Happy Birthday Gilda! We miss you.

Gilda Radner would have celebrated her 55th birthday this week. Ovarian cancer took her from us at far too early an age. Born June 28, 1946, she was one of the oldest boomers and had a tremendous influence on the wealth of female comedic talent that burst onto the comedy club seen in the 80s and 90s. So, today I'm meandering down memory lane of women's humor in the 70s in honor of the wonderful woman who taught a generation of women that riotous free spirited laughter was a "good thing." Just think of the fun she'd have had goofing on Martha Stewart!

To put the comedy of the women, women who actively created comedy and did not just interpret scripts, of Saturday Night Live were doing in perspective is to remember the wasteland into which Jane Curtin,not Curtain (fyi) Lorraine Newman, and Gilda Radner ventured. In the decade before SNL, Phyllis Diller and Mary Tyler Moore displayed the entire range of the repertoire allowed to women in televised comedy. You could play off a man by being a dingy helpless creature a la Mary Tyler More on the Dick Van Dyke Show, or you could be anti-housewife a la Ms. Diller (who has NOT retired, but who has retired her "act") and whom I have to confess that I absolutely loved when I was a child (and still do!) as she was right at the edge of the PC filter... and by the way, when my husband was flying alone as a child, he spent a wonderful few hours with Ms. Diller in an airport lounge who really is a wonderful woman judging by this encounter. By the 70s the sterotypes had gained a significant bit of breadth with the good girl Mary Tyler Moore being showcased in her own show that featured several other comediennes such as Betty White, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachmanand Georgia Engel.

Lily Tomlin broke ground on Laugh In1968-73 than did Ruth Buzzi, Judy Carne or Joanne Worley, or even Goldie Hawn who eventually dwarfed the others mentioned her with her comedic, dramatic and production success. Tomlin's character that allowed women a wry, nonconformist voice through a little girl persona of Edith Ann that probably wouldn't have been tolerated from an adult character. But the success of the wacky comedy show was built on predictable characters in predictable situations. The comedic element of the show that is often overlooked in retrospective analysis is its incorporation of a significant number of comediennes in a day where "variety" televisions shows at best featured one female comic. The Smother's Brothers Comedy Hour, while groundbreaking in the depths to which it took political humor, primarily showcased male talent.

The realm of political comedy and satire was not long left to the men once the ball got rolling. Eventually SNL filled the bill in sketch comedy, but before that was Maude, starring Beatrice Arthur, was a groundbreaking sitcom for women which dealt with the issues of divorce, abortion, and a host of other politico-religious issues. This show was also significant in that it gave Esther Rolle a platform to give a woman of color voice to some knee jerk, but fairly well rounded pronouncements on the issues of social idiocy, race and class. And it acted as a stepping stone for Rolle to get her own show in the late 70s. Maude spun off from All in the Family with Jean Stapleton and Sally Struthers playing fairly predictable stereotypic roles but with some of the the best sitcom casting ever done. Other shows that show cased great talent and writing but were not necessarily the offspring of women's creativity included Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in which the dysfunction of the world of the 70s was charicatured in Fernwood by Louise Lasser and crew. And perhaps no sitcom character's growth illustrates the changes in women's roles in comedy and television better than looking at the transformation of Loretta Switt's character Hotlips into Margaret on M*A*S*H* (1973-1983).

Gilda wasn't alone in her expansion of women's comedic presence in television, but she certainly personified the integration of a woman comic into the total fabric of televised comedy. She wasn't just in front of the camera, she was the first ensemble cast member selected for the show, so in many ways the selection of the now classic team of The Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast for the original Saturday Night Live were anchored on Gilda's talent. Women focused sketch comedy of the 60s often centered on sex roles or gender based expectations as in Ruth Buzzi's (not Ruth Buzzy) spinster, Gladys Ormbsy, hitting Artie Johnson with a purse, or Lily Tomlin's gossipy phone operator. Gilda's characters, such as Emily Latela or Roseanne Roseanna Danna, were female, sure, but their comedic essence lay in their humanity not in their femininity.

Women's comedy of the late middle 20th century, of course, could not have existed without the classic work of Lucillie Ball and Carol Burnette. These groundbreaking comediennes, really the grandmother and mother of the comedy of the early 70s continued doing comedy through the rapidly changing 70s. In a 1980 article in People Magazine Lucille mentions Carol Burnette, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler as being among her favorite comediennes of the day. Lucille Ball's mention of Bette Midler makes the point that women who could stand a life of constant travel did find venues prior to the 1970s. During the 70s, the queen of the well established nightclub circuit, the venue for comics before the days of comedy clubs, was undoubtedly Bette. In the 70s she took live, adult-oriented comedy out of the clubs and brought it to the attention of a much larger audience, while she in no way submitted to domestication. No discussion of comedy in the 70s would be complete without her. She stretched some very traditional schitck and formats to new limits.