Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American comedienne and actress, best known for her five years as part of the original cast of the NBC comedy series Saturday Night Live. Radner, who died at 42 of ovarian cancer, became an icon for public awareness of both detection and treatment of the disease.

Biography
She was born to well-to-do Jewish-American parents, Herman Radner and Henrietta Dworkin, in Detroit, Michigan. Her mother named her Gilda after the title character played by Rita Hayworth in Gilda. She grew up in Detroit with a nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she affectionately called "Dibby" (and on whom she based her famous character Emily Litella) and an older brother named Michael. When Gilda and Michael were very young, they spent their winters in Palm Beach, Florida. She was very close to her father, who operated the Seville Hotel in Detroit where many nightclub performers and actors stayed while they performed in the city, including Frank Sinatra. to follow her then-boyfriend, a Canadian sculptor named Jeff Rubinoff, to Toronto, Canada. In Toronto, she made her professional acting debut in the 1972 production of Godspell with future stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, and Martin Short, and afterward joined the Toronto Second City comedy troupe.

1970s
In her final season of Saturday Night Live, Radner appeared on Broadway in a successful one-woman show that featured racier material, such as the song "Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals". This show was captured on film in 1981 as Gilda Live! and co-starred Paul Shaffer and Don Novello. The play was also released as an album recording -- the play was a qualified success, the film and album were failures. During the production, she met her first husband, G. E. Smith, a musician who also worked on the show whom she married in a civil ceremony in 1980.
Radner met her second husband, Gene Wilder, on the set of the Sidney Poitier film Hanky Panky between 1981 and 1982. She described their first meeting as "love at first sight." She soon divorced Smith in 1982 and went on to make a second movie, The Woman in Red, in 1984 with Wilder. The two were married on September 18, 1984 in the south of France and made a third movie together, Haunted Honeymoon, in 1986.

1980s and marriage to Gene Wilder
After being severely fatigued and suffering from pain in her upper legs on the set of Haunted Honeymoon, Radner sought medical treatment. After several false diagnoses, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in October 1986.
Gene Wilder had this to say about her death:
She went in for the scan – but the people there could not keep her on the gurney. She was raving like a crazed woman – she knew they would give her morphine and was afraid she'd never regain consciousness. She kept getting off the cart as they were wheeling her out. Finally three people were holding her gently and saying, "Come on Gilda. We're just going to go down and come back up." She kept saying, "Get me out, get me out!" She'd look at me and beg me, "Help me out of here. I've got to get out of here." And I'd tell her, "You're okay honey. I know. I know." They sedated her, and when she came back, she remained unconscious for three days. I stayed at her side late into the night, sometimes sleeping over. Finally a doctor told me to go home and get some sleep. At 4 am on Saturday, I heard a pounding on my door. It was an old friend, a surgeon, who told me, "Come on. It's time to go." When I got there, a night nurse, whom I still want to thank, had washed Gilda and taken out all the tubes. She put a pretty yellow barrette in her hair. She looked like an angel. So peaceful. She was still alive, and as she lay there, I kissed her. But then her breathing became irregular, and there were long gaps and little gasps. Two hours after I arrived, Gilda was gone. While she was conscious, I never said goodbye.
Her funeral was held in Connecticut on May 24, 1989. In lieu of flowers, her family requested that donations be sent to The Wellness Community. By a coincidence, the news of her death had broken in the early afternoon (Eastern Standard Time) of the Saturday that Steve Martin was rehearsing his hosting duties for that night's season finale of Saturday Night Live. Lorne Michaels and the writers, including Mike Myers and Phil Hartman, had not known she was so close to death. They scrapped one of their planned skits and had Martin introduce a video clip of a 1978 skit in which he and Gilda made fun of an old Hollywood romantic couple's dance. He cried during his introduction.

Illness and death
Wilder has since established the Gilda Radner Ovarian Detection Center at Cedars-Sinai to screen high-risk candidates (such as women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent) and run basic diagnostic tests. He testified before a Congressional committee that her condition was misdiagnosed and that if doctors had inquired more deeply into her family background they would have found that her grandmother, aunt and cousin all died of ovarian cancer and might have attacked the disease earlier. Through these efforts and the efforts of others, ovarian cancer awareness has spread, and there is more widespread awareness of the symptoms of ovarian cancer.
Wilder continued his involvement in both detection and treatment of ovarian cancer. In tribute to Radner, Gilda's Club, a comfortable center where cancer patients and their families can go to be around other people in the same situation to share support, coping and wellness strategies, was founded in 1994. (The center was named for a famous quip from Radner, in which she said "Having cancer gave me membership in an elite club I'd rather not belong to.") Many Gilda's Clubs have opened nationwide and in Canada and continue to do so.
In 2002 the ABC television network aired a TV-movie about her life, Gilda Radner: It's Always Something, starring Jami Gertz as Radner.

Legacy
Won an Emmy for "Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actress in Variety or Music" for her performance on Saturday Night Live in 1977.
She posthumously won a Grammy for "Best Spoken Word Or Non-Musical Recording" in 1990.
In 1992, Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame for her achievements in arts and entertainment.
Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 27, 2003 at 6801 Hollywood Blvd.

Television work

The Last Detail (1973)
Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979)
Gilda Live (1980)
First Family (1980)
Hanky Panky (1982)
It Came from Hollywood (1982) (documentary)
The Woman in Red (1984)
Movers & Shakers (1985)
Haunted Honeymoon (1986)