A fund-raiser for the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center on Saturday had Coco Peru holding a two-hour heart-to-heart with Lily Tomlin about the lesbian star's sublime career (and Dolly Parton's wig).
“Gay people don’t have an excuse to be square,” Lily Tomlin told Coco
Peru on Saturday night at “Conversations With Coco,” a fund-raiser for
the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. At the event, fittingly held at the Lily Tomlin/Jane
Wagner Cultural Arts Center in Hollywood (named for the star and her
partner), Clinton Leupp’s alter ego talked Tomlin through her 45-year
career in film, on television, and on Broadway ... and Tomlin proved that discussing your Emmys and Tonys with a famous drag queen is about as far from square as it gets.
Entering the simple stage set — two chairs, a table,
and some flowers — Tomlin looked chic and youthful, her jet-black hair
matching her leather jacket, slim pants, and high-heeled boots. Exposing
a bit of vanity, she complained lightheartedly about her “sidelight”
and fussed with her pants all night to make sure they weren’t riding up.
Her first job on camera actually involved a play on her
beauty — on a short-lived revival of TheGarry Moore Show in 1966, Tomlin is
seen in front of a mirror as a stagehand informs her she has two
minutes before showtime. She brushes her hair, applies mascara, and
announces she’s now groomed and gorgeous enough for the cameras. Then
she pulls a gorilla mask over her head. Even though the skit was cut,
Tomlin’s delivery of her aborted debut didn’t miss a beat.

Quick to laugh and full of stories, Tomlin talked up her Detroit childhood,
which included several sojourns to visit relatives in Kentucky. Her
brother fancied himself a playboy, drinking water out of martini
glasses, while she and her cousins would eat cobs of corn thrown on the
floor by her mother (Tomlin’s next project should be a Running With
Scissors/Me Talk Pretty One Day anthology).
Clips of Tomlin’s characters on Laugh-In, which she joined in its
third season in late ’69, were projected on a giant screen, including
Suzy Sorority and, of course, impish Edith Ann and the snorting phone
operator Ernestine. She described Ernestine’s power trips and facial
tics as signs of a repressed sexual beast within. Tomlin spoke of the
most memorable characters she created for Laugh-In and her
television specials — including the male lounge singer Tommy Velour and
the R&B crooner Pervis Hawkins — like friends she hadn’t seen in
a while, describing them as you would a high school boyfriend or
college professor (Hawkins was a “cool cat” and Ernestine “really loved
herself”).
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