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Entertainment
Classic Lily Tomlin
Tomlin as Edith Ann.
Lily Tomlin is coming to Denver, but she really isn't on tour - or maybe she's on a tour that started when she exploded as a comic personality on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, a prime time comedy show that debuted in 1968 and provided Tomlin with overnight mainstream success when she brought her most beloved character, Ernestine the telephone operator, to the show in 1969, along with another blockbuster character, a precocious little girl named Edith Ann.
"I've always had an act," says Tomlin. "And I would do anywhere from 30 to 50 dates a year, fit in between whatever else I was doing. So I've always kept my hand in. In fact, I was thinking about it. I've had an act since I was about 10. ... I used to put it on on the back porch and try to get other kids in my apartment house to be in it, try to cast it, try to sell tickets, hang my mother's sheets for curtains, try to make costumes. I was mad to make a show - Mickey Rooney and me."
So Tomlin's appearance at the Paramount Theatre in Denver on Friday, March 19 in An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin is just part of her extended tour that started decades ago. And when she's not on the road, she's biding her time on Broadway, where she's won awards for her one-woman shows Appearing Nitely and The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe; recording comedy albums; creating, producing or starring in television specials and films; and making guest appearances on a variety of television shows. But it was Ernestine who won the hearts of Tomlin fans everywhere on Laugh-In and who remains possibly her most popular character today.
"Literally, Ernestine overnight was a sensation," says Tomlin. "Monday night, they aired. Tuesday morning, Ernestine was a star. I wasn't, but Ernestine was, believe me. And she knew it."
Will Ernestine be visiting Denver? Most likely.
"I do 10 or 12 characters," Tomlin says about her show, "and try to talk about Denver and what's going on around us. I usually improv Edith Ann with the audience and a Q&A at the very end with Lily, but I'll do a pretty full show."
Tomlin as Ernestine.
After 40 years of creating and re-creating some of the hottest characters in comedy, does Tomlin ever get tired of them?
"No, not if they're saying anything that's relevant and people seem to want to hear them," she says. "I adore performing live, as I said, as long as it has relevancy. And I fool around and have fun on stage, because I want to take the audience on kind of a trip, too. Because when you work in this forum, if I can take you - with my voice and body - if I can take you to another scene, it's like a film cut - if I can suspend your disbelief and become a different person in a different location, talking about different things. I love to have fun with the audience, make fun of myself and just share that. It's like you validate me and I'll do my darndest to validate you."
She apparently does her job with every show, because not only does a Tomlin performance consistently sell out - no matter what show it is - but her legendary presence draws other legends to the audience as well.
"One night I was doing The Search," she says, "and the same night, Meryl Streep, Hepburn and Streisand came. I didn't know they were there. If I had, I would have absolutely gone into cardiac. I didn't know until it was over. I couldn't have performed. I would have been so nervous and so scared.
"And my first show - my first Broadway show in 1977 - Claudette Colbert came to the show. And I knew somebody was there that night because I could feel the electricity in the audience. ... And when she came backstage, she was just like a vision. ... That was another thrill."
Even Greta Garbo came to a Tomlin performance. "I thought I dreamed it," she says. "It was real."
But the audience doesn't have to contain a Garbo or a Streisand to make the show important to Tomlin.
"I still get nervous anyplace I go," she says. "I want it to turn out well. I want the audience to think they spent their time and money reasonably well. It can be very depressing I you think you've failed the audience. ... It's what you do. It's your work. You want to be proud of it. It's a lot of your identity. ... We're getting real psychodrama. There'll be people coming to the show wanting to give me their cards for professional counseling."
Not likely - although there might be some professional counselors in the audience who show up for the laughs, just like everyone else. With the political situation in the world today, almost everyone needs a good laugh right about now - and Tomlin is as concerned as everyone else in the LGBT community, although she remains optimistic.
Tomlin as Lupe.
"There's so much happening right now that seems not progressive and not liberal,"
she says. "And (with) all the disappointments that have happened, and the Republicans managing to dominate the agenda in so many ways ... I'm still amazed at what the gay community has been able to achieve in 40 years. A lot have been done, really, and people are much, much more free."
"I just think (it's) commitment," Tomlin says about why the relationship has lasted so long. "Absolute commitment. My family's Southern, Jane is Southern. She ‘s from Tennessee. My mother and dad are from Kentucky, even though I was born and grew up in Detroit, and I lived in the inner city, but I understand the Southern culture. And Jane left Tennessee when she was 17 and went to New York. So we each have a foot in the city and a foot in the south. And our families know each other. ... She's just multitalented, and she's incredible, and she's gorgeous on top of it, and she has beautiful skin, and everybody adores her. I'm like cheap goods compared to Jane. If we get invited someplace, Jane doesn't always go. She has no fear of ignoring social obligations.
"We call her ‘Maybe Jane.' We say, ‘Who's gonna go?' And you say, ‘Joe and Larry and Phyllis and Isabel and Maybe Jane.' When she does come, it's a really big event."
The freedoms that Tomlin is seeing now are things that she might not have imagined when she first met her longtime partner, Jane Wagner - an award-winning author, producer and collaborator on most of Tomlin's projects - almost 40 years ago. But even with the discrimination that same-sex couples faced then and continue to face today, the business and romantic relationship continues.
Although Tomlin says that she and Jane will probably never marry - "First of all, like I said, ‘Maybe Jane.' ... I'm here, but we're waiting on Jane. Jane has no sense of time." - she and Wagner have certainly settled into their long-term commitment.
"I think that one of the real gifts of a really long, committed relationship is the absolute intimacy," she says. "The comfort, the knowing, the comfort in just being and doing how you do and knowing that no one's judging you. ... It's sort of unconditional in a way. As close as you get, I suppose."
And judging by the response to Tomlin's upcoming Denver show, her fans have a similar unconditional support of the comedian. So whether you're Streep or Streisand or just plain Smith, get your tickets now - no "maybes" about it. Only Jane Wagner can get away with that.
See An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin on Friday, March 19 at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre, 1621 Glenarm Pl. in Denver. For tickets, call 866-461-6556 or go to www.tickethorse.com.