Gilda’s cancer had indeed returned, and she passed away in 1989, when she was only forty-two. I found out through Steve Martin, who phoned me with the bad news in the morning. It was a Saturday, and he was hosting SNL that night. On the show, Steve abandoned his planned monologue and introduced an old clip: a wordless, poignantly funny sketch that he and Gilda had done on the show in 1978, in which they spotted each other across a crowded room at a disco and launched into an MGM-style dance routine, to the tune of “Dancing in the Dark” from the Fred Astaire–Cyd Charisse musical The Band Wagon.
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