Live From New York - James H. Miller [78]
PENNY MARSHALL:
Cindy Williams wasn’t even sure she wanted to go into television, having done movies. So I was like reading with the world for who would play Shirley on Laverne and Shirley. And I called Gilda, because I needed someone strong. I said, “What’s your contract? Can you get out?” But she had a loyalty to Lorne, which I understood. Gilda was funny. Gilda was great.
ROBERT KLEIN:
Once Gilda made me laugh so hard, it was one of the hardest and longest laughing jags I ever had in my life. Do you remember years ago there was a yogurt commercial where they show these old Russians in a village and they live to be a hundred and six because they eat yogurt? Well, she played the old woman with the babushka, and yogurt was going all down her face. She was as good as it gets.
KATE JACKSON:
I was so shy and nervous when I hosted, because these were the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. They were better than anybody else on television and everybody knew it. Lorne and the writers were there, and I was wondering if when I opened my mouth to start talking were they going to laugh? Would they roll their eyeballs, look at me, and go, “Oh Lord, have mercy”?
After the cold opening I rushed to change clothes and was doing my wardrobe change and waiting for the lights to come up, and Gilda just very quietly said to me, “You’re really good at this.” And that just sent me flying. She just absolutely released me and allowed me to have the kind of confidence that lets you do the best you can do. That was the most generous thing. It was just wonderful of her to do that.
MARILYN SUZANNE MILLER
We were aware of Gilda’s eating problems, but we didn’t know it was called bulimia. We thought it was this incredibly brilliant idea that Gilda thought up, and I underscore that and I suggest you put it in your book. Yeah, we thought it was a great idea. There were a few girls in my sorority house that went into the bathroom and threw up right after dinner. Which we also thought — by “we,” I mean the entire female population thought — was the most wonderful idea and many of us tried to do. It didn’t have any name like bulimia, and nobody had said it was a disease. We just thought it was a great idea. And then when it went on for a while we thought it was a great weird idea.
LARAINE NEWMAN:
I was concerned about Gilda’s bulimia because I’d had a very close friend who was bulimic all through her teenage years. I knew the things that could happen, so I was really worried about Gilda in that context. She was very open about it — not covert, which I always thought was typical of people with that illness. They’re usually very hidden. But she was so funny about it, because she would really announce it to us.
Jane and I and Gilda shared a dressing room until the third year. The boys always had their own dressing room; we had to share one. And Gilda used to make this joke about how when we were tired we would have to split a couch three ways. We would all be on the couch together. Then at one point, Gilda would get up and say, “Well, I’ve got to go into the bathroom.” And there were times when she and I would hang out at her house and I would be snorting heroin and she would be eating a gallon of ice cream. And I remember her staggering to the bathroom to make herself throw up, and saying, “I’m so full, I can’t hear.” And I laughed so hard. There we were, practicing our illnesses together. She was still funny throughout all of it.
ELLIOTT GOULD:
Gilda became a very close friend of mine. She was the greatest. Just the most lovely and sensitive human being you could imagine. Gilda told me that when she couldn’t sleep, she would order food at about two or three in the morning, and she was so bulimic she would order enough