Comedy / Film & TV
Gilda Radner
1946–1989 · comedian, actress
Original Saturday Night Live star who grew up in Detroit, where her father's Seville Hotel housed touring performers and her nanny inspired Emily Litella.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 42- Birth name
- Gilda Susan Radner
- Also known as
- Roseanne Roseannadanna · Emily Litella
- Detroit years
- 1946–1964
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Gilda Radner was born in Detroit in 1946 into a Jewish family and grew up in the city, spending winters in Miami Beach. Her father Herman ran Detroit's Seville Hotel, a favorite stop for nightclub performers and actors playing the city's stages, and she adored him; his death when she was a teenager hit her hard. The family's nanny, Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called Dibby, taught her to laugh at herself and later became the model for her hard-of-hearing Weekend Update character Emily Litella. Radner attended the University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods from 1957 to 1964, then studied at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before following a boyfriend to Toronto, where Godspell and Second City launched her. As one of the seven original Not Ready for Prime Time Players on Saturday Night Live (1975–1980) she won an Emmy. She died of ovarian cancer in 1989; Gilda's Club, a cancer support network with a clubhouse in Royal Oak, carries her name.
Highlights
- Original Saturday Night Live cast member (1975–1980); Emmy Award 1978
- Created Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella and Baba Wawa
- University Liggett School, Grosse Pointe Woods, class of 1964
- Inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame (1992)
- Gilda's Club Metro Detroit in Royal Oak is named after her
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 4
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Related place · 1940s–1950s
Seville Hotel
Status being checked
Detroit hotel run by her father, Herman Radner, where visiting nightclub performers and actors stayed. Address and fate of the building not verified.
Studied here · 1957–1964
University Liggett School
Private school where Radner studied for seven years, graduating in 1964.
Studied here · 1964–c. 1969
University of Michigan
Radner enrolled here after Liggett before leaving for Toronto.
Memorial
Gilda's Club Metro Detroit
Clubhouse of the cancer support network founded in her memory in 1991 by her widower Gene Wilder and friends.