Gilda Live

As I was driving home this past weekend, I changed up the CD’s in my CD player. Yeah, I know, how archaic is that nowadays, but my iPod often gets static in some of the hilly parts of the drive, so CD’s give me a chance for clearer sounds. Typically, I put audiobooks in the CD player, but this time I put a mix of music and audiobooks.

One that I put in was the soundtrack to “Gilda Live!” which was Gilda Radner’s Broadway show back in 1980. It features most of her Saturday Night Live characters doing various skits as well as a couple of original songs like “Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals.” While they are a bit dated in a sense, they do make me laugh out loud. They also make me remember SNL when I was really young. I only caught the earliest seasons of SNL in reruns, but I do remember watching Gilda during the 1979 season when I was all of six and got to stay up late on Saturdays.

It also saddens me a bit to listen to her work, knowing that there was really so little of it due to her untimely death in 1989. I often wonder what she’d be doing today if she were still around. She’d be 68 years old, but really that’s not very old these days, and I can imagine she’d be playing great parts on “Hot in Cleveland” or an Emily Litella-grandmother character on some sitcom. Even better, I can imagine her hosting SNL now and putting the new talent to shame. She really was wonderful.

Here is probably one of my favorite skits from “Gilda Live!” Those of you who know me and my work will understand why.