There are few actors working today that have done solid work for six decades and been able to remain consistently relevant. Lily Tomlin has not only been able to stay a presence in film and television, she was able to do it as a lesbian (not “out” for most of it, but tacitly admitted it for many years) without experiencing any public recrimination, which speaks to the volumes of talent Tomlin possesses. A familiar presence in comedies, her grounded style brought realism and (though I loathe to use the word, it really fits here) gravitas to even the flightier of concepts.
What makes Tomlin special is that she’s an actress who makes choices deliberately and has the ability to submerge herself into the character. Most film actors develop screen personas and coast on their charisma. One could argue that George Clooney’s Danny Ocean in Ocean’s Eleven and his Matt Kowalski in Gravity are exactly the same or that Jack Nicholson’s Randall McMurphy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Daryl Van Horne from The Witches of Eastwick are the same. Tomlin has stock screen elements, such as an acerbic wit, or a dry sarcasm, or even the new-age-y free spirit, but not all her roles employ these characteristics.
Tomlin shot to fame when she moved to Los Angeles and began appearing on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In. She joined the second time she was offered the job. Tomlin had come out to host a short-lived series called Music Scene, and this had been cancelled in short order. When George Schlatter, the producer, came with another offer, she took it and became a mainstay in the program’s later years. She demanded ownership of the characters she created; Ernestine, the sassy telephone operator and Edith Ann, the small child in a rocking chair, became comedy mainstays.
Tomlin would receive her own network special on Nov. 2, 1973, Lily, which would change American comedy forever. On the writing staff were Richard Pryor and Lorne Michaels. It won an Emmy in 1974, which led to Michaels being tapped to produce NBC’s Saturday Night, a live comedy-variety program, a job (with one five-year break) Michaels holds to this day. The special would also lead Mel Brooks, when looking for a black writer to help him with Blazing Saddles, to hire Emmy winner Richard Pryor. (Pryor wrote all the Mongo stuff; Brooks wrote the Black Bart stuff.)
Tomlin worked for Robert Altman in three films, Nashville, Short Cuts, and A Prairie Home Companion, Altman’s final film. In Nashville, she played Linnea Reese, the wife of Delbert Reese (Ned Beatty). The film is a musical symphony of 32 characters and how they weave in and around each other’s lives during the preparation of a rally for Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker. Tomlin’s Linnea, a white singer with a black gospel choir and a mother of two deaf children, is having problems with Del. She begins an affair with Tom (Keith Carradine), a singer-songwriter who uses women for sexual pleasure and throws them away. To explain much more of the plot requires a book, but Tomlin was nominated for a Golden Globe and Oscar for the role. If you’ve never seen the film, it’s an epic in the truest sense of the word.
After Nashville, one of my favorite Lily Tomlin pictures (and one that has been all but forgotten in the mists of time) was released. In 1977 (yes, the year of Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit), Art Carney and Tomlin starred in The Late Show. Written and directed by Robert Benton (who would go on to direct another of my favorite films, Nobody’s Fool, in 1994), it concerns a aged private investigator (Carney) who has a friend die while on the job, and he has to solve the dead man’s last case. Tomlin plays the client, a wacky new-age flake who wants to join him as his sidekick. Carney, in his late-life serious phase, is the straight man and most of the laughs come from the juxtaposition of the odd pair.
Probably the most successful of Tomlin’s film outings was the female revenge film 9 to 5. Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Tomlin starred as three women who’d been sexually harassed, belittled and demeaned by their boss, played by Dabney Coleman. One of the highlights of the film is Tomlin poisoning Coleman in a revenge fantasy. The film would later become a Broadway musical and Parton’s theme song remains part of pop culture to this day.
Arguably, the high aesthetic point of Tomlin’s film career was All of Me, the 1984 comedy that put Steve Martin squarely as an American treasure. Martin had previously been regarded as a goofball comedian. In this, directed by Carl Reiner (his fourth film with Martin), an uptight lawyer (Martin) accidentally gets the soul of his deceased client (Tomlin) stuck in the right half of his body. This allowed Martin to do physical shtick, with Tomlin providing acerbic commentary.
Other career highlights for Tomlin include going to Broadway with her one-woman showcase, The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe, in 1985. Written by Tomlin and Jane Wagner (Tomlin’s wife/life partner since 1971), she received rave reviews and a Tony award. A film was made of the performance in 1991. She revived the show in 2000 and toured with it until 2002. In 2003, Tomlin received the Mark Twain Prize for contribution to American humor.
Since then, Tomlin has done numerous guest shots and cameos on film and television, most notably as Mrs. Landingham’s replacement on The West Wing. (Awesome trivia note: when Tomlin was on Desperate Housewives, she was in talks to spin off her character with Kathryn Joosten, who played Mrs. Landingham. The spinoff was cancelled after the latter’s death.) Other appearances of note were as Kenny Powers’ mother on Eastbound and Down and as Tina Fey’s mother in the 2013 film Admission.
This year, Tomlin reteamed with Jane Fonda for Netflix’s Grace and Frankie. Though the two hadn’t worked together on screen in 35 years, since 9 to 5, Tomlin and Fonda are best friends in real life. I’ll admit, the premise seemed sitcom-hokey: Two women in their seventies have to band together after their husbands — best friends and law partners — announce they’re homosexual and leaving them. It is pedestrian material, at best. The main reason to even view the series is the spectacular cast, with Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston playing their former husbands. (Interestingly, the actors worked together on prior Aaron Sorkin shows; Fonda/Waterston on The Newsroom and Tomlin/Sheen on The West Wing.)
Grace (Fonda) is an uptight retired cosmetics magnate who used herself as the face of the company. Having given her company to her daughter Brianna (June Diane Raphael), she’s looking forward to the day when Robert (Sheen) will retire from his law practice and they can finally enjoy life. Frankie (Tomlin) is a retired art teacher who is hoping Robert’s law partner, Sol (Waterston), will do the same. Both couples did everything together for many years, and the enmity between Grace and Frankie is very palpable. Retirement means freedom from such constraints. Instead, the announcement that Robert and Sol are moving in together and have carried on an affair for 20 years devastates them both.
Following the advice of other divorcees, after their credit cards are stopped, Grace and Frankie take possession of the beach house that the couples share. When Grace comes to take possession of the beach house, Frankie is already there to take peyote and go on a vision quest to determine her future. But Grace busts in and forces her to go to the beach. Frankie then injures her back, and calls for Grace to get her pain pills. This begins the often contentious, but certain road to friendship, wherein ensues a much more watchable version of The Odd Couple than the Matthew Perry travesty on CBS.
I have watched six of the 13 episodes so far, and the show is not bad. There’s nothing original about it in the slightest, and I suppose if every now and then, you like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, then you should have some. The real standout, and the Emmy-nominating committee agrees, is Tomlin. She easily inhabits Frankie, giving her a past and a present, while playing her as uncouth, liberal and free-spirited. (By contrast, Fonda, a great actress, is acting. I don’t buy inherently that Fonda’s Felix Unger is her personality.)
Tomlin invests each character she plays with a realism that comes directly from inside, so that you stop thinking of the actress and can only think of the character. When Tomlin nervously rips bread apart in the series’ opening scene, it’s not Lily Tomlin acting it, it’s what Frankie did. Frankie is breaking the bread at the moment of filming.
Tomlin finally returned to a lead role on the big screen this year in Grandma, directed by Paul Weitz, whom she worked with in Admission. Weitz really wanted to write a piece that showcased Tomlin’s talents and in Elle Reid, created a part that redefines her for the current generation.
Elle is a poet whose best work was long ago and far away, and has supported herself as an artist-in-residence at colleges, teaching literature and pretending to be the poet she used to be. Having lost her partner of 38 years a year and a half prior, she has become a cougar, preying on younger women half her age. When we first see Elle, she’s breaking up with her girlfriend Olivia, a Masters student that worships her. Elle then sinks into melancholy, revisiting her past as her granddaughter, Sage, knocks on the door and tells her she needs help to get an abortion.
Grandma is a road movie that takes place in one city; a buddy comedy between two women that isn’t funny, and a drama that examines the life of a woman who made bad decisions. Elle has no money on hand, cutting her credit cards up to make a wind chime out of them once she paid off the debts from her partner’s medical and funeral bills. To try and obtain the $630 needed for Sage’s abortion, she has to go to people from her past, starting with the most recent past and then further, alienating her old friends in the process. (An especially poignant scene with Sam Elliott makes the audience uncertain of our feelings about Elle; at times, Elliott comes off as creepy and menacing and at others, Elle comes off as the violator of trust.)
Tomlin is the core of this movie. If Elle had been played by, say, Debbie Reynolds, the character would’ve come off as too bouncy. Tomlin’s soul has a shadow to it that plays up Elle’s flaws, but she also has a ferocity to her love for Sage — like a mother hen. It’s a razor’s edge that Tomlin has to walk, being both likable and unlikable. Elle has done many things in her life, and she has to account for them. In one scene, she thinks she might be able to get some cash from Carla (played by the late Elizabeth Pena), the café owner who expressed interest in her first editions. Unfortunately, Olivia works there and a fight between Elle and her former girlfriend carries over to Carla insulting Olivia. Elle flips out and, still protective of Olivia, proceeds to verbally destroy Carla.
Grandma and Grace and Frankie are not particularly original in scope or journey. However, both have Lily Tomlin, who is finally back in the public eye, and doing what she does best: making us face our uncomfortable truths through humor and heart.
John P. Inloes (@suburbandwarf) is one of those weird people who likes the British so much he visits there once a year. It’s almost time for his annual trip. He’s going to see The Sound of Music in Liverpool, which he’s never seen before. He’s also going to The Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, where he will be able to help the Doctor fight off Daleks and Cybermen. Sigh. But no Clara.
