Gilda Radner Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Free printable long trivia quiz with answers about Gilda Radner.

 

Who was Gilda Radner?
A: Gilda Susan Radner was an American comedian and actress who was the first of the seven original members cast for the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL).

In her routines, Radner specialized in parodies of what?
A: Television stereotypes, such as advice specialists and news anchors.

In 1977, she won an Emmy Award for what?
A: Her performances on SNL.

She also portrayed those characters in her what?
A: Her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979.

Radner's SNL work established her as an iconic figure in the history of what?
A: American comedy.

When did she die from ovarian cancer?
A: In 1989.

Where was Gilda born?
A: In Detroit, Michigan.

Who was her mother?
A: Henrietta, a legal secretary.

Who was her father?
A: Herman Radner, a businessman.

Through her mother, Radner was a second cousin of what business executive?
A: Steve Ballmer.

Where did she grow up?
A: In Detroit Michigan.

Who was her nanny?
A: Elizabeth Clementine Gillies, whom she called "Dibby" (and on whom she based her famous character Emily Litella).

What is her older brother’s name?
A: Michael.

She attended what school in Detroit?
A: The exclusive University Liggett School.

She weighed as much as 160 pounds and as little as what?
A: 93 pounds.

Her weight distressed her mother and she took me Gilda to a doctor who put her on what?
A: Dexedrine diet pills when she was ten years old.

Radner was close to her father, who operated what?
A: Detroit's Seville Hotel, where many nightclub performers and actors stayed while performing in the city.

He took her on trips to New York to see what?
A: Broadway shows.

When she was 12, her father developed a what?
A: He developed a brain tumor.

Within days, he was bedridden and unable to what?
A: Communicate

He remained in that condition until when?
A: His death two years later.

Where did Radner enroll after graduating from Liggett?
A: She enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1964.

In Ann Arbor, why did Radner drop out in her senior year?
A: To follow her boyfriend, Canadian sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff, to Toronto.

In Toronto she made her professional acting debut in what?
A: The 1972 production of Godspell with future stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, Martin Short, and Paul Shaffer.

Afterward, Radner joined what?
A: The Second City comedy troupe in Toronto.

From 1974 to 1975 Radner was a featured player on what?
A: The National Lampoon Radio Hour, a comedy program syndicated to some 600 U.S. radio stations.

Fellow cast members included whom?
A: John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Richard Belzer, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Rhonda Coullet.

Radner gained name recognition as one of the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", the freshman group on the first (1975) season of what?
A: Saturday Night Live.

She was the first what for the show?
A: The first performer cast.

She co-wrote much of the material that she what?
A: Performed.

Who did she collaborate with on sketches that highlighted her recurring characters?
A: Alan Zweibel (of the show's writing staff).

Between 1975 and 1980, she created characters such as whom?
A: Obnoxious personal advice expert Roseanne Roseannadanna and "Baba Wawa", a parody of Barbara Walters.

After Radner's death what did Walters state in an interview?
A: That Radner was the "first person to make fun of news anchors, now it's done all the time."

She also played the character Emily Litella, an elderly, hearing-impaired woman who did what?
A: She gave angry and misinformed editorial replies on "Weekend Update".

She won an Emmy Award in 1978 for what?
A: For her work on SNL.

In Rolling Stone's February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Radner was ranked where in importance?
A: Ninth.

In the years between Mary Tyler Moore and Seinfeld's Elaine, Radner was the prototype for what?
A: The brainy city girl with a bundle of neuroses.

Radner battled what illness while on the show?
A: Bulimia.

She had a relationship with what SNL cast mate?
A: Bill Murray, with whom she worked at the National Lampoon, which ended badly.

In 1979, incoming NBC President Fred Silverman offered Radner what?
A: Her own primetime variety show, which she turned down.

That year, she was a host of the what?
A: Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly.

While in character as Roseanne Roseannadanna, Radner gave the commencement address to whom?
A: The graduating class at the Columbia School of Journalism in 1979.

Radner had mixed emotions about the fans and strangers who did what?
A: Recognized her in public.

In 1979, Radner appeared on Broadway in what successful one-woman show?
A: Gilda Radner - Live From New York.

The show featured material that was racier than what?
A: Than NBC censors allowed on Saturday Night Live, such as the song "Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals".

In the fall of 1980, after all original SNL cast members departed from the show, Radner began working with actor Sam Waterston in what?
A: The Jean Kerr play, Lunch Hour.

They played two people whose spouses are doing what?
A: Having an affair, and as a reaction they start their own relationship consisting of trysts on their lunch hour.

The show ran for how long in various theaters in the United States, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.?
A: More than seven months.

What did newspaper critics, including Tom Shales have to say?
A: They praised the play and Radner's performance in it.

Radner met actor Gene Wilder on the set of what Sidney Poitier film?
A: Hanky Panky (released in 1982), when the two worked together making the film.

She described their first meeting as what?
A: "Love at first sight".

She was unable to control her attraction to Wilder as her marriage to who deteriorated?
A: Guitarist G. E. Smith.

Radner went on to make what second film with Wilder?
A: The Woman in Red (released in 1984), and their relationship grew.

When were the two married?
A: On September 18, 1984, in Saint-Tropez.

The pair made what third movie together?
A: Haunted Honeymoon (released in 1986) and remained married until her death in 1989.

Details of Radner's eating disorder were reported in a book about Saturday Night Live by whom?
A: Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad.

The book by Hill and Weingrad was published and received much media coverage during a period when Radner was doing what?
A: Consulting various doctors in Los Angeles about her symptoms of illness that turned out to be cancer.

In 1985, Radner was experiencing severe fatigue and suffered from pain in her upper legs on the set of what movie?
A: Haunted Honeymoon in the United Kingdom.

She sought medical treatment, and for a period of 10 months, various doctors, most of them in Los Angeles, gave her several diagnoses that all turned out to be what?
A: Wrong because she continued to experience pain.

During those 10 months, she faced hardships such as the publication of Hill and Weingrad's highly publicized book about Saturday Night Live, which provided many details about her what?
A: Her eating disorder as well as the financial failure of Haunted Honeymoon.

Haunted Honeymoon grossed only $8,000,000 in the United States, entering the box office at number 8, and then slipping to what the following week?
A: 14.

On October 21, 1986, Radner was diagnosed with what?
A: Stage IV ovarian cancer.

After her diagnosis, the National Enquirer ran what headline?
A: “Gilda Radner In Life-Death Struggle" in its following issue.

Without asking for her comment, the editors of the publication asserted what?
A: That she was dying.

Four months after her ordeal with the National Enquirer, Radner saw whom one last time at Laraine Newman's 35th birthday party (in March 1987)?
A: Her Saturday Night Live cast mates.