Post by dreamer on Sept 27, 2009 12:39:04 GMT -5
Lily Tomlin: Funny, sad and that’s the truth
By Judith Newmark
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Sunday, Sep. 27 2009
Stand-up comics don't really like to know who's in the house, says Lily Tomlin, one of the best.
"You just die when somebody famous is in the audience," she said. "You just pray that if they are, they'll come back afterward."
But not until afterward. You don't want to know until then.
So she remembers, vividly, the night at a New York club when her dresser greeted her at intermission, white-faced and shaking.
Who was out there? the comic asked, then interrupted herself: NO. DO. NOT. TELL. ME.
The dresser kept her secret, "thank God," Tomlin recalled. "I would have had such dry mouth if I had known!"
Who wouldn't? That night, Tomlin's audience included Meryl Streep. And Barbra Streisand. And — boy oh boy oh boy — KATHARINE HEPBURN.
"I never got Barbra's blessing," Tomlin said, recalling that the singer, who said she didn't feel good, left early. But Streep, complimentary and charming, made a point of coming backstage. (Later, in 2006, Tomlin and Streep played the singing Johnson sisters in "A Prairie Home Companion.") As did you-know-who.
"I heard Hepburn on the stairs and I just lost it," Tomlin said. "I rushed out to her and grabbed her and started kissing her face. I could never have done it if I had been sane — or conscious!"
She laughed ruefully. "I didn't dare ask for a two-shot."
It's nice to know that a woman of Tomlin's stature can feel just like a fan, even though she has plenty of her own.
The winner of two Tonys for her one-woman show, "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe", six Emmys and many other awards, Tomlin broke through in 1969 on NBC's "Laugh-In," introducing audiences to such memorable characters as weirdly observant little Edith Ann, the snorting telephone operator Ernestine, and the romantic soul singer Pervis Hawkins. (Tomlin was the first female comic to do male characters regularly.)
They and some of the other personalities in Tomlin's self-contained repertory troupe will probably appear in her show Oct. 3 at the Touhill, which will include old and new material. She's getting ready to open a new show in November in Las Vegas; she's also just signed on to the FX TV drama "Damages."
Tomlin, who creates her shows with writer Jane Wagner, her partner in work and in life for more than 30 years, has always specialized in character-driven comedy. Maybe that's why she made a fairly smooth transition from stand-up to acting. But Tomlin says she's never drawn a distinction between her stand-up act and scripted work.
"I can do whatever is assigned to me," she said. "The question is, how far can you go?"
Farther than you might think. Born in 1939, Tomlin grew up in a Detroit housing project, "a tough neighborhood where everybody was a character. I just had to do them (onstage)."
Her parents, who had moved north from Kentucky to look for work during the Depression, took their children to visit their grandparents in the summer, an experience that led Tomlin to think of herself as a kind of Southerner, like the women she played in the movies "Nashville" and "Big Business."
"When we were making 'Big Business,' I was forever fighting for the Southerners: Don't give them one tooth!" she said. "My brother lives in Nashville, and Jane's sister is in North Carolina. I treasure my Southern roots — even though I went to New York as quick as I could!"
Tomlin, who first tried stand-up during her student days at Wayne State University, found the comedy climate in New York challenging for a young woman. She got a very specific lesson at the Upstairs and the Downstairs, a club where headliners played downstairs while six young unknowns presented a revue above.
Tomlin counted herself lucky to be the "character woman," rather than the leading lady or the ingenue, because she got the best bits. But the ingenue was a clever girl, too, who cracked Tomlin up with her backstage stories.
"But onstage, she was … boring," Tomlin said. "One night, I said, you have got to do some of that in the show. But she said, 'No. I wouldn't want to seem unattractive.'"
At that time, the mid-1960s, "women could make you laugh if they were coming from some kind of diminished place," Tomlin said. "Joan Rivers talked about being undesirable, Totie Fields talked about her weight. And men joked about women. It was a big divide.
"But I wanted to be the mother-in-law and tell her side of the story. People said you can't do stand-up, you can't do improv, you'll lose your femininity. But I didn't pay any attention.
"The women's movement was burgeoning, and I was always motivated to do cultural humor — to create characters who express a point of view.
"Everything is sad and funny at the same time. It's just a matter of degree."
www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/stage/story/27D22FD4BDFEF7F28625763D00086B86?OpenDocument
By Judith Newmark
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Sunday, Sep. 27 2009
Stand-up comics don't really like to know who's in the house, says Lily Tomlin, one of the best.
"You just die when somebody famous is in the audience," she said. "You just pray that if they are, they'll come back afterward."
But not until afterward. You don't want to know until then.
So she remembers, vividly, the night at a New York club when her dresser greeted her at intermission, white-faced and shaking.
Who was out there? the comic asked, then interrupted herself: NO. DO. NOT. TELL. ME.
The dresser kept her secret, "thank God," Tomlin recalled. "I would have had such dry mouth if I had known!"
Who wouldn't? That night, Tomlin's audience included Meryl Streep. And Barbra Streisand. And — boy oh boy oh boy — KATHARINE HEPBURN.
"I never got Barbra's blessing," Tomlin said, recalling that the singer, who said she didn't feel good, left early. But Streep, complimentary and charming, made a point of coming backstage. (Later, in 2006, Tomlin and Streep played the singing Johnson sisters in "A Prairie Home Companion.") As did you-know-who.
"I heard Hepburn on the stairs and I just lost it," Tomlin said. "I rushed out to her and grabbed her and started kissing her face. I could never have done it if I had been sane — or conscious!"
She laughed ruefully. "I didn't dare ask for a two-shot."
It's nice to know that a woman of Tomlin's stature can feel just like a fan, even though she has plenty of her own.
The winner of two Tonys for her one-woman show, "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe", six Emmys and many other awards, Tomlin broke through in 1969 on NBC's "Laugh-In," introducing audiences to such memorable characters as weirdly observant little Edith Ann, the snorting telephone operator Ernestine, and the romantic soul singer Pervis Hawkins. (Tomlin was the first female comic to do male characters regularly.)
They and some of the other personalities in Tomlin's self-contained repertory troupe will probably appear in her show Oct. 3 at the Touhill, which will include old and new material. She's getting ready to open a new show in November in Las Vegas; she's also just signed on to the FX TV drama "Damages."
Tomlin, who creates her shows with writer Jane Wagner, her partner in work and in life for more than 30 years, has always specialized in character-driven comedy. Maybe that's why she made a fairly smooth transition from stand-up to acting. But Tomlin says she's never drawn a distinction between her stand-up act and scripted work.
"I can do whatever is assigned to me," she said. "The question is, how far can you go?"
Farther than you might think. Born in 1939, Tomlin grew up in a Detroit housing project, "a tough neighborhood where everybody was a character. I just had to do them (onstage)."
Her parents, who had moved north from Kentucky to look for work during the Depression, took their children to visit their grandparents in the summer, an experience that led Tomlin to think of herself as a kind of Southerner, like the women she played in the movies "Nashville" and "Big Business."
"When we were making 'Big Business,' I was forever fighting for the Southerners: Don't give them one tooth!" she said. "My brother lives in Nashville, and Jane's sister is in North Carolina. I treasure my Southern roots — even though I went to New York as quick as I could!"
Tomlin, who first tried stand-up during her student days at Wayne State University, found the comedy climate in New York challenging for a young woman. She got a very specific lesson at the Upstairs and the Downstairs, a club where headliners played downstairs while six young unknowns presented a revue above.
Tomlin counted herself lucky to be the "character woman," rather than the leading lady or the ingenue, because she got the best bits. But the ingenue was a clever girl, too, who cracked Tomlin up with her backstage stories.
"But onstage, she was … boring," Tomlin said. "One night, I said, you have got to do some of that in the show. But she said, 'No. I wouldn't want to seem unattractive.'"
At that time, the mid-1960s, "women could make you laugh if they were coming from some kind of diminished place," Tomlin said. "Joan Rivers talked about being undesirable, Totie Fields talked about her weight. And men joked about women. It was a big divide.
"But I wanted to be the mother-in-law and tell her side of the story. People said you can't do stand-up, you can't do improv, you'll lose your femininity. But I didn't pay any attention.
"The women's movement was burgeoning, and I was always motivated to do cultural humor — to create characters who express a point of view.
"Everything is sad and funny at the same time. It's just a matter of degree."
www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/stage/story/27D22FD4BDFEF7F28625763D00086B86?OpenDocument