the first person to replicate news anchors,
and that is now the most popular thing
on SNL is the news. Like, that is the segment.
There's never a dull moment in my "iwustwious caweer".
Baba Wawa...
oh man, Gilda nails it.
I'm hoping as I watch there's some type of transference,
you know, some osmosis, because...
Gilda, she just has it.
And tonight we'll be talking to an actual "wiving wegend".
The incwedible Mawena Goyshwin.
[Laughing]
I have a very vivid memory.
I was about 12 years old,
and I told my mom,
"Have you noticed that there aren't any
funny women anywhere"?
And she got pissed and she showed me Gilda Radner.
A Mr. Richard Fedder from Fort Lee,
New Jersey writes in and says,
"Dear Roseanne Roseannadanna.
Last Thursday I quit smoking.
Now I'm depressed, I gained weight,
my face broke out, I'm nauseous,
I'm constipated, my feet swell,
my gums are bleeding,
my sinuses are clogged, I got heartburn,
I'm cranky, and I have gas."
-[Laughing] -"What should I do?"
Mr. Fedder, you sound like a real attractive guy.
[Laughing]
My brain cracked open.
It was a profound moment for me.
She was being successfully gross as a woman.
This is a time where we're, we're figuring out, like,
what is a woman?
Is it just a possession of a man?
Is she just, like, supposed to be a wife?
And she's like, "No, I'm gonna be a,
a loudmouth comedian." Which in itself is so radical.
I am woman, hear me roar.
[Roaring]
Gilda had the ability to be herself and hold her own
on a stage full of testosterone.
Gilda Radner was the first person to
say 'bitch' on television.
-Bitch. -[Laughing]
That is a big deal.
To be able to curse on camera,
but still be a woman and still be loved.
Audiences across the country
quickly see something fresh in Gilda.
A woman whose brand of comedy is raw,
authentic, and totally relatable.
Early in the show, we were sitting in Lorne Michael's
office where we would pitch ideas for the host.
Gilda had just been talking to us about what she had
eaten from the time she had woken up,
you know, a lot of candy.
She was pioneering compulsive candor.
We were just rolling on the floor.
Everybody knew that was gonna be solid laughs,
and Lorne immediately made out a card,
"What Gilda Ate", and put it up like
she had pitched a sketch.
[Applauding]
And now a new feature on Saturday Night,
"What Gilda Ate". Gilda?
Thanks, Rob. Okay.
I started the day with one piece of dry toast and two
egg whites scrambled in a no-stick Teflon pan.
I just loved it because comedy up until then had
never been about women, it had always
pretty much been about men,
and maybe men making fun of women.
But it wasn't women making fun of themselves or
commenting on the state of being a woman.
That was what was really quite exciting about
'Saturday Night Live.'
And then when I got back to the office I told everyone
I was going to the bathroom, but I really went to
a coffee shop and had apple pie à la mode and
I ate the whole thing.
And on the way back up in the elevator I found a Milk Dud
covered with tobacco in the bottom of my purse.
[Laughing]
It was hilariously funny, but, you know,
really sad at the same time.
It was a confession because she ate
more than she wanted to eat.
Peanut MUNCH bar and a box of Cheez It's.
Thank you very much, Gilda, that's enough, thank you.
Wait, I'm not finished yet.
I know but we have to go on with the show, I'm sorry.
-Oh, I'll just go get a snack. -Okay.
[Laughing]
While Gilda taps into her neuroses for material,
almost overnight she is thrust into the
crucible of fame.
She zoomed to stardom so quickly and
everything had changed so rapidly.
At first it was, like,
really fun to be in this goldfish bowl.
You'd roll out of this intense three week period
of three shows and people would be
echoing catchphrases you used.
You know, like Gilda would hear, "Never mind."
Yee-hee-hee-hee!
Live from Mardi Gras, it's Saturday night!
[Cheering]
With SNL's popularity hitting the stratosphere,
the team takes the show on the road to New Orleans.
For Gilda, it's a taste of fame that sours her appetite.
Hello, hello!
It was a disaster on many levels,
and people started to really run after Gilda and
kind of want pieces of her.
And I think they were chasing her and there was
some menace if they can't get what they want.
People were cracking up.
It felt like the world was watching, you know?
A lot of people were watching.
[Cheering]
Hounded into hiding, Gilda escapes through
the New Orleans airport in disguise.
There's no school to how to become famous gracefully.
At first there are some perks and it seems wonderful,
but there's another side to it
where you have no privacy.
[Indistinct shouting]
You're still following me?
Stop! Leave me alone!
In New Orleans, I think she really saw the
dark side of fame and it scared the shit out of her.
Back in New York, the intense demands of
the show's weekly schedule start increasingly
bearing down on Gilda and the cast.
The legend of 'Saturday Night Live'
is that it is gruelling.
That show is made every week, in a week,
and then it goes live.
And there are many, many stories of
the pressure and the stress.
Hi, Yorta. Hi, George.
Sorry we're late.
Suddenly you're there, but there's a
whole bunch of other people there too.
How do you get in front of the camera?
And it was pretty crazy 'cause, you know,
a lot of the cast members were doing drugs,
and this heavy intense schedule,
and having to come up with stuff all the time.
But there were problems and obstacles for
the women in that company.
There was a lot of pushing around, I guess,
for territory amongst the actors and
especially the men.
Under pressure and competing for space,
Gilda's anxieties are also amplified by
an entirely new experience...
being watched by millions every week.
You're on camera, the camera adds 10 pounds,
you're standing next to a really skinny person.
Sometimes people have no compunction about saying
what her body looked like in something,
and you'd watch the playback of the show later.
Suddenly the world can see her body and,
she was very conscious of what she looked like.
Yeah, she was hard on herself that way.
Even a woman doctor like me can have a weight problem.
That's why for many years I've tried exhausting
exercises, harmful pills, and worst of all,
complex and annoying diets.
So finally, I wrote my own book.
There've always been these
impossible beauty standards for women.
[Ringing]
-Hello? -It's Charlie, Angel.
Time to go to work.
In magazines and on TV
during the 1960s and the 1970s,
women were thin, and gorgeous,
and blonde, and perfect.
Now, Gilda wasn't blonde
but she could control her weight,
and she did that by restricting her food and
getting thinner, and thinner, and thinner,
because that was what she could control in that moment.
The stress seemed to be getting to her and
that was the form it took.
Gilda never really smoked pot,
nor did she like cocaine, which she called,
'the devil's dandruff'.
She wanted to, you know, be skinny.
That was her jones.
♪ TO WEAR MY CLOTHES WITHOUT ♪
♪ IMPRINTING IN MY SKIN, ♪
♪ THE ELASTIC FROM MY UNDERPANTS. ♪
♪ UNDERPANTS. ♪
Gilda Radner continues to win over audiences
with her unvarnished comedy, but under the spotlight
she battles with her food intake.
Onstage, she jokes about weight and
her diet of artificial sweeteners.
♪ [Vocalizing] ♪
Now saccharin and I will be together forever
in low calorie heaven.
[Laughing]
♪ Saccharin! ♪
♪ You left a bad taste in my mouth! ♪
♪ But you kept my seams from bustin'! ♪
♪ Saccharin! Without you in my life ♪
♪ my body would be absolutely disgusting! ♪
For years she'd been eating so much saccharin and
so much Diet Tab, and we'd try to get her off it
because there was awareness blooming,
finally, that some of these artificial
sweeteners are carcinogenic.
She was struggling with eating disorders and then
simultaneously would be doing
bits on SNL about that.
Live from New York, it's Saturday night!
As the show continues,
Gilda's eating disorder takes another turn.
Gilda was so stressed about having to perform and
having to achieve an ideal, that her now anorexia
has developed into purging.
So, she has, at this point,
run the gamut of eating disorders.
She went from overeating to not eating at all and
now she's eating and vomiting it up.
Early on, Gilda said, "I'm gonna teach you
how to eat as much as you want and not gain weight."
And I ate all this food, and then
she taught me how to throw it up.
That, you know, was a shiny new toy.
You know, "Oh my God, I can eat all I want
and there's no penalty."
I remember hearing that she was binging and purging,
and I was kind of shocked because
why would she need to do that?
I felt for her because it's such a pressure cooker that
they're living in and the thing for women to be thin is
so important, but of course an eating disorder is not
just about being thin. It's about control.
In a world where you don't have any control,
especially in entertainment, like, who likes you?
Who doesn't? I want to be loved.
Well, I can control this,
and I will focus my control on this because
everything else feels like I can't control it.
Offstage and away from the cameras,
Gilda searches for a bit of solid ground and security,
in love.
Lorne Michaels said Gilda was a genius comic,
but she was obsessed with two things,
her career and having a boyfriend.
I think she was looking for a place to land,
where she felt safe.
I think Gilda, for all her charm and all her joy and
all that beauty of her, also needed to feel secure.
From Toronto to New York, Gilda has dated
some of the biggest stars of the time.
From Dan Aykroyd to
Martin Short and Paul Simon.
Now in the midst of SNL's chaos,
she finds Bill Murray.
There was an attraction, it metastasized.
They got together.
You could completely see why, they had a lot of chemistry.
[Laughing continues]
Anne Beatts and I wrote, "The Nerds".
Mom, you don't have to worry about me
going all the way with Todd.
It was a real litmus test of what was going on
in Gilda and Billy's relationship,
which was hot and cold.
This is your graduation gift from me.
Really?
-Ah! -Agh!
He had another long-term girlfriend,
so they didn't want to go too big with it.
Quit it, Pizza Face.
You're messing up my hair,
boy, are you ever immature.
But then when they would do "The Nerds",
how they were getting along was
completely reflected in the sketch.
Are there any new developments?
-[Yelling] Stop! -I guess not!
So you know, you really ought to put some bandaids
on those mosquito bites you got there.
Ha-ha-ha. That's so funny I forgot to laugh.
She developed this codependency on men,
and she went from boyfriend to boyfriend to boyfriend...
she was never really alone.
I think that's a hard balance.
To go from being adored on the giant macro scale
of that, to then living a private life,
and Gilda was never lacking for love,
everyone in her life loved her...
but I think Gilda's need for love was massive.
♪
♪ ...JEWISH JEANS. ♪
♪ SHE SHOPS THE SALE. ♪
Despite fame and acclaim,
by the late 1970s Gilda's demons
are starting to show up off stage as well.
During the third and fourth year she was very thin.
Sometimes I would go out to dinner with Gilda.
After eating dinner with us she would get up in the
restaurant and go around and ask strangers for bites of
their dessert, which was a very odd,
curious thing to do, and she was at that point
the darling of New York.
You know, she was America's sweetheart,
and they were sort of thrilled to have
a Gilda story.
I'm sure after one of those she would have to
go and throw it up, wherever she could
do it and not be overheard.
Back in the 1970s, Gilda's friends
knew there was something wrong with her,
but they didn't exactly know what it was,
and they didn't know how to give her the
kind of support, and the kind of help,
and the kind of resources that she desperately
needed during that time.
Unchecked, Gilda's eating disorders deepen
as she falls towards rock bottom.
I think everybody was worried about Gilda,
but everybody was kinda trying to keep their nose
above the waterline themselves because of
just the amount of stress.
So, I was onto what she was doing,
I didn't know how extreme it was.
I later learned that Gilda had been hospitalized.
With SNL on summer hiatus in 1978,
Gilda Radner, one of the show's biggest stars,
finally caves under the unrelenting stress.
She checks herself into hospital.
She went in voluntarily,
but at that time in the 1970s,
going to a psychiatric facility
to address psychiatric issues,
which is what an eating disorder is,
wasn't common.
It was still really shameful
as opposed to what we feel now.
Go get help.
Gilda's doctors teach her to keep a detailed diary
of her diet- 1,200 calories a day-
nudging her up and out of the abyss.
If you think about eating disorders and you think about
anorexia in particular, it kind of is like a cancer,
where it starts to eat away at your body.
Gilda's life was in danger.
She was on her way to death had it not had
some level of intervention at that time.
She was just such a star, it just felt like
everything fell in line for her.
And then you get to know her and her struggles and
you're now connected like, "Oh my goodness,
she's suffered an eating disorder."
And while this fame is happening,
your wildest dreams, you look in the mirror
and you have body dysmorphia, and that
mask just pretending to be normal is the
first mask of like, "Hi guys, I'm fine.
Now I'm gonna put on a character.
I am now a character."
Dr. Breadloaf's Quick Loss Diet Book.
Let's turn to page one and read the instructions.
Breakfast? Eat page one.
-[Laughing] -That's right.
You simply tear the page out of the book and eat it.
What could be easier or more slimming?
Mm!
With Gilda, there was always the shadow of having been
a chubby little girl, and I think there was
a lot of baggage on that.
Her mother put her on Dexedrine to get her
to lose weight and to conform with some image
she wanted her daughter to express.
She mentioned it and sometimes we would
act out our own familial baggage on, you know,
the airwaves, which was a strange perk of the job.
We know a lot of comics who have dark histories and
dark childhoods that, that kinda make them
who they were and who they are,
and I think Gilda is no exception.
You want the acceptance of your mother.
If she's saying I'm not enough,
then I need to go and figure out how to be enough.
Comedy is a mental disorder where
you need people to love you.
Strangers are preferable.
She was seeking validation from strangers,
from laughter, from anything.
But for Gilda, putting her whole self out there
has already taken a dangerous toll.
I think being a performer is a high wire act.
It's hard to be open and vulnerable
and expose yourself.
You're exposing your soul, your heart...
you're giving up a lot of your pain,
and as a result of that I think other things
come loose in the machinery.
Why do we see so many performers fall into drugs?
Fall into addictive behaviour?
You have to be willing to open yourself up,
and the minute you do that... it gets scary.
-Gilda Radner! -[Cheering]
After 14 days in hospital, Gilda returns to SNL
vowing to stay the course to stability.
She's on comedy's, mountaintop,
and wins an Emmy for her work.
Thank you.
Like my dressing room at NBC, I share this with,
with Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin.
Climbing higher, she hits Broadway solo.
Escaping for a brief moment the confines of TV,
certifying her star power.
♪ THE ANIMALS, THE ANIMALS, ♪
♪ LET'S TALK DIRTY TO THE ANIMALS♪
♪ ---- YOU, MR. BUNNY. ♪
♪ EAT SHIT, MR. BEAR. ♪
♪ IF THEY DON'T LOVE IT, THEY CAN SHOVE IT, ♪
♪ FRANKLY I DON'T CARE, OH... ♪
She had some heartbreaking numbers in that show.
Some amazing things. I mean, it was...
you know, it was like one step from Judy Garland.
But statistics prove that most guys prefer skinny girls
with cancer over healthy girls with bulging thighs.
[Applauding]
I remember thinking, I'm like,
"Does this mean you're dying?"
They say you gave rats cancer,
but I say that can't be true.
Even though it was this dark, gritty,
true, nasty material,
hearing just the laughs, and being with her kind
just was such a boost for her.
Gilda's one-woman show is a huge success,
and that same year she gets married to
her band's guitarist.
But back at SNL, tensions grow as
some of Gilda's oldest collaborators break into
Hollywood while she continues to run ragged.
The pressure was just so huge and everybody
responded to it in a different way.
I just left.
In 1980, Gilda looks for a fresh start and performs in
her final episode of Saturday Night Live.
Lord and Lady Douchebag.
[Laughing]
When Gilda left SNL, I think more than anything,
she was looking for a quiet, safe place where
she would feel totally and completely loved, nurtured,
and appreciated for having Gilda-ness.
Gilda is cast in her first Hollywood feature,
and her life is about to be turned upside down.
The agents in Chicago arranged for it.
They didn't say anything about you.
Oh, I'm Kate Hellman. I'm really, I'm sorry.
-How do you do? -I thought you were a burglar.
I thought you were a burglar!
Something very special happened to you
in 'Hanky Panky.'
-Yeah, I met Gene Wilder. -Everybody loves a love story.
Oh, yes, I know.
Well, you know, this wonderful person...
got a crush on him, you know, that's what happens.
Start, your heart starts fluttering, you don't know,
you can't put two words together,
feet don't touch the floor, can't sleep at night.
Gilda felt abandoned by
her father after he died.
When somebody experiences a big traumatic event at a
young age, you tend to become very emotionally stunted.
If you look at Gilda's characters,
a lot of her characters are little girls and
little children or stunted women,
and that followed her
throughout the rest of her life.
She sought that validation
through men in her life and
she was never really alone because she didn't
value herself to be alone and be okay with that.
Gilda leaves her husband,
swapping New York for life in Los Angeles,
with one of the biggest movie stars
in the world.
Gilda was madly in love with Gene.
He was a movie star.
He wasn't someone who OD'd or had
all kinds of neurotic problems.
He came from a slightly different generation and
I think the scruffy, hippie, druggie thing
wasn't his shtick. It wasn't his jam.
Gene didn't want Gilda to have anything
to do with any of the SNL people anymore.
He didn't want Gilda anywhere near it.
With the stress of New York behind her,
Gilda begins to eat and live well.
I think that Gilda found a safe harbour with Gene.
I bet it was the first time Gilda ever had
that much safety.
A lot of my characters had a lot to do with growing up,
and I've got a direct line to being a little girl still,
but I don't want it to be...
invade my life as much as it has.
I'm not, I'm less afraid to grow up.
♪
Hello, Ted.
The stage is set for a big second act with her
new co-star and partner, but success
in the movies is harder to come by.
I don't think film was the medium that
Gilda excelled in.
When she did movies for, for Gene,
it never quite gelled the same way 'cause
she needed the excitement of a live audience.
She missed performing live.
Gilda and Gene travel to England to film what they
hope will be their first big box office hit,
but fate is about to take another turn.
You are again with him in 'Haunted Honeymoon'.
Yeah.
What was special about that role for you?
Well, 'cause I got to be engaged to, to him
and I got to wear a wedding gown for 40 days in
a row straight, and I got to take wedding photos that
I never had from our actual marriage.
Now married, Gilda Radner and Gene Wilder
are happy and full of hope
trying to remedy a string of mediocre movies
when the clouds set in.
Ultimately, the reviews were terrible.
The movie bombed, which was devastating to Gilda,
she had wanted the movie to be a success.
And toward the end of the filming of that movie,
she got ill.
She didn't know what was wrong.
Back in the United States after wrapping the film,
Gilda's mysterious symptoms continue.
I'd feel good for a few days and I'd think I was fine,
and then I'd wake up one day and feel like
I was getting the flu.
It was as though I was hypnotized into
this deep sleep, like a fog rolling in over my brain
that I couldn't escape.
Virtually every doctor she saw ended up telling her that
she was just being neurotic
or she was depressed.
Anything but literally, organically, ill.
After nearly a year of illness,
Gilda is finally diagnosed with
stage four ovarian cancer.
One of the first things she said to me,
I remember so clearly, she said,
"I've been haunted.
I've been having cancer premonitions
since I was 12."
That's when her father got brain cancer.
When she finally got this diagnosis, of course,
it was the realization of all her fears.
♪
The first night she was hospitalized,
she was alone in a room watching television,
and there was a station that had been
running 'Saturday Night Live' reruns every night,
and so she was lying in bed
watching herself on television,
and she was feeling totally alienated.
You know, she realized that she'd gone from, you know,
major star to this
helpless figure in a hospital bed.
Gilda starts to look back for understanding,
wondering if she had tempted fate all along.
I was heavy into saccharin and cyclamates
for over 20 years.
I would put those tablets in my coffee in the morning
to make it really sweet.
I coped with stress by having every possible
eating disorder from the time I was nine years old.
I sang a song once called 'Goodbye Saccharin'
about how I had to have saccharin because
sugar would make me fat,
and I'd rather be thin and get cancer
than have bulging thighs.
It came back to haunt me.
That was a very dark line.
We talked about it, she just said
she wonders, was she hypnotizing herself?
You know, she said that line so many times.
Knowing Gilda suffered from eating disorders
and also was making fun of
that subject matter on SNL, of course!
Like, it makes perfect sense.
All great performers, whatever they struggled with
the most is what they were pushing out and
getting a laugh out of.
You know, sometimes the funniest thing is the most
truthful thing, and sometimes the truth is ugly.
That's what makes Gilda great,
is that she doesn't hide from
the crux of what makes things uncomfortable,
but also what makes things hilarious.
But as Gilda the comedian becomes Gilda the patient,
her faith in her gift falters.
One night, she was walking down the street in New York,
and on this bus shelter there was
a huge poster of Gilda from Life Magazine
saying, "Comedian laughs in the face of cancer."
And, you know, she really felt like a fraud
because she wasn't laughing.
Later on, I think that she realized,
or it was just her natural impulse,
she needed to get control over the situation.
In 1988 with her cancer newly in remission,
Gilda sets out to rediscover her spark.
-Am I getting fat? -[Laughing]
Well, just write in and tell me.
Really, you could do me a favour.
I can't tell anymore.
Well, or sit there and care about yourself.
It's up to you.
[Laughing]
-Hi Garry! -Oh, Gilda!
It's Gilda Radner, everybody.
Gilda goes out on stage on Garry Shandling's show.
It's the first time she's been on TV since
everything has happened.
[Cheering & applauding]
No, no. Really.
Don't, don't, don't milk the applause like that, it's...
[Laughing]
Oh, I'm sorry, Garry.
I haven't been on television for a while.
Oh that, yeah, what, what was wrong?
-Oh, I had cancer. -[Laughing]
What did you have?
[Laughing]
I just had a series of bad career moves.
[Laughing]
Which by the way, there's no treatment for
whatsoever, so you really...
People talk about how comedy is a way of not being fully
vulnerable because you make a joke out of it.
Come on.
[Cheering & applauding]
But there's power to that.
Taking something that's tragic, or hidden,
or shameful, and flipping it around and
turning it into a joke.
She somehow spun it so people would laugh,
so much in a way that she made you comfortable
talking about her illness.
Gilda really shined a light on what cancer,
and the cancer patient experiences.
She said, "Okay, now I'm gonna tell all.
I have, I have nothing to lose.
I've been to the mountaintop, for other women and
other people who are suffering.
I'm gonna tell my story."
That's when you see the complete evolution of Gilda.
She's not sitting down crying a river.
She's cracking jokes.
We don't have control of what ultimately happens to us,
but we have control over how we react to it,
and Gilda had the perfect reaction.
With a winning return to television,
Gilda begins to see the possibility of a new dawn
on the small screen.
When I talked to Gilda about it later, she said,
you know, "I felt like I was coming home.
When I opened that door and walked onto the stage
and felt the cameras and so on...
It was like coming home."
In the spring of 1988,
Gilda Radner is in remission.
She's booked to host a triumphant return at SNL,
and dreaming of a new show,
when her recovery is cruelly cut short.
She had been in remission and then it came back pretty
full force and she kind of knew it was curtains.
She had come to a place of surrender
and that she had gone through all the emotions
up- to get to that place.
In May, 1989, at the age of only 42,
Gilda Radner enters hospital in Los Angeles
for a routine scan.
After receiving a sedative, she falls into a coma.
She never wakes up.
Saturday Night Live was getting ready to go to air
when the news broke.
You know, I've been coming here to do
'Saturday Night Live' since 1976 and
the thing that keeps coming back to the,
brings you back to the show is the people
you get to work with, and I'd like to show you
something we recorded on this stage in 1978.
♪
[Laughing]
[Applauding]
You know, when I look at that tape,
I can't help but think how great she was and
how young I looked.
Gilda, we miss you.
[Applauding continues]
♪
As the news spreads,
tributes from former co-stars pour in.
She was a, a love light.
You know, she was a,
a white light in the world and,
and just full of love and full of support.
She was just incredibly funny,
and... she was...
very warm and very generous and
had this remarkable spirit, and I think that's
what people responded to her.
It was devastating. She was so...
central to everything that happened with
Saturday Night Live, she was just...
at the beating heart of all of it.
Gilda's story was marked by darkness and light,
one fuelling the other,
but in bringing her struggles to the screen,
she shaped the future of comedy
for decades to come.
Gilda's legacy is survivor.
For a woman to survive
being in the male -dominated industry
like comedy, is a game changer.
She literally set a precedent for
all of the female performers on SNL.
Every last one of them.
It sounds like a cliche,
but her trailblazing humour,
especially as regards women, it was something that
really, we had never seen before.
She allowed women to be women.
Like forever,
you couldn't run a minute mile, right?
No one could do that, it was unheard of,
and then someone did and then everybody could do it.
I think that Gilda was that for women in comedy.
She just kind of lived in her truth.
Her time on this earth was so powerful
because she did that.
Gilda Radner's legacy is
letting your light shine brightly
and then sharing it with all of us.
Letting us know the truth behind the story
and the truth behind that light
so that we can remember it,
and laugh with it, and cry with it.
I don't know a human being alive
who isn't screwed up,
who isn't a mess,
who doesn't have darkness.
I don't know as many who can take all that and
put it out there in a way that is funny.
I think Gilda's skill was
taking all of that stuff and sharing it,
but in a way now, I can be left alone
with what I'm feeling.
In my life, comedy has made the difference
between tragedy.
A comic view of the world is what saved me
time and time again, and...
and I love being funny.
It's not a sad story.
The great thing about life is death is not bad.
It's living your life without purpose,
and I think Gilda lived with purpose and passion.
What more do you want?
But leave me my dreams.
Dreams are like paper.
They tear so easily.
I love to play.
But every time I play, you win.
♪ [Accordion] ♪
Ciao.
♪