Because Gilda Radner left Saturday Night Live before I was watching television, probably still unaware what a television was, I was only introduced to her through re-runs on cable. Her parody of Barbara Walters (as Baba Wawa) confused my 10 year-old self. Why was this newswoman talking like Gussie Mausheimer from An American Tail? (Perhaps Gilda and Barbara Walters were Madeline Kahn’s inspiration.) In high school, sneaking television late at night, I was really introduced to the brilliance and subtlety that was Gilda Radner.
I know it’s cool at about just any given time to think Saturday Night Live is not cool. I don’t really buy into it. I think the show only loses when the players become stars and are as big as the hosts. These quirky characters are best when you really don’t understand the person who is delivering them. Gilda Radner is perhaps one of the best of that age.
However, as funny as Gilda was, I think her love affair with Gene Wilder and her brutal confrontation with ovarian cancer are as strong of a legacy. My grandmother died of ovarian cancer less than a year before Gilda. While I didn’t understand what killed my grandmother at the time, and I certainly wasn’t following the career, disease and passing of a comedienne at 10 years old, I’ve later connected the relationship and have strong feelings about the work done by Gilda to raise awareness and comfort families facing ovarian cancer.
Twenty years after her death, most people have probably forgotten about the ovarian cancer, bulimia, or her refusal to do cocaine in late 70s New York. How strong of a woman she was. People do remember her marriage to Gene Wilder, especially as he still claims her as the love of his life. In an interview I saw a few years back, his eyes instantly welled up when the interviewer just mentioned Gilda.
I’ve never felt that kind of love, the kind that lingers for 20 years like a slight breeze slipping through a cracked window, always present and slowly filling a room reaching everything and touching everything. I aspire for that and see the contentment in Gene Wilder’s eyes having had his life enveloped in it. Her influence is strong.
Gilda died twenty years ago, and in the year of Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson personalities’ like hers fade from our memories. Her last days were traumatic, as she fought doctors giving her a sedative before a CT-scan. She feared she’d never wake from it, and she didn’t. Her legacy, the humor and the rich love of her husband, keeps me awake, aware, and alive whenever she slips into my thoughts today.
Thanks for remember a truly remarkable woman!
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