Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Glad we had Gilda

“She would walk into the room and all the energy would go to her”

Love, Gilda: Still alive in our hearts
Love, Gilda: Still alive in our hearts

Where were you on the night Alan and Robin Zweibel were wed? The co-producers of the documentary Love, Gilda, opening Friday at the Ken, met while they were both working on Saturday Night Live and married in 1979. Their mutual friend Gilda Radner couldn’t make the ceremony due to a prior commitment to entertain me and two-thousand or so fellow ticket-holders at Chicago’s Arie Crown Theatre with her one-woman show, Gilda Live.

Gilda Radner was the first cast member hired by Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to star as one of his Not Ready For Prime Time Players. For the first five years of its existence, I didn’t miss an episode of the Saturday night staple, and Gilda was one of the main reasons behind the fanaticism.

Sponsored
Sponsored

Gents of a certain age will recall decorating their teenage man-caves with the notorious Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster. The combination of teeth and pokies was the mid-’70s answer to breaking the internet. But on her best day, Farrah never made me laugh. At the time, all the guys wanted Gilda for their sweetheart, while the gals longed to be a member of her inner clique. An 8x10 of Gilda adorned the back of my bedroom door.

Born in Detroit to older parents, her father, in his 50s when Gilda was born, didn’t live to see her fifteenth birthday. In childhood, she was a voracious overeater. At the age of ten, mother Radner introduced her daughter to Dexedrine. At a very young age, Gilda learned how to ward off playground jerks looking to turn her weight into a subject of ridicule. “Comedy is hitting on the truth before the other guy thinks of it,” were words she lived by, and a reliance on self-deprecating humor became a key to her survival.

The Radner family was comfortable enough to afford a nanny, who played second-mother to Gilda. Elizabeth Gillies, whom young Gilda dubbed “Dibby,” was the basis for the her deaf and delightfully demential character Emily Litella. She became the first character on TV to utter the word, “Bitch.” The censors got such a giggle out of hearing the cuss pass from the lips of an elderly woman that they looked the other way. But the comedian also had a pronounced dark streak, as evidenced by her SNL portrayal of Christina Crawford as a fitful catatonic, or the three “Uncle Roy” skits in which she and Laraine Newman play pubescent objects of desire to their beloved babysitter played by Buck Henry. (Neither character is touched upon in the doc.)

Martin Short said of Gilda, “She would walk into the room and all the energy would go to her.” Perhaps that’s why she was never without a man by her side. According to one account, at one time or another she had flings with the just about every Ghostbuster, give or take a Rick Moranis or Ernie Hudson. (It was one of her early love interests who persuaded Gilda to drop out of college and move to Canada to be by his side.)

As musicals based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew go, Godspell was a surprisingly painless experience. Short of hiring Pier Paolo Pasolini to direct, the Toronto production lives on as the stuff legends are made of. The allegorical musical united on one stage the nascent talents of Radner, Victor Garber, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, and Martin Short. It also introduced Gilda to musical fledglings Paul Shaffer and Howard Shore. Before long, the New York based SNL and its far shrewder Canadian counterpart SCTV were piercing the tube with a comedy explosion the likes of which television viewers hadn’t convulsed over since Berle, Caesar, and Ball helped usher in the medium.

Soon after the opening credits — but not before the audience is given a chance to re-familiarize itself with the subject — a quartet of more contemporary SNL alumnists (Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, and Melissa McCarthy) are called upon to to read select passages from Gilda’s diaries. Fortunately, their participation is kept to a minimum. Most celebrities don’t leave behind a stockpile of research material such as this, and director Lisa D’Apolito puts it to good use. The photographs alone would fill several storage lockers. Add to this an autobiographical audiobook narrated by the author, performance videos, and recently discovered audio tapes, and you’d swear Gilda was an active participant in the project.

“Gene took Gilda away from us,” says Paul Schaffer, with a noticeable tinge of regret still stuck in his throat. He’s referring to Gene Wilder, the actor who spent the last five years of her life loving and looking after his beloved Gilda. As Wilder’s nephew points out, “Gene wasn’t a comedian. He was an actor who appeared in a lot of funny movies.” And Gilda was a comic who didn’t want to appear as a solo personality doing standup. Gilda appeared in five features — she put off having a baby to make Haunted Honeymoon — and not one of them is worth your time.

The one thing we never learn is where the name Gilda came from. It was her birth name, but damned if I can turn up another person who shared it. America lost Gilda to ovarian cancer when the comedian was but 42-years-old. She exited swinging, doing her best to find the humor in cancer. It’s a film that begs audiences to stop and take a whiff of the proverbial roses while having a few good laughs along the way.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Hip-hop artist Don Elway makes movies for his music

Not Ordinary EP tells a story of life on the streets
Next Article

Pacific Beach – car thief's paradise

Take photos of your automobile and license plate
Love, Gilda: Still alive in our hearts
Love, Gilda: Still alive in our hearts

Where were you on the night Alan and Robin Zweibel were wed? The co-producers of the documentary Love, Gilda, opening Friday at the Ken, met while they were both working on Saturday Night Live and married in 1979. Their mutual friend Gilda Radner couldn’t make the ceremony due to a prior commitment to entertain me and two-thousand or so fellow ticket-holders at Chicago’s Arie Crown Theatre with her one-woman show, Gilda Live.

Gilda Radner was the first cast member hired by Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels to star as one of his Not Ready For Prime Time Players. For the first five years of its existence, I didn’t miss an episode of the Saturday night staple, and Gilda was one of the main reasons behind the fanaticism.

Sponsored
Sponsored

Gents of a certain age will recall decorating their teenage man-caves with the notorious Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster. The combination of teeth and pokies was the mid-’70s answer to breaking the internet. But on her best day, Farrah never made me laugh. At the time, all the guys wanted Gilda for their sweetheart, while the gals longed to be a member of her inner clique. An 8x10 of Gilda adorned the back of my bedroom door.

Born in Detroit to older parents, her father, in his 50s when Gilda was born, didn’t live to see her fifteenth birthday. In childhood, she was a voracious overeater. At the age of ten, mother Radner introduced her daughter to Dexedrine. At a very young age, Gilda learned how to ward off playground jerks looking to turn her weight into a subject of ridicule. “Comedy is hitting on the truth before the other guy thinks of it,” were words she lived by, and a reliance on self-deprecating humor became a key to her survival.

The Radner family was comfortable enough to afford a nanny, who played second-mother to Gilda. Elizabeth Gillies, whom young Gilda dubbed “Dibby,” was the basis for the her deaf and delightfully demential character Emily Litella. She became the first character on TV to utter the word, “Bitch.” The censors got such a giggle out of hearing the cuss pass from the lips of an elderly woman that they looked the other way. But the comedian also had a pronounced dark streak, as evidenced by her SNL portrayal of Christina Crawford as a fitful catatonic, or the three “Uncle Roy” skits in which she and Laraine Newman play pubescent objects of desire to their beloved babysitter played by Buck Henry. (Neither character is touched upon in the doc.)

Martin Short said of Gilda, “She would walk into the room and all the energy would go to her.” Perhaps that’s why she was never without a man by her side. According to one account, at one time or another she had flings with the just about every Ghostbuster, give or take a Rick Moranis or Ernie Hudson. (It was one of her early love interests who persuaded Gilda to drop out of college and move to Canada to be by his side.)

As musicals based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew go, Godspell was a surprisingly painless experience. Short of hiring Pier Paolo Pasolini to direct, the Toronto production lives on as the stuff legends are made of. The allegorical musical united on one stage the nascent talents of Radner, Victor Garber, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, and Martin Short. It also introduced Gilda to musical fledglings Paul Shaffer and Howard Shore. Before long, the New York based SNL and its far shrewder Canadian counterpart SCTV were piercing the tube with a comedy explosion the likes of which television viewers hadn’t convulsed over since Berle, Caesar, and Ball helped usher in the medium.

Soon after the opening credits — but not before the audience is given a chance to re-familiarize itself with the subject — a quartet of more contemporary SNL alumnists (Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader, and Melissa McCarthy) are called upon to to read select passages from Gilda’s diaries. Fortunately, their participation is kept to a minimum. Most celebrities don’t leave behind a stockpile of research material such as this, and director Lisa D’Apolito puts it to good use. The photographs alone would fill several storage lockers. Add to this an autobiographical audiobook narrated by the author, performance videos, and recently discovered audio tapes, and you’d swear Gilda was an active participant in the project.

“Gene took Gilda away from us,” says Paul Schaffer, with a noticeable tinge of regret still stuck in his throat. He’s referring to Gene Wilder, the actor who spent the last five years of her life loving and looking after his beloved Gilda. As Wilder’s nephew points out, “Gene wasn’t a comedian. He was an actor who appeared in a lot of funny movies.” And Gilda was a comic who didn’t want to appear as a solo personality doing standup. Gilda appeared in five features — she put off having a baby to make Haunted Honeymoon — and not one of them is worth your time.

The one thing we never learn is where the name Gilda came from. It was her birth name, but damned if I can turn up another person who shared it. America lost Gilda to ovarian cancer when the comedian was but 42-years-old. She exited swinging, doing her best to find the humor in cancer. It’s a film that begs audiences to stop and take a whiff of the proverbial roses while having a few good laughs along the way.

Comments
Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Tiny Home Central isn’t solving the San Diego housing crisis

But it does hope to help fill in the gaps
Next Article

Tyler Farr, Blue Water Film Festival, Mustache Bash

Events March 21-March 23, 2024
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.