Detroit-born comedian and Saturday Night Live star Gilda Radner had been taking part in theater productions since college during her time at the University of Michigan, although she dropped out in 1969 to move to Toronto with her Canadian boyfriend Jeffrey Rubinoff. That relationship didn’t last, but Radner remained in Toronto, taking classes at the University of Toronto to complete her degree. Eventually, after catching a local stage show, she decided to pursue this thing called acting.

Radner worked at the theater doing children’s plays and performing for elementary schoolers across Toronto, which led to some acting in CBC kids’ shows as well. Her most significant role came when she was cast in the 1972 production of the Stephen Schwartz musical Godspell alongside fellow Canadian performers Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, Martin Short and musical director Paul Shaffer. A year later she joined many of these same people in another group of actors: the improv troupe Second City, whose Toronto company would historically include Dan Aykroyd, Joe Flaherty, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short among its most famous alumni.

Eventually Radner would work with her fellow Second City performers, as well as American comedians like John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Christopher Guest, on the National Lampoon Radio Hour (based on the National Lampoon magazine) which aired for a single advertiser-repellant year in 1973, as well as the off-Broadway production The National Lampoon Show which premiered in 1975.

That same year, Radner was hired by Lorne Michaels to join the very first cast of NBC’s new variety show Saturday Night Live (she was the first cast member Lorne Michaels hired so she’s technically the first SNL cast member in history). Radner was on SNL for its first five seasons from 1975 to 1980, often co-writing her own material and often doing so in collaboration with SNL writer Alan Zweibel. Among her most famous characters on the show were editorialist Emily Litella, the Barbara Walters parody Baba Wawa, personal advice expert Roseanne Roseannadanna and singer Candy Slice, while she impersonated such celebrities as Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Marie Osmond, Patty Hearst, Jackie Onassis, Julie Nixon and Lillian Carter.

In 1979 she had a successful one-woman stage show called Gilda Radner Live where she would tell jokes that were a little dirtier than what NBC would allow. It was adapted to film with Lorne Michaels as an executive producer, but that wasn’t as popular.

After leaving SNL in 1980, Radner would do the same thing that cast members like Aykroyd, Belushi, Chase and Murray did and act in movies. But none were very successful and that largely had to do with Hollywood’s inability to know what to do with her. She did not really fit the mold for what mainstream films typically did with female characters in the eighties because she was less of an actress and more of a clown and an impressionist. Although she continued to receive praise for her stage work, which was always her biggest strength, and her work in film led to her meeting with actor and filmmaker Gene Wilder who she worked with on Hanky Panky, The Woman in Red and Haunted Honeymoon and who she eventually married and loved until the day she died. A day, by the way, that came way too soon.

Gilda Radner was first diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer in 1986. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy in addition to getting surgery to remove her tumor, the emotional and physical struggles of which she detailed in her 1989 autobiography It’s Always Something. She actually joked about her cancer when she made her final TV appearance on the fourth wall-breaking sitcom It’s Garry Shandling’s Show in 1988 after a long show business hiatus, to much applause from that show’s studio audience as well as an Emmy nomination.

In 1988, medical tests showed that her cancer was in remission, but in December that same year, she learned it returned. A year later she died at a hospital in L.A.

Gilda Radner was not only by all accounts one of the nicest and funniest people in show business (comedians loved her because she had a great laugh) but she was also one of the key figures and in my opinion one of the MVPs of SNL’s early years, inspiring and influencing many future comedians, including future SNL cast members like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Cecily Strong. Her death also raised awareness for many about ovarian cancer and the importance of getting diagnosed early. Something that might have saved her life (my mom also died of ovarian cancer so I am well aware of the importance of that diagnosis). A documentary about Radner called Love, Gilda premiered at Tribeca in 2018 and it’s a nice homage to her life and career that goes into everything I just wrote about in much more depth. I recommend watching that if you want to learn more about how great she was.