Gilda Radner — comedian (snl) with roots in the Russian Empire
Gilda Susan Radner was born in Detroit on 28 June 1946, the younger of two children of Herman Radner and Henrietta, née Dworkin. Her connection to the Russian Empire runs through her father's father. George Ratkowsky had emigrated from Lithuania, then part of the Empire, first to New York and then to Detroit, where he established a successful kosher meat business; his town is not recorded. Herman did well enough to invest in the Seville Hotel, an upscale Detroit hotel whose guests included Frank Sinatra and George Burns. Through her mother's Dworkin family, Gilda was a second cousin of Steve Ballmer, the future head of Microsoft. Her father died when she was fourteen.
As a young woman she moved to Toronto, where she joined the city's Second City comedy troupe. In October 1975 she became one of the original members of Saturday Night Live's Not Ready for Prime Time Players, and over five seasons created some of its best-remembered characters: Emily Litella, Roseanne Roseannadanna, Lisa Loopner and Baba Wawa, a parody of Barbara Walters. She won an Emmy Award in 1978 and in 1979 took her own show, Gilda Radner — Live from New York, to Broadway.
In 1980 she left the programme to work in film, appearing in Buck Henry's First Family (1980) and then in Hanky Panky (1982), on whose set she met Gene Wilder. She had been married to the musician G. E. Smith, of the Saturday Night Live band, from 1980 to 1982; she and Wilder married in the south of France in September 1984 and made two more films together, The Woman in Red (1984) and Haunted Honeymoon (1986).
After Haunted Honeymoon she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Between treatments she wrote a memoir, It's Always Something, published in 1989. She died in Los Angeles on 20 May 1989, aged forty-two.
In 1991 Wilder and friends founded Gilda's Club in her memory, to support people with cancer and their families; the first club opened in New York in 1995, and a network of affiliates followed. Wilder also established a hereditary cancer programme in her name at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Her life was the subject of the documentary Love, Gilda (2018).
Tracing the roots — Lithuania, then in the Russian Empire — paternal grandfather George Ratkowsky (town not documented)
Her father's father, George Ratkowsky, emigrated from Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, to New York and then to Detroit, where he built a kosher meat business. Through her mother's Dworkin family she was a second cousin of Steve Ballmer.
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Lithuania, then in the Russian Empire — paternal grandfather George Ratkowsky (town not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"I base most of my fashion sense on what doesn't itch."