In 1980, Radner quit the program to pursue a career in film acting. She was then married to G. E. Smith, the leader of the SNL band.
Radner costarred with the late Gene Wilder, her future husband, in the 1982 film Hanky Panky. After getting married in 1984, the couple acted in two more movies together:
Haunted Honeymoon (1986) and The Woman in Red (1984). Even after Radner passed away from ovarian cancer in 1989 at the age of 42, the couple stayed wed.
At the time of her passing, Anne Beatts, the former head writer of Saturday Night Live, told PEOPLE, “She was Tinker Bell if the show was like Never-Never-Land, the Island of Lost Boys.”
“She simply hadn’t forgotten her inner child.” Over the course of its 50 years on the air, Saturday Night Live has produced some of Hollywood’s most hilarious comedians.
