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She struggled with weight and body image her whole life

At the age of 10, Gilda was taken by her mother to a doctor, who prescribed Dexedrine (an amphetamine now used to treat narcolepsy and ADHD) as a “diet pill.” Years later, she had to check into a hospital for eating disorders; she weighed barely 100 pounds and “still felt fat.” It was only late in life that Wilder seemed able to convince her to enjoy food.

She succeeded through talent, but also force of will

“Because I’m not a perfect example of my gender, I decided to be funny rather than worry about it,” Radner wrote. And she was neither a classic beauty, nor a great singer (says composer Stephen Schwartz, who hired her for the Toronto run of Godspell anyway) nor the best at improv, according to Second City executive Andrew Alexander. “But she always found a way to endear herself to the audience,” he says. And whenever some bit of comedy was flagging, she would double down, getting louder or more frantic or more physical until it worked.

She once got a bizarre fan letter

After a physical examination, Radner received a letter from the lab with the results of her blood and urine tests. Attached was a note that read: “Dear Gilda, I’m a big fan and I wanted to take this opportunity to say that it was an honour analyzing your urine. – Thomas Olen.” Probably against some medical code of ethics, notes Melissa McCarthy in an interview, but Radner saw the humour in it.

She found it hard to watch Ghostbusters

The reason? She had dated so many of the cast, including Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd – though not, the film points out for some reason, Rick Moranis. Radner fell in love many times, dropping out of college to follow sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff to Toronto, and, in 1980, marrying guitarist G.E. Smith. But soon after she met Wilder, her costar in the movie Hanky Panky. By all accounts, theirs was a true love and one for the ages, or at least for the time she had left.