NONFICTION - Sept. 4, 1994

BUNNY, BUNNY: Gilda Radner, A Sort of Love Story by Alan Zweibel (Villard: $14.95; 208 pp.) Writer Alan Zweibel and comic actress Gilda Radner were best friends for more than a decade before Radner died of cancer in 1989. Three years later, Zweibel, still trying to come to terms with his grief, wrote “Bunny, Bunny,” a witty, moving tribute to his old friend.

Beginning with their first words to each other on the set of “Saturday Night Live” in 1975, “Bunny Bunny” chronicles a complex and loving relationship that almost, but never quite, turned into romance.

There’s the trip to the Bahamas where, in a particularly funny scene, Radner calls hotel security because Zweibel is pounding on her door in the middle of the night trying to retrieve his gambling winnings that he has earlier made her promise to hold for him at all costs. In another section Radner calls Zweibel to come backstage two minutes before she is to go on for her one-woman show. “‘I’m happy for you,”’ she says. “‘I was peering out at you guys and noticed that Robin (Zweibel’s girlfriend) never looked prettier and that you never looked whiter and I just knew you were engaged.”

Zweibel’s ambitious format--the book is written entirely in dialogue--has its strengths and weaknesses. Radner’s wonderful sense of humor, kindness and intelligence shines through on every page without ever being weighed down by the sentimentality that sometimes comes with description. Also, the unadorned, short lines of speech give the whole piece a poetic simplicity that adds emotional impact. However, there are many instances in which people say unrealistic things to explain the action around them. It’s stilted. This seems forgivable though in an otherwise engaging book.