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CAPE FEAR MEMORIAL BRIDGE CLOSURE: UPDATES, RESOURCES, AND CONTEXT

Lily Tomlin on How Her Characters Evolve and Why They Carry a Message

Comedian Lily Tomlin burst onto the American cultural scene in the late 1960s.  As a cast member on the sketch-comedy TV show Laugh-In, Tomlin’s character-driven humor introduced the nation to Ernestine, an obnoxious phone operator who personified a monopolistic and nefarious phone company.

"Now, Mr. Veedul, Ms. Tomlin again.  About this unpaid phone bill… now when may we…Well, Mr. Veedul, I just don’t see why you’re kicking up such a ruckus when, according to our files, your present bank balance plus stocks, securities, and other holdings amount to exactly three-hundred and – what?  Privileged information?  Oh, Mr. Veedul, that’s so cute.  No, no.  No, Mr. Veedul, you’re dealing with the telephone company."

Edith Ann, the precocious 5-and-a-half-year-old, sat in an over-sized rocking chair with her doll, Doris: 

160125EDITHANN--CCOPY.mp3
Listen to an Edith Ann clip here.

"You know what I have in my pocket, Mrs. Spear?  [I haven’t time to play games with you, Edith Ann!]  I have a note that my teacher wrote to my mother because my teacher does not like some of the things I do.  [You better give it to your mother!]  Yeah?  Well, I don’t like some of the things my teacher does, so I’ll write for her to give to her mother and see how she likes it. [laughter]…"

Generations later, these iconic characters are still funny and still relevant.  

Here's Part I of a conversation with the multi-award-winning actress about how her traveling one-woman show, An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin, came to be. 

160125LILYPART1.mp3
Lily Tomlin on creating her characters...

RLH:  Can you talk about the development of some of these characters that people have come to know and love over the years – like Edith Ann and Ernestine?  How do they come to be?  Are these bursts of imagination that come out fully developed or do they evolve over time?  How do you create a character?

LT:  So initially I wanted Ernestine – I just wanted to satirize the phone company because especially living in New York – the phone service was horrendous in the mid-60s.  Remember at this time, the phone company was a monopoly.   No one had any recourse whatsoever. 

They’d call up to get a phone repaired and this would be months – and someone like Ernestine would say, ‘Will you be home between April and November?’ 

You just couldn’t do anything about it.  It was infuriating. 

And then the phone company was also culpable politically in a lot of countries around the world.  They cooperated with the FBI and they cooperated with J. Edgar Hoover.  They would tape peoples’ phone conversations and turn them over to the police who had requested them and – just maddening stuff.  A lot of stuff went on that probably still goes on but it was really washed over in those days.

So, she started out – she was just going to be like a tough Bronx operator.  And the more I worked on her and improvised and threatened people, the more her body got just so twisted up, her face got twisted up [SNORT].  And when she’d laugh, she’d snort because her face was, you know, just frozen in that pinched appearance. 

God, I haven’t talked about this in so long.

And her hand found its way down into the opening in her blouse.  And I swear I think it was that suppressed sexuality is what struck a nerve with the public whether they knew it or not.

RLH:  Your wife, Jane Wagner, has been your collaborator for many years and a key part of your work.  Can you talk about the collaborative process between the two of you?

LT:  Jane is really a solitary writer.  And she’ll just write something and hand it to me or I’ll say, in the old days I would say, ‘God, I’ve got to do a street person.  I want to do a bag woman so badly.’ 

And Trudy is what came out of that.  I would go to The Enquirer and I would just ad lib off The Enquirer different subjects that Trudy might be interested in – like the man with the 2-minute memory.  Every trip to the bathroom was a new experience.  It was just outrageous what they wrote in the paper. 

And so I’d say look at this and I would have developed the voice or the body or whatever I was able to do and Jane might just write me a monologue about a street person or prostitute or whatever I had in mind.

RLH:  Why did you suddenly want to create the character of a street person?  Was this character coming with a message?  Or was it just something that people had never done?

LT:  Well, if we were true to her, she would have a message.  You would have some insight into that humanity.  Whatever Trudy talked about it would, first of all, make her less threatening to the public, make them understand more, maybe, who she is.  She could easily become a wonderful device to voice all those people who are so disenfranchised in the streets… I always wanted to do culture types because they would tell you about the part of the culture they were living in.

RLH:  So this is about making familiar to people sectors of the population, perhaps, that…

LT:  And hopefully making political points at the same time that were meaningful and that were true.  Not that you just put that into someone’s mouth; you express the struggles that they’re up against.

RLH:  Thank you so much for taking the time.  I can’t imagine what the demands on your time must be like these days.

LT:  Well, it’ll blow over...

Lily Tomlin is appearing February 4th at Cape Fear Community College's Humanities and Fine Arts Center in An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin.

Stay tuned for Part II of this conversation, when Lily Tomlin talks about finding the balance between honoring her authenticity and protecting her privacy as a gay woman in an era when homosexuality was not widely accepted.

Rachel hosts and produces CoastLine, an award-winning hourlong conversation featuring artists, humanitarians, scholars, and innovators in North Carolina. The show airs Wednesdays at noon and Sundays at 4 pm on 91.3 FM WHQR Public Media. It's also available as a podcast; just search CoastLine WHQR. You can reach her at rachellh@whqr.org.