Book Description
"I had wanted to wrap this book up in a neat little package. I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end."

The world fondly remembers the many faces of Gilda Radner: the adamant but misinformed Emily Litella; the hyperkinetic Girl Scout Judy Miller; the irrepressibly nerdy Lisa Loopner; the gross-out queen of local network news, Rosanne Rosannadanna. A supremely funny performer, Gilda lost a long and painful struggle in May 1989 to "the most unfunny thing in the world"--cancer. But the face she showed the world during this dark time was one of great courage and hope. It's Always Something is the story of her struggle told in Gilda's own remarkable words--a personal chronicle of strength and indomitable spirit and love undiminished by the cruel ravages of disease.

This is Gilda, with whom we laughed on Saturday Night Live: warm, big-hearted, outrageous, and real. This is Gilda's last gift to us: the magnificent final performance of an incomparable entertainer whose life, though tragically brief, enriched our own lives beyond measure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

Good
This book is less an autobiography than it is a memoir of dealing with cancer.The entire book is pretty much about the nitty gritty details of cancer, which could prove a valuable comforting resource for those going through something similar.Wish there had been more about her life and career.But it's pretty much all about cancer and Gene Wilder, whom she obviously adored.I like that it feels like you can hear her voice when you read--it sounds like her and can be very funny and touching.She seems like a great person and someone you would have loved to know as a friend.

Thank You Gilda
I was diagnosed with colon cancer in April 2005 and life has never been the same. My partner purchased this book for me and I loved it. I loved it not because it read like a self help book but because it read as a true commentary of life with cancer. It's words touched a part of me that no self help book could ever touch. Radner's everyday dealings with this insiduous disease made me laugh and cry and boil over with anger. Radner's words help me to roam through the numerous rooms that one staggers through after a diagnosis of cancer. My heartfelt thanks to Gilda and I would recommend the book to everyone who is affected and infected with cancer.

Cancer and the Babbling Mind of a Comedic Genius
I first discovered Gilda from watching the TV-movie of this starring Jami Gertz on ABC back in 2002 (which I don't recommend for highly-acclaimed critics, or to anyone for various reasons resting solely on the persona portrayed by Gertz) .
Although growing up in Detroit, I wasn't very familiar with Gilda as one would think, being from the same town. I looked EVERYWHERE to try to purchase this book, on here, Border's, Barnes&Noble and other various websites and my last resort, eBay (which I recommend if you don't know where to purchase it). In which case, I received it in the mail after a week or so, ripped opened the packaging and read it like a fat kid eating cake. Wanting more. After reading the book, you feel like you know Gilda. While reading the book, you feel like you know Gilda.
She starts off talking about her random excursions in her ambiguous life, how she wanted her story to go one way, but it took a left turn and made another.Gilda especially highlights her relationship with Gene and how they met, where they got married, the process of getting married in a French town hall and saying "I do" at every pause, because she couldn't understand the French language. She did everything in her power to try to become Gene's wife. She suffocated him, he moved to New York came back to see her in Connecticut and when "the ducks were landed" she ended her relationship with Former SNL lead-guitarist, G.E. Smith and so began the relationship between Rosanne Rosannadanna and Willy Wonka. Her never ending battle to have a child, put me at the edge of my seat as she went through 2 miscarriages.
Feeling unexplainably fatigued all the time, she tried to find the source of her problem by taking vitamins, sleeping more, eating properly. She stopped smoking (a habit she picked up at age 14) and went to doctors who mis- prescribed her with "Epsom-Bar Syndrome." Eventually, it got to the point where she couldn't get up and was constantly tired, so she got other opinions and was diagnosed.
STAGE FOUR Ovarian Cancer.
Afraid to be seen in public, she took therapy and began to realize how many other people were suffering from the same thing. She joined the Wellness Community, found her place and died on May 20, 1989. This book touched my heart from beginning to end. As if she was my life-long friend. I own the original 1989 edition, and I am NEVER letting ANYONE else touch it.

Gilda Radner--Class Act
Gilda Radner was a very fine performer, but this book--not devoted to her entertainment career--shows her to be a class act off-stage as well. Some of us are lucky to have faired well at the hands of brilliant medicos, and are very grateful for it, but anyone who has had long-term experience with America's byzantine medical system knows how easy it is to become fixated, to the detriment of one's own health, upon its appalling lapses and petty cruelties, and lose sight of what's positive.Practically crawling, doubled-over in pain, before doctors took her condition seriously, and, later, away from treatment for an extended period of "remission," only to find out it was merely a mistaken test reading, Radner shows no bitterness in this honest, brave, and, yes, sometimes funny book.

Someone so famous during the golden era of "Saturday Night Live" that she could hardly walk the streets of New York without being mobbed by fans, Radner is reduced by illness to humble sprees involving bingo parlors and mail-order catalogues. Demonstrating resilience, but also a sweet brave sadness that makes you hope, against all sane logic, that things will turn out differently.

It has been written elsewhere that when Radner was very ill in the hospital she would make the rounds cheering up other patients, introducing herself "Hi, I used to be Gilda Radner."There you have it--that transcendent quality humor sometimes has to defy all human limitations, even death. Fortunately Radner will defy it more than most because her warm, precise and yet delightfully silly comedy will live on in tape, film and this very good book. Thank you, Gilda, you will always be really something.

Oh Yes!
How wonderful to read something by the funny and wonderful and loveable Gilda Radner. Her descriptions of her trials and tribulations with various doctors..her descriptions of her house. Fate with cancer as a fate worse than the interior decorator..Love for the world..A shining example..A wonderful lady who inspired me during my chemo..Love to her..I shall conjure..The spirit of the one who made us feel not alone.. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Subtitled "Gilda Radner: A Sort of Love Story," this autobiographical play tries to recapture the non-sexual, but deeply felt relationship between Radner, one of Saturday Night Live's original Not Ready-for-Prime-Time players, and Alan Zweibel, who was a writer for the show. Alternately comic and heartbreaking, the play follows these two overgrown kids as they ride their bumper-car lives right up to Radner's death from ovarian cancer. Their loyalty and love glows through every scene. The book is illustrated with photos of Radner from Zweibel's personal albums.Book Description
The script to the touching and funny play by Alan Zweibel about his relationship with famed comiedienne Gilda Radner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Genius!
Although, I felt as though I was reading a monologue rather than a story, I was able to finish the whole book in a little less than an hour (because it was THAT good).

I just wish they would've ended up together (like together together, not just "together")..
but friendship is always stronger..

Very thin, more like a skit script
Maybe as a homage to the fact Zweibel wrote skits for Gilda Radner when they both worked on "Saturday Night Live," this whole book is written like a series of skits, some funny, some poignant, just the dialogue without stage direction, details, exposition or anything. So you have to fill in all the rest yourself and imagine you're watching two people on a stage. You learn a little about their relationship, but not much. You have many blanks to fill in.

I wouldn't mind seeing this as a play, but as a book, it was kind of hollow.

Heart Warming
I found this book to be very touching and sentimental. I only hope when I am gone my friends will remember me in a way like this.

Bunny Bunny-Funny Funny
For the true Gilda fan, Or someone who enjoys the comedy of Alan Zweibel.I thought it was a sweet book.I laughed, I cried, I read it quick!

I Laughed, I Cried!
In 1975 a writer Alan Zweibel and a comedienne named Gilda Radner meet while working at Saturday Night Live. In this poignant yet very funny book, the author pays homage to a woman he worked with for over 14 years and with whom he had sort of a love story.

Using recreated dialogues between Gilda and himself, Mr. Zweibel recounts their first meeting on the set of Saturday Night Live when Gilda asks him if he will write a scene for her where she is a parakeet.From this opening story we then see their friendship forged as they work together, vacation together, get mad at one another and finally comfort one another over various events in their lives. Mr. Zweibel captures the essence of two young people in crazy business on the brink of great success beautifully and we revel in their friendship.There are so many wonderful moments I will remember like when Gilda talks about her fame and Alan is overjoyed when he gets a credit card and gets another one to pay off the first one.The when we read from the night when John Lennon dies outside of Gilda's apartment house to asking Alan to meet her new love, Gene Wilder.And as we are laughing all too soon our joy turns to sorrow as Gilda is diagnosed with ovarian cancer ending her life too shortly at 39.

This is a wonderful love story about two people who meet and fall in love even if isn't the same kind of conventional love story you might have expected.

Read this book - you'll laugh, you'll cry and end the book
Wishing we still had this talented woman still among us and especially that our sort of love story with Gilda went on forever.





... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A actor who was willing to share how she felt.
Ifirst saw Gilda on Saturday night live. Every chance I got to see her, I did.When I read this book, it gave me an insight into how people with cancer deal with it and know that there's no cure.My son has Aids and hasbeen told that he has any where from 3 months to the end of the year.He'sonly 32 and has a son 12. His son knows that he has Aids but doesn't knowat what stage it's at.Gilda was very brave to take on all that she didand still have to deal with cancer and the chemo and what it's effect ithas on you and your loved ones. She is someone that all who have a deadlydecease should look at how she lived her life and try to have some of thebraveness she had. ... Read more

Product Description
Fourteen outfits and a cardboard Gilda figure familiar to SNL viewers of the late 1970's. ... Read more

Product Description
May 1977PLAYMATE: Sheila MullenCOVER: Lillian MullerPICTORIALS: Bewitched By Older Women- seven page pictorial essay narrated by Paul Theroux and photographed by Richard Fegley, features 30-something ladies including Ursula (Uschi) Digard, Playmate Kai Brendlinger, ex-Bunny Debbie Hoffman and others; Our Lady D'Arbanville is a cameo of actress Patti D'Arbanville; Humping Ironfeatures Miss Nude Universe and Miss Body Beautiful, Kellie Everts; three pages of cartoons by B. Kliban, Whack Your Porcupine.INTERVIEW: Original Saturday Night Live cast with Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Dan Ayrkoyd, producer Lorne Michaels and others.FEATURES: Article by James R. Petersen, The Extended Male Orgasmoffers new evidence about potency and gratification; fiction by Jorge Luis Borges, The Otherand Nadine Gordimer, Oral History; pictorial essay on motorcycles in Long-Distance Runners; David B. Tinnin reveals the roots of terrorism in Terror, Inc.; Natalie Cole, Woody Hayes and Miss December 1966, Susan Bernard, in "Grapevine" segment; PAGES: 246 ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Gilda Radner, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1849 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description
Featuring Bill Murray, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Christopher Guest, Harold Ramis + + +. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Magical Misery Tour
Actually, every word in the "Magical Misery Tour" was lifted from John Lennon's famous Rolling Stone Interview, which was even released as a paperback book.Or as Yoko said, "The Dream is Over."

Embrace the Misery!
This album is an absolute must-have, because "Magical Misery Tour" is just about the funniest thing ever recorded. Give it a listen and you too will shriek "Mother! They're trying to crucify me!"

Some incredibly funny stuff, some not so much...
It's hard to remember what a cultural force Nat Lamp was in the 1970's.Only an institution such as the Lampoon could have helped to create the keystone epic "Animal House" and, of course "SNL", arguably the two most important and influential comedy forces of the decade.So it is with this in mind that I try to remain at least mildly unbiased in my assessment of this disc as, frankly, some of it absolutely first rate, even thirty years later. And some of it is, well...

So, why should you buy this disc?Well, here's why you shouldn't: "Save The Whales" is good for one listen only, and frankly, should have been done much better; "I'm A Woman" is a testiment to the fact that Gilda Radner was both overrated and, at times, incredibly annoying (although, in all fairness to her, the material itself was dated and silly probably 18 months after it was first recorded and would have been if anyone else had done it); "Pizza Man", a "tribute" to vocal stylings of 1950's rock/doo-wop that comes across as one of those "Is this supposed to be funny or just stupid?" moments; and "Those Fabulous Sixties" which is a head scratcher in terms of why in the hell this one was included.So, you ask, what is left?What is left indeed.The remaining tracks teeter between incredibly funny to sheer, total brilliance."Deteriorata" is an amazing, and amusing, parody of the incredibly insipid "Desidorata", one of the top selling singles of the early 70's."Colorado" demonstrates that not only was Chevy Chase once funny, he was also undeniably multi-talented; "Well-Intentioned Blues", a hysterical blues parody by Christopher Guest, and, arguably, the best thing on this CD; "Mission:Impeachable", another Chase gem that both amusingly and chillingly distillates the entire Watergate scandal in about two minutes; "Kung Fu Christmas", another funny song, "Mister Roberts", a howlingly funny (and loving) take on Mr. Rogers, with both Guest and Bill Murray displaying their collective genius in what is the funniest bit on the disc; "Gymnasty", a short, shockingly funny bit that will bring back memories of anyone who remembers the 1976 Olympics; "The Immigrants", a funny take on documentaries and, finally, "Magical Misery Tour", with lyrics that I believe must have been lifted directly from interviews that John Lennon gave in the 70's (there is no way that anyone at the Lampoon could have written anything both this brilliant and twisted!)So, there you have it. Most of the CD is terrific and you will listen to it over and over again.And thanks to the digital age for being able to move quickly past the dumb stuff.Buy it today! ... Read more