Love, Gilda

The life of actress/comedienne Gilda Radner is presented largely through audio recordings of herself and through her handwritten notes, some read by fellow comedians/comediennes influenced by her work, some, like her, Saturday Night Live (1975) (SNL) alumnae. That life is told largely in chronological order. It tells of her growing up period in a relatively affluent family in Detroit, Michigan, and losing her father, who she considered her best friend at the time, when she was fourteen. The story moves to her not finishing college in the University of Michigan's drama program to pursue love - she easily falling in love with various men over the course of her life, most of those men professional colleagues - which led to her start in performing professionally on stage in a number of comedy troupes, where she seemed to be at home. Her professional success, even in those early days, can be largely attributed to she being likable no matter who she was portraying which connected her to the audience, and her willingness to do anything on stage to get the laugh if something as scripted wasn't working. Her reputation in this comedy work led to her being the first person cast on what would be the groundbreaking SNL. Despite the success, she felt much pressure, she hiding an eating disorder in order to maintain the Hollywood body image, which for her was especially prevalent in her mind in having battled weight issues as child. The difficult transition from SNL focuses on her meeting Gene Wilder on the set of Hanky Panky (1982), falling in love (despite already being married at the time) and getting married. Her story's final chapter is the roller coaster, especially in the emotional sense, in dealing with ovarian cancer, which would eventually take her life in 1989.