About a year before Gilda Radner died, she made an appearance on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show at the advice of her good friend, Alan Zweibel who was a producer.
1
It’s available on vimeo, or on this site.
Garry is going to take a big step in his life tonight, or as he says it, “one more closer step [that’s some good english!] to having children”
I think the theme song is what people know the most from the show. I mean, its so simple.
This is the theme to Garry’s Show,
The theme to Garry’s show.
Garry called me up and asked if I would write his theme song.
I’m almost halfway finished,
How do you like it so far,
How do you like the theme to Garry’s Show.This is the theme to Garry’s Show,
The opening theme to Garry’s show.
This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits.
We’re almost to the part of where I start to whistle.
Then we’ll watch “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show”.(whistles)
This was the theme to Garry Shandling’s show.
Now we know how Gary got his poofy hair back then.
OH SNAP. GILDA’S HERE.
I almost cry every time I see how excited she is, and the audience is. This was the first time she had made a TV appearance since the press for the movie her at Gene did, Haunted Honeymoon two years prior due to Ovarian Cancer. This was supposed to be her big comeback, she was even in an article in Life Magazine about beating cancer right before this. She was supposed to host Saturday Night Live, but due to the 1988 writers strike it was postponed. Unfortunately, her cancer would come back just a few months later, and Gilda would pass away on May 20th, 1989.
“Don’t milk the applause like that.”
“I’m sorry, Garry, I haven’t been on TV in a while.”
“Yeah, what was wrong…”
“I had cancer, what did you have?”
“I just a series of bad career moves.”
“Are these the sea monkeys?”
“No, that’s my soup for dinner … boy you have been out of touch for a while.”
Ohhhhhh, I think the reason why this episode is titled “Mr. Smith Goes to Nam” is because Garry’s landlord, Leonard, was running around in the middle of the night having flashbacks and waking up the entire neighborhood. Turns out Gilda’s male nurse, Blake, was in his unit that was captured. You know how shows go to a flashback, welp, the flashback is coming to Garry’s house instead:
“Nance, Nance! Sit over here, you can see Leonard’s past!”
The next day, all three of them come over to see Gilda and Blake.
“Oh no! It’s the Garry Shandling show! No more tapes! No more tapes!” [Gilda thought Garry was coming over to bring her more tapes of his work to make him feel better, she used some of them earlier to tape Lakers games.]
The flashbacks came to Gilda’s house too
I was wondering why Gilda looked so catatonic in one scene in the Fox commercial, it’s ‘cuz she was hit by a coconut, because everything in Garry’s world is literal!
“Don’t you look into the camera, I don’t care how sick you are!”
Aw, they all played Candy Land at the end! Aw, but then Garry said, “I think Gilda’s ready to to television again..”
IS THAT A PORTRAIT OF [Gilda’s husband] GENE DURING THE CLOSING CREDITS?! I hope they let Gilda take that home.
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In honor of Gilda this month, I’m donating proceeds to items in my ebay shop to Gilda’s Club branches all over the U.S. The little doll is up on my etsy shop too. 100% of her proceeds goes to Gilda’s Club in Madison, Wisconsin.
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1. Zweibel, Alan, Bunny, bunny : Gilda Radner : a sort of love story (New York: Villard Books, 1994) https://archive.org/details/bunnybunnygildar00zwei
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