It’s always something

When I was about seven years old, my favorite movies in the entire world were “Clue” and “Haunted Honeymoon”… I guess because Kid Sara was very into nostalgic 40s-set comedies that look really cheesy now that I’m in my 30s, but that are still awesome.

Anyway, that’s how I knew who Gilda Radner was when she died of ovarian cancer in 1989 at the age of 42. Of course, for me she was “the funny lady from ‘Haunted Honeymoon’” and not “the original SNL cast member,” but I promise that I grew to appreciate her non-“Haunted Honeymoon” work as I grew older. I’m not trying to cast myself as a Radner super-fan, just to say that, when my mom told 9-year-old me that the funny lady from my favorite movie had died, it mattered.

My sisters and I were always pretty goofy. We had a stock of cast-off costume pieces and props with which we developed and performed all manner of skits for our parents, friends, or sometimes just our exceptionally patient Labrador Retriever. (RIP, Bailey.) I mean, most girls are goofy, but at some point a lot of them figure out that people are observing their goofiness and they start feeling self-conscious about it, and they get more into perfume and boys and anything that’s not goofy. But we were unabashedly goofy, and part of the reason for that* is that we had role models like Radner and, as I’ve written before, the cast of “Designing Women” and other TV shows to show us that women could be the goofy, stubborn, vulnerable, sexy and still somehow capable of running entire businesses, whether any men were watching or not.

(*And a giant amount of credit has to go to the amazing parents who exposed us to these movies and TV shows, and who endured our probably-noisy goofy playtime.)

When I wrote above that “it mattered” to me when Radner died, it’s because she was probably the first celebrity whose death I was aware of. What’s it like for a kid who’s told of a death? A kid who’s old enough to understand what death means, I mean. There’s this person you’re used to seeing on a screen and wanting to do what she does because it looks so fun, and you’re only vaguely aware that she’s a real person when she’s not on that screen – and then you learn that she won’t be there anymore. For a kid whose grandparents were still in their 40s and 50s at the time, it my first real sense of this kind of loss.

I thought of all that this week when the news came out that a chapter of Gilda’s Club, the cancer charity founded in Radner’s memory,was considering dropping her name from its title because, supposedly, too many younger patients don’t know who Radner was.

*profanity alert for the faint-hearted*

Damn, that’s some bullshit.

First of all, it’s pretty asinine for a charity to expect top-of-mind name recognition for the person on its letterhead. Pop quiz – Jane Addams, Susan G. Komen, Betty Ford: give me a 100-word bio, no Googling. You probably can’t, and it doesn’t really matter. If your nonprofit depends upon its namesake, as opposed to its mission, to raise funds and awareness, then you have issues and Gilda Radner’s enduring popularity ain’t them.

But the bigger bullshit (I’m making that a proper use of this noun now, okay? Okay.) for me is the idea that anyone under age 30 A) doesn’t know who Radner was, and B) shouldn’t, because, I mean, it has been 20+ years since she died and all.

John Belushi. Andy Kaufman. Lenny Bruce. All funny, and all dead for a long time. Richard Pryor and George Carlin – dead more recently, but still dead, nonetheless. But if you’re an aspiring comedy writer who’s not aware of the work of a single one of these men, pretty much anyone would consider you to be lacking.

Why isn’t Gilda Radner on that list? How is Radner not an automatic when you’re listing the essential comics of the late 20^th century?

The thing is – to her contemporaries, she was. Here’s SteveMartin hosting SNL right after Radner died.  And, folks, when Steve fracking Martin gets choked up over your passing, that’s how you know you’re a genuinely awesome and talented motherfucker.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Gilda Radner? Who the hell was Gilda Radner?” then here’s what you need to do: Step 1 – shut up. Step 2 – school yourself. There’s fracking YouTube now, what’s wrong with your clueless ass?