On this particular Friday, 

little Gilda has plopped herself 
on a pink shag rug; stuffed toys 
and dollhouses at her fingertips. 
She is playing with her Looking 
For Mr. Goodbar Sleepytime 
Playset, and an impish grin of 
delight crosses her face as she 
dances her Diane Keaton doll 
around an imaginary singles 
bar with a plastic businessman.

But little Gilda misses the 

point of this game. Rather than 
have her dollies boogie the 
night away, Gilda is told that 
the object is for Dian Keaton to 
pick up as many strange men as 
possible before being killed.

So 
after 
a 
few 
Tequila 

Sunrises, Gilda guides Diane 
Keaton 
and 
the 
plastic 

businessman to Diane’s singles 
apartment. There, pony-tailed 
Gilda has a real neato night in 
store for her friends. They’ll 
make cookies and toast and 
have lots and lots of fun.

Little 
Gilda, 
however, 
is 

informed 
that 
the 
night’s 

agenda is much too mild to 
merit Judith Rossner’s raunchy 
novel. So with a momentary 
glimmer in her eye, Gilda picks 
up her plastic businessman and 
wrecks havoc on the defenseless 
body of Diane Keaton.

“I’m big and I’m strong and 

I’m gonna kiss you all over 
with my big fat slimy slips.” 
Then, with an angelic look, she 
inquires, “Did I win yet?”

No, Gilda is told, you did not 

win. You don’t win ‘til Diane 
Keaton loses.

“Now take Diane back to the 

singles bar and pick up your 
psychotic blonde homosexual.”

Gilda obliges and grasps her 

psychotic blonde homosexual. 
But once again, a confused look 
clouds her face and, ever so 
innocently, she asks: “What’s a 
psychotic blonde homosexual?”

This is a rehearsal on the 

set of NBC’s “Saturday Night 
Live,” and little Gilda is Gilda 
Radner 
— 
a 
once 
obscure 

weathergirl for Ann Arbor’s 
WCBN who is now a somewhat 
obscure TV crack-up. Unless 
you watch “Saturday Night 
Live,” you probably haven’t the 
foggiest idea who Gilda Radner 
is. If that’s the case, then 
you’ve probably never heard of 
Emily Letella, Rhonda Weiss, 
Roseanne Rosannadana, Lisa 
Leubner and Baba Wawa. Gilda 
Radner is all those people.

But, more than anything else, 

Gilda Radner is your little sister, 
or the nerdy girl down the aisle 
in Hebrew School or the funny 
kid with the big mouth.

She’s 
well 
past 
her 

adolescence but, like a child 

waiting impatiently for her 
next birthday, she measures her 
age in fractions — “thirty-one-
and-a-half.”

“I 
never 
grew 
up,” 
she 

explains.

If that’s true, then you can 

reckon Gilda Radner is the first 
person to ever make her career 
by not growing up.

***

It’s a madhouse this Friday 

on the eighth floor of New 
York’s towering NBC Building. 
Performers 
and 
stagehands 

and producers are running 
around with props and scripts 
and directions in preparation 
for the next day’s show. Inside 
the studio, its stage and sets 
bathed in light, workmen are 
hammering away at makeshift 
wooden scenery and performers 
are practicing their skits with 
help from big white cue cards.

Somewhere 
in 
the 
his 

mélange is Gilda Radner, and 
a lot of people want to know 
where she is. A small, frail-
looking woman with a smooth, 
porcelain 
complexion 
and 

brown hair tied back in a pony 
tail, she looks more like a 
Campfire Girl than a member 
of the Not Ready for Prime 
Time Players, the troupe of 
young comics without whom 
there’d be no “Saturday Night 
Live.” She has just returned 
from London, where she taped 
a guest spot on the “Muppets 
Show,” and she looks worn and 
jet-lagged. Be brief, we’re told, 
and concise. Gilda’s busy and 
tired.

Inside the small, Spartan 

dressing room that she shares 
with 
fellow 
Prime 
Timers 

Jane 
Curtin 
and 
Laraine 

Newman, Radner curls up on 
a sofa and reaches for a tray 
of cheese and crackers. She 
lights up a Virginia Slim. She 
offers her guests Tabs. And she 
commences to tell how a pudgy 
Detroit girl — a University of 
Michigan drop-out, no less 
— has managed to establish 
herself as a cult heroine among 
late-night TV addicts.

Much of what she does, 

Radner says, is drawn from her 
youth. 

“What I do in comedy I call 

bedroom comedy,” she says. 
“It’s like the stuff you did 
in your bedroom with your 
girlfriends during a slumber 
party. I also used to shut myself 
in the brother’s room and 
pantomime to records and do 
stuff in the mirror.”

By her own accounts, Radner 

has an exceptional childhood. 
Born 
in 
1946 
for 
a 
Rita 

Hayworth movie that year, she 
lived in the Palmer Park section 
of Detroit. A plump, ungainly 
girl, Radner recalls spending 
many an hour glued to the TV 

set, delighting to the antics of 
Lucille Ball, Steve Allen, Pinky 
Lee and the folks on “Your 
Show of Shows.”

“I’m a child of television,” 

she says. “I ate all my meals 
in front of the television. As a 
kid I’d pack a lunch in a brown 
paper bag from the kitchen and 
go eat it in front of the TV.”

That probably didn’t help her 

weight problem any, but Radner 
says 
those 
early 
television 

shows influenced the course of 
her comedy.

***

When she wasn’t watching 

television, Radner spent her 
time tagging along 
with Mrs. Gillies, 
a 
nursemaid 
who 

carved 
for 
Gilda 

during most of her 
childhood.

“I grew up with 

her, 
spent 
every 

minute 
with 
her. 

It 
was 
me 
and 

somebody fifty years 
older, and we had 
tea parties together 
and I’d go with her 
on her day off and 
visit 
her 
spinster 

cousins.”

“And that was my 

whole growing up,” 
she 
adds. 
“More 

than having friends 
my own age, she was 
my best friend.”

In 
fact, 
Mrs. 

Gillies, 
now 
84, 

eventually 
became 

Emily Letella, the 
misconstrued dodo 
who rebuts editorials and has 
become one of Radner’s most 
popular characters.

Radner 
broadened 
her 

horizons 
after 
coming 
to 

the University. Spurned by 
Northwestern because of low 
board scores, she majored in 
theater, landed her first job as 
WCBN’s weathergirl and moved 
into an Alice Lloyd triple with 
Alice and Barbara. (“I hated 
it.”) She was even picked up 
for disorderly conduct one day 
for singing and dancing on the 
bank of the Huron River.

One 
of 
her 
greatest 

disappointments, she recalled, 
was not being cast for a 
production 
of 
Troilus 
and 

Cressida 
in 
Mendelssohn 

Theater. 

Realizing that her destiny 

did 
not 
encompass 
the 

Shakespearean stage, Radner 
veered 
off 
into 
children’s 

theater.

“I used to have the loudest 

voice, so I was always the witch 
in the play,” she says.

She was busy with other 

productions, too — plays like 
“Camelot,” 
“Lysistrata” 
and 

“She Stoops to Conquer.”

“I mention it a lot because 

I value that experience,” she 
says. “Coming to where I am 
now, I’ve sat in a costume 
room… and sewed a rolled hem 
on a chiffon skirt. You know, 
the most boring thing… Which 
means I can now remember to 
appreciate the people who are 
doing it for me.

“It’s those years that make 

me feel like I kind of paid my 
dues.”

Radner was so busy with 

children’s theater, in fact, that 
she missed out on many of 
the campus activities which 
epitomized the ‘60s.

***

“Most of my friends were 

in journalism and political 
science,” she says, pausing to 
sip from her can of Tab. “And 
when I’d be going off to do a 
children’s show, they’d be going 
off to protest at some radical 
political meeting. I was always 
feeling guilty about not going 
their way.”

But that guilt has disappeared 

now that Radner is on a show 
which, through parodies and 
satire, is politically vocal. “I 
find it interesting now,” she 
says. “But as guilty as I felt 
then about not being politically 
active when so many of my 
friends were… I’m able to reach 
more people now than was ever 
done back in college.”

Radner didn’t stick out her 

stay at the University. (She 
never finished Hebrew school, 
either.) With one semester to 
go, she left for Canada because, 
she says with a dreamy smile, “I 
fell in love.”

There, she landed a part 

in 
the 
Toronto 
Company’s 

production of Godspell, and 
tried to earn her diploma — 
first through a correspondence 
course with the University 
of Wisconsin, and then night 
classes at the University of 
Toronto. Michigan, however, 
didn’t accept her credits. “I 
have all the education,” she 
beams, “but no diploma.”

Meantime, Radner did some 

National Lampoon shows and 
latched up with a Chicago-
based improvisational group 
called Second City, where many 
of the Prime Time Players 
honed their comedy skills. The 
producer of “Saturday Night 
Live,” who knew her work, 
asked her to join the show. She 
never auditioned.

 ***

So 
here’s 

Gilda 
today, 

sitting in her 
dressing room 
with her Tab, 
her 
crackers 

and 
a 
well-

deserved 
respite 
from 

the 
insanity 

which reigns 
outside 
the 
door. 

Thursdays, 
Fridays 
and 

Saturdays are 
ridiculous 
on the set of 
“Saturday 
Night Live” — 
people 
work 

late into the 
evening — and 
performers 
like 
Radner 

must 
savior 

those 
moments 

when 
they 
can 
cloister 

themselves 
from 
stage 

directions, script changes and 
cue cards.

In this sense, it’s just a job 

as far as Radner’s concerned — 
analogous, she says, to working 
in a deli. Sure she gets sick of 
it, Radner says, but just like the 
guy who slices pastrami, she’s 
got a job to do: she’s a working 
actress on a top rated and that’s 
that.

***

It’s 
late 
afternoon 
and 

Radner is called back into the 
studio to rehearse the Looking 
For Mr. Goodbar skit. Under the 
glare of lights and the scrutiny 
of about a dozen people, she 
sheds her 31 years and becomes 
the little girl with the confused, 
angelic grin. For more than 30 
minutes, she rehearses her 
lines, switches props, suggests 
changes in the script, is told to 
move over, or repeat something, 
or cut such and such from her 
monologue. 
Afterwards, 
she 

departs to fetch a tray of food 
from the NBC cafeteria. Gilda’s 
going to eat dinner and rest 
now, we’re told. She’ll see you 
again later. Just be patient.

Everything 
Radner 

does during the week is in 
preparation for the 90 minute 
show broadcast live Saturday 
nights at 11:30. “I think of it 
as an opening night,” she says 
of the actual show, one of the 
only live programs left on 
network TV. “Each show is like 
the opening night of an under-
rehearsed Off-Broadway show… 
and we’re never getting to do it 
again.”

She 
credits 
her 
stage 

experience 
with 
preparing 

her for the rigors of “Saturday 
Night Live.” And she credits 
“Saturday Night Live” with 
preparing her for what lies 
ahead in her performing future.

“Before I did this show I 

never performed alone, I always 
performed in groups,” she says. 
“Now I have monologues and 
character that work alone. I 
cannot believe it, but I have 
enough material now that I do 
by myself that I can now go 
(somewhere else) and do it.”

What will you be doing at 

age 41, Gilda? Stage? Perhaps. 
Movies? Maybe.

Like a preoccupied child, she 

has no idea where she’ll be ten 
years from now

But, she says, she’ll always 

be in show business. “I have no 
fears of being unemployed,” she 
says confidently.

Even back in her college days, 

Radner thought she’d enter the 
business — either as atheater 
teacher or at the civic theater 
level.

Her 
mom, 
however, 
had 

charted Radner a different 
course.

“She wanted three things 

out of me — to get my teaching 
certificate, to get married and 
to give her grandchildren.”

Did you do any of that, Gilda?

***

“I didn’t do ANYTHING!”
But Mom is learning to accept 

her daughter’s career.

“She just last week gave 

me 
some 
credibility,” 
says 

Radner. “She sent me a letter 
telling me a bunch of friends 
were requesting autographed 
pictures, and she wrote, ‘Well I 
guess you’ve reached stardom.’”

Though Radner says she 

dared never fantasize about 
stardom, she admits having 
fleeting 
premonitions 
of 

celebrity.

“I never thought this would 

happen,” 
she 
says. 
“Yet 
I 

remember coming down the 
stairs of my house one day and 
saying to my boyfriend at the 
time ‘Someday I’ll know kinds 
and princesses.’ I didn’t know 
why I said it.”

And kings and princesses she 

has known. Despite the sweat, 
Gilda enjoys a good measure 
of glamor. TV guest shots. 
Rubbing elbows with a different 
“Saturday Night Live” guest 
host each week. An occasional 
evening at Studio 54.

“I even met a Beatle,” she 

chirps with all the enthusiasm 
of a teenager crashing the 
backstage of a concert. “It was 
George — and he knew who I 
was!”

Undoubtedly. Gilda’s gotten 

a lot of press recently — in 
good places like New York 
Times and People (cover story), 
and not-so-good places like 
the National Enquirer. Such 
exposure 
is 
threatening 
to 

blow her cover as a well-kept 
secret. Because of the show’s 
appeal 
to 
a 
predominantly 

young viewership, Radner is 
a little-known entity among 
the older set and the early-to-
bed generation. That means 
she can roam her adopted New 
York 
unmolested, 
but 
such 

splashy magazine coverage — 
people called her the “Darling 
of ‘Saturday Night Live’” — 
worries her.

For one thing, Radner says 

she’s been unfairly compared 
with 
Chevy 
Chase. 
Chevy 

Chase, you might remember, 
is the comedian who struck 
professional gold on “Saturday 
Night Live,” enjoyed media 
hype and, eventually, left the 
show.

“The media divided him from 

us, called him a star and made 
him leave too soon,” she says. 
“People use that comparison, 
but the thing is, I refuse to 
believe it or live by it or let 
(the press) divide me from the 
group.”

Radner says she worked with 

her fellow Prime Timers too 
long to let the media single her 
out.

“I can never feel like a star 

around here.”

***

Gilda Radner has a theory 

about her acting technique: 
She hasn’t any. “The best thing 
I do,” she says, “is pretend, 
and that’s what acting is to 
me — pretending. Like we 
did the Video Vixens, a punk 
rock group, so I was really 
pretending that I was Patti 
Smith and I was pretending that 
I could sing and that I’m hot 
and dirty and a rock star. And 
then I see the tapeback, and it’s 
me! … But if people like what I 
do, it may be because they know 
they’re seeing me pretend.”

So today, Gilda Radner is 

going to do a little impromptu 
pretending for her guests from 
Ann Arbor. But it’s hard to 
believe that everything she 
does is strictly pretend.

Take her popular juvenile 

roles for instance. How much 
does Radner have to pretend 
when she herself frequently 
talks like a kid and putters 
around NBC with black and 
white Oxfords and a little green 
piece of yarn keeping her pony 
tail in place?

“I find them (juvenile roles) 

closer now to the child in me 
than anytime else in my life,” 
she says. “I think there’s a time 
when you can get back to it … 
and have no inhibitions about 
it.

***

“I don’t know whether it has 

something to do with the work 
ethic or about being secure of 
myself as a woman, but I can 
take a child role. Maybe since 
I’m having a career and making 
a success it’s all right for me to 
be a kid. I don’t know. I love it. I 
can sit … and play all day.”

Her Roseanne Rosannadana 

can’t be strictly pretend, either. 
Roseanne (the name is a take-
off on a New York newswoman) 
is a raucous, befuddled, frizzy-
haired consumer reporter who 
appears on the show’s Weekend 
Update spoof and does gross 
things like pick imaginary food 
particles from her teeth and 
talks about everything except 
consumer 
affairs. 
Just 
like 

Roseanne, Radner claims she 
“has her filthy side.” She proved 
it by attributing her low college 
board scored to her ill-timed 
menstrual cramps — a funny 
tidbit, but gross nonetheless.

Radner’s 
most 
recent 

character is Lisa Luebner, who, 
like her creator in earlier days, 
is a nerd. Unlike her creator, 
Lisa 
suffers 
from 
chronic 

asthmas and other respiratory 
disorders.

“I’m a little bit like her 

today,” says Radner, muffling 
her voice, looking off into space 
and snorting back imaginary 
mucus, “Cranky.”

“You know when you have 

a cold, your world gets so 
insulated?” 
Radner/Leubner 

asks, sounding sick. “Well, she 
always has a cold and asthma, 
and 
she 
says 
things 
like, 

‘Salutations from the United 
Nations.’”

Lisa 
Leubner 
recently 

appeared on an interview show 
spoof to discuss her new book, 
“The Class of ’77,” an account of 
what her high school classmates 
did during summer vacation.

Then there’s Rhonda Weiss, 

the JAP.

Despite 
Radner’s 
Jewish 

upbringing, 
she 
says 
she 

avoided becoming the typical 
Jewish 
American 
Princess, 

probably because she attended 
a non-Jewish high school in 
Detroit.

But Radner becomes a pretty 

believable Princess when she 
lays on her Borscht-Belt brogue.

Using hand motions and 

sounding catty, “New Yawkish,” 
and 
nasal, 
Gilda 
gives 
a 

sampling of Rhonda:

“You’re talking cramps? I 

get them two weeks before, one 
week during and three days 
after. We’re talking an entire 
month of cramps.”

***
Her character set aside, the 

woman who says, “I am that 
girl who was funny in school” 
has got to leave now and be 
funny at rehearsals. The next 
day, she’ll have to be funny 
before a studio audience and 
several million others watching 
at home. Being genuinely funny 
under those conditions sounds 
like the tallest of orders, but 
for Gilda Radner it’s a snap. 
That’s because Gilda Radner 
— loud, obnocious, childish, 
gross, nerdy Gilda Radner — is 
all the people we’ve known and 
laughed at over the years. She’s 
us in sillier times.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, September 14, 2017 — 5B

JAY LEVIN

Daily Arts Writer, 1978

BICENTENNIAL

A hometown girl named 
Gilda finds time’s prime 

to make people laugh

Originally published in March 26th, 1978, the Daily revisits a candid 
interview with late comedian and Michigan alum Gilda Radner

NBC

Gilda Radner, a brief University of Michigan student and original member of SNL

So here’s Gilda 
today, sitting 
in her dressing 

room with 
her Tab, her 
crackers and a 
well-deserved 
respite from the 
insanity which 
reigns outside 

the door

