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My Rendezvous with Gilda Radner
As she fell in love with Gene Wilder
Watching the three-and-a-half-hour NBC special 50th-anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live last night, I had hoped to catch more glimpses of the endearing and endearingly funny Gilda Radner.
I had once been privy to her first date with actor Gene Wilder.
An alumna of Toronto’s Second City improvisational theatre troupe, she had been the first cast member producer Lorne Michaels had hired for the show, one of the initial seven “Not Ready for Prime Time” players.
On Saturday Night Live, Gilda had become a renowned figure, with her somehow sweet imitations of TV journalist Barbara Walters’ slight speech impediment as “Baba Wawa,” and as the know-it-all character, “Rosanne Roseannadanna.”
This was now 1981 and Gilda had recently left the popular weekly show and was appearing on Broadway.
My late friend, Bill Avery, whom I always called “Bill Averywhere,” had been a publicist, and one of his clients was a cozy and fine Upper East Side French restaurant called Chez Pascal, owned by a chef/restaurateur named Robert Pascal.
I sat with Bill and as we looked at the menu’s handwritten “Suggestions du Jour,” I couldn’t help but notice the woman at the adjoining table.
