| | Issue #20.04 :: 01/24/2007 - 01/30/2007 | Lily Tomlin: A Life of Laughter
Acclaimed Comedienne Performs at Koger Center on Friday
| BY RON AIKEN
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From her television debut on The Garry Moore Show in 1966 to joining Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in 1969 to a litany of memorable television and film roles since, Lily Tomlin has reached the pinnacle of entertainment success and remained there for four decades. Among her achievements are five Emmy awards, two Tonys, one Grammy and an Academy Award nomination for her role in director Robert Altman’s classic film Nashville.
As much as any other comedian or actor, Tomlin has remained relevant, funny and insightful through her portrayal of characters both sharp-tongued and heartbreaking. Her talent is equally facile whether on screen or stage, and her trademark characters from Laugh-In — from phone operator Ernestine to child Edith Ann — are beloved by generations of fans.
And yet, when talking to the 67-year-old Tomlin, what comes through more than any other quality is her sheer humanity, compassion for others and genuine love of her craft and its ability to reach people and bring them together in laughter.
Following are Tomlin’s candid thoughts about growing up in inner-city Detroit, her early career ups and downs, the state of comedy today and what it’s like to have had recurring roles on two of television’s most acclaimed series, Murphy Brown and The West Wing.
Free Times: You were born in Detroit, but I understand you spent a lot of time in your youth going back and forth between Detroit and Paducah, KY., to visit relatives.
Lily Tomlin: I spent a lot of time in Kentucky growing up. My parents were from Kentucky and moved to Detroit, like a lot of Southerners in those days did to find work. So my brother, Richard, and I would take the old Brooks Bus Line down for visits. I recall getting so much out of that time, listening to the people there who were so different from those I was growing up with in Detroit. We’d come down and spend a few days with one relative, a few days with another when we weren’t in school. I have so many wonderful, rich memories of those times. I’m sensing these memories right now, I can see my cousin Janice, she lived outside Paducah with my Aunt Eve, she was the youngest kid of four in her family and a year or two younger than me. I remember she’d have to get up really early and clean the milk barn. I’d hear her, all sullen, complaining about why she had to do it and not me. She’d sulk out the door, slapping her feet on the floor as she was going out of the kitchen. But it was a real clash of cultures.
FT: You’ve spoken a lot about how formative your younger years were in terms of a multicultural upbringing. Can you elaborate a little on that?
LT: I lived [in Detroit] for 14 years. Our neighborhood was a lot of older people. They were very educated but couldn’t move because they were on pensions. There were also all kinds of different ethnicities, too. Just every kind of person you can think of, and we lived with them in that old apartment house. It was a real microcosm of humanity.
My dad worked at a factory, and the neighborhood was predominantly black with a large Jewish community, and I always regretted that type of environment wasn’t as pervasive when I’d go to Kentucky, where to have a personal relationship with a black person was just revelatory. I think growing up like I did, it naturally makes people more tolerant. It gave me such a deep appreciation and empathy for the differences in people, how similar they all really are.
Too, the economic differences in Detroit were very clear. My mother’s maiden name was Ford, and she always vicariously read about the Ford family. When Charlotte Ford made her debut at Grosse Pointe, it cost $250,000, which was an unimaginable fortune to us then. We wanted to see the party as it was being set up; we didn’t own a car — we were probably the only ones in Detroit without one — but we borrowed a broken-down car from a friend, this old ’49 Ford with the driver’s-side door tied shut, and drove my mother around the estate where you could see all the canopies and preparations until she was satisfied.
It turned out that a girlfriend of mine who was a cheerleader with me in high school became Henry Ford II’s third wife and widow. One time I was playing Detroit and the cheerleaders got together and invited my mom out to the Ford Estate. I remember my girlfriend telling my mom, “Mrs. Tomlin, this time you don’t have to drive around the outside. You can come in the front door now.” She loved that.
FT: You were very close to your mother before she passed away in 2004 in Nashville. So much so, in fact, you took her name as your stage name.
LT: I was born Mary Jean Tomlin and she was Lillie Mae Ford Tomlin. I changed the spelling a little, but she always got a kick going around and telling people she was the “real” Lily Tomlin. She was so smart and funny. I still miss her a lot.
FT: You enrolled at Wright State in Detroit but didn’t finish there. What happened that led you away from school and toward acting and doing stand-up?
LT: I was not much of a student — I think once I enrolled in college I developed a bad case of narcolepsy. But once there, I got into a show that was just awful. I realized they were doing old material, very collegiate — no real wit, just kind of this takeoff of Gunsmoke.
But it showed me that I could do it and put that idea in me that you can do this for a living. I grew up a tremendous fan of movies. In Detroit, I was a 14-year-old illegal usherette at a theater, and us girls under 16 would have to hide in the ladies’ bathroom when they would come to check work permits. We’d stay in there and smoke until they left. But I just loved it. One of my favorite movies was Wicked Woman with Beverly Michaels. There’s this great scene where she basically seduces Richard Egan that was just so racy at the time.
You didn’t see things like that on screen where the woman was the aggressor. I remember the movie played on a double bill with The Moon is Blue, which was the first time anyone had said the word ‘virgin’ on screen.
FT: Your early career was spent doing stand-up. Who were your influences and what was it like?
LT: It was so exciting then, every time out it was really like skating on thin ice; you don’t really know what your capacity is. I can remember once I got on Laugh-In and was getting fairly well-known, I’d go down to the Ice House [comedy club] in Pasadena to try new material. People from L.A. didn’t go there, so I wouldn’t get seen, and as I was trying new things I’d be talking so fast, I’d come off and be absolutely spent. I’d ask how long I was up there for, and they’d say “13 minutes.” I thought I’d been up there like two hours. Back then there were very few women doing stand-up. The first comedienne I saw was on The Ed Sullivan Show, Jean Carroll. I was just a kid, but I remember she was very sharp and hip for that time. She did a lot of husband jokes. She was just breezy, easy and hip. I just did a tribute for her at the Friar’s Club, actually. But as far as personal influences, I’ve always had sort of wrenched ideas and concepts. I’ve always been very influenced by society’s double standards, with women being objectified and our obsession with beauty. One of my earliest monologues was about the world’s oldest living beauty expert. Back then, all the beauty experts on television were these prim, very old ladies, which was ironic by itself. It was my comment on the beauty culture, how ephemeral it is. It’s just part of being socially conscious.
FT: Did you ever have any trouble with hecklers back then, a la Michael Richards here recently?
LT: I really didn’t; I always found people mostly are affectionate, and I would try to treat them affectionately. A lot of comedians who have problems with hecklers do so out of inexperience handling it more than anything. That’s what I didn’t understand with Michael; he used to do stand-up all the time, and to see him yelling out the [racial] things he did and getting the flop sweats … if your ego gets in the way, it’s sad because you’ll get very defensive and then very aggressive.
Some people are just vanquished by it rather than retaliate. They hurt him, obviously, and he was going to hurt them, he wanted to show that he was in control, but in fact he was vulnerable and out of control. It was really unfortunate because it was so out of character, and I’m sure he anguishes over it every day.
FT: Can you talk about how you developed your material and the characters you’ve become so well known for?
LT: I’ve always done characters, a lot of developed personas. Doing stand-up, I can be myself if I have to, but I always found that if I started talking about a funny idea, it didn’t seem right just coming from me. A lot of comedians develop personas, or some kind of exaggerated personality, for the stage that they can slide in and out of. But for me, I never could come up with one that felt right. It always felt dishonest to me. I have to put things in the mouth of a character.
FT: It’s safe to say you became a household name from Laugh-In. What are your memories of that period of time? Is comedy more progressive now than it was then?
LT: There were more barriers then, many more so. On Laugh-In, our ambition was to get the F-word on television, like the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate bit. And Ernestine always dialed with her middle finger and would say things like “You are abusing your instrument,” those kinds of things. The censors were watching us so closely, and we were constantly trying to get things past them. Now, there are very few barriers anymore. Intelligence is key. It’s always going to be attractive to people, the insight you get from it. I also love great farce, great physical humor — it’s the artistry in it. People have all kinds of permutations on it, and there are so many kids now who are really gifted, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle. They’re just amazing. Also, there’s so many comedians now. There used to be just a handful.
FT: You’ve hosted numerous television specials and generated a lot of controversy with the famous kiss with Richard Pryor, which for many people was their first television kiss between a black man and a white woman. [The actual first interracial television kiss was in 1968 between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek].
LT: What was funny about that was we had gotten word down from the network execs to not kiss Richard goodnight. But he was such a little rascal, he came in with cornrows, which no one had seen in 1973. I’ll always have such a love for Richard. I remember the last time I spent time with him was when I presented him with award in Santa Barbara at a film festival a couple of years before he passed. It was tremendous. We watched clips, the audience watched clips for like two hours. I think he was weeping, and it was so touching to see, to see him be appreciated and it mean so much to him. It was just such an essenced night, and the clips were so well chosen.
FT: What else stands out in your mind from those years in terms of lingering memories?
LT: Do you remember Koko, the gorilla who could use sign language? Along with my partner, Jane Wagner, we produced a pilot for a People magazine television show in 1976 not long after the magazine first came out [in 1974]. I hosted it, went up to do a feature on Koko and she bit me. Those gorillas are strong, and she was young then. So for the piece what I would do is draw a picture and she’d sign what it was.
I drew a red bird, and she made the right sign for it, then I drew an alligator with great big teeth. She’d never been in the jungle, so she takes the picture and throws it down, just jumps up and down. She didn’t break the skin and I knew my finger was still there, but my feelings were hurt and I reared up. After she did that she took Penny, her handler, in corner and showed her that she wanted to bite me. I don’t think she liked the look of that alligator.
FT: Have you ever found yourself star-struck with the many talented people you’ve worked with?
LT: You know, not really. Though I do remember the first time I went to the Golden Globes. Dorothy Malone was there, she was an actress in the ’50s and ’60s and always was like the sexy bad girl to Barbara Rush’s sexy good girl. She’s the only person I ever wanted to meet, and I went to her dressing room and she was not an extroverted person. I think I probably scared her to death gushing over her. I told her how Written on the Wind was absolutely formative for me. I’ve always been attracted to the bad girls, probably because there were so few of them, the studios really just held the id down on everything.
FT: Do you have a hard time watching yourself on screen?
LT: I don’t mind watching myself, unless I’m bad, I guess. I’ll think, “If I could only do it again.” That’s what’s so scary, that the performance will always be out there, you can’t get rid of it. Movies are so much more impactful in that way. Television is so disposable and fast-moving; there’s always more shows behind it. But, put a movie on the projector and if you’ve done something really false, there’s no hiding from it.
FT: That also holds true for good performances. Which of your own performances do you believe represents your best work?
LT: There’s many different scenes, but I think in Short Cuts, when my character’s daughter, Lili Taylor, comes in with a goldfish in a bag. There’s just one or two lines, but it just seems so genuine, like the character hadn’t seen one in quite a while, and seeing it brought some old memory back. I just like that moment.
FT: Do you know immediately if you’ve had a particularly good take?
LT: I really don’t. The scene at the bar in Nashville, when I first saw it watching the dailies [unedited versions of what’s been filmed earlier that day], I hated it. With Robert [Altman], on his set everyone watches the dailies with him. So it’s kind of nerve-wracking. When I saw that scene with me in the back booth, I thought my eyes were too shadowed, that I’d blown the scene. So I left early, just in tears and overcome with regret thinking I didn’t do enough. Then Scotty, Altman’s right hand, she speaks in this lisp, she came over to me. I didn’t want to talk with anyone, I was just sobbing, I thought the scene was ruined. But he loved it, and it just shows sometimes you don’t know.
Although I have to say that Martin Sheen is very, very good at that. On The West Wing, Martin always knew when a take was good. I don’t know how he’d know, I don’t know how could be outside the scene like that. I can’t tell. I have to go with the moment and can’t watch it objectively. I like stage, because I don’t get to review it and see if it didn’t work. I just I think I’m soaring.
FT: Speaking of The West Wing, between that and your role on Murphy Brown, you had the chance to have a recurring role on two of television’s smartest shows in recent memory. Can you talk about what those experiences were like, besides one being a comedy and the other a drama?
LT: Well, comedy and drama are basically one continuum, there’s really just one degree of separation between comedy and drama. It’s just a matter of style and how you choose to embody it. But there were lots of similarities between the shows. Both were very well-run and well-written with good actors, very familial. I was really attached to Murphy Brown, even though I was only there for two years. Maybe that was because the show was on so long and, just like The West Wing, I was an avid viewer before I joined the cast. I loved working on that show, and I was extremely fond of The West Wing, too. I think I was a little closer to Murphy because I think comedy brings you closer. There’s something vulnerable and meaningful about laughing with someone. And Candice [Bergen] was so good, such a strong character. But The West Wing was terrific, too, and as much as anybody else I hated to see it go off the air. It also was very similar in that the actors truly enjoyed working there, felt valued and felt a kinship with each other. Both shows were just so well respected. I was very fortunate to have a part in both.
FT: You mentioned your fondness for performing live, and you’ve obviously had a great career on stage, which is what you’ll be doing here. What do you most enjoy about it?
LT: I prefer live performances to anything else. The stage, it’s more personal and more alive; you have to be in the moment, living the evening. I still do shows, probably about 40 or so a year, because as long as the material is good, it’s totally new to me, if it’s fresh and I feel it will entertain and inform and kind of also create a kind of little roller-coaster ride of impressions and feelings, I want to share that. I want to be validated by the audience, too, through their response.
It’s really a romance with the audience. It just reaffirms how much alike we are, and it’s just fun to surprise people and to make people laugh. I really enjoy making a performance a shared experience with the audience.
Also, it’s gratifying to see your craft come together. In theater you get to work on it incessantly. I’m begging all the time to Jane [Wagner, her partner of 35 years and collaborator] that I want a new show to go back to Broadway with, and I know she’ll invent something great. What I used to love about performing [The] Search [for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe] was to go out to the front of theatre back in mid ’80s and see a yuppie couple dressed to the nines, three or four ladies on a trip to New York from Omaha with print dresses, pocketbooks and out of shape, then see some punk rock kids, and feel how united they were and they’d hug me and it was beautiful. They’d received, for those who really did get goose bumps, that shared experience that is so uplifting and affirming, that connection.
FT: On a personal note, my own first exposure to you came through Sesame Street and your character of Edith Ann. What was it like working with Jim Henson?
LT: Oh, Ron, I’m so pleased to hear you say that. He was one of my absolute favorite people in the world. My earliest memories of Jim was appearing with him on The Ed Sullivan Show. He was just starting out too. He had the first Kermit that he had made himself, this thing with a little doily with lips and eyelashes. He had Kermit sitting on a proscenium singing “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face.” It was wonderful, and I had so much fun working with them on The Muppet Show. I’d just seen him a few days before he died. We had dinner, and four days later he was dead. It was just a tragic loss.
FT: One last question. Are the rumors of an updated version of 9 to 5 true?
LT: We all want to do it, but Jane [Fonda] let the rights lapse, and Dolly [Parton] is writing a musical version for Broadway on her own; she picked up the theatre rights. At the moment Jada Pinkett Smith has the film rights; she wanted to do an African-American version. If that doesn’t work out, the three of us would love to do it; we’ve all been close since then.
FT: Thank you so much for spending so much time talking to us.
LT: It was my pleasure, really. I hadn’t thought of some of those things in years. I look forward to seeing you at the show. | |
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