Women of Saturday Night Live stick together forever.
SNL season 1 stars Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman paid tribute to their late costar Gilda Radner by holding up a photograph of the beloved comedian during the goodnights of the show’s 50th anniversary special on Sunday.
The actresses were the first three women to star on the iconic sketch show, which launched on Oct. 11, 1975. Then known as NBC’s Saturday Night, the original stars were known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Along with Curtin, Newman, and Radner, the first cast also included Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Dan Aykroyd, and the late John Belushi, who died in 1982. Michael O’Donoghue, who died in 1994, and George Coe, who died in 2015, also briefly appeared as cast members that season.
Radner spent five seasons captivating SNL fans as Roseanne Roseannadanna, Lisa Loopner of “The Nerds,” rambling elderly Weekend Update character Emily Litella, Barbara Walters parody Baba Wawa, and more. She won an Emmy for her work on the cast.
After leaving the show in 1980, Radner made several movies with Gene Wilder, including Hanky Panky, The Woman in Red, and Haunted Honeymoon. The pair married in 1984. Two years later, the actress was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatment. She was briefly in remission, but her cancer returned and she died on May 20, 1989. She received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003.
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John Belushi, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, host Elliott Gould, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, and Garrett Morris during a ‘Saturday Night Live’ season 1 sketch. NBCUniversal via Getty
In addition to Curtin and Newman, Chase and Morris were both in attendance at Sunday’s celebration, with the latter introducing a 1978 short film by former staffer Tom Schiller that featured the entire original cast.
“Way back there when I joined the cast of Saturday Night Live, I had no idea y’all that I would be required to do so many reunion shows,” the show’s first Black cast member joked.
Watch Curtin, Newman, Morris, Chase, and dozens more SNL stars in the full 50th anniversary goodnights above.
