Lily Tomlin in Full Flower

"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").

Her transition to film was seamless, which now strikes Tomlin as amusing -- it was rare in the '70s for television actors to graduate to film. But at the time she never saw herself as limited, which may explain her Oscar-nominated turn as a gospel singer and unfaithful wife in Robert Altman's Nashville. The ageless feminist comedy 9 to 5 was the topic of the most questions from Coco, with Tomlin relaying that she and costars Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton remain close ("there's nothing like a number 1 movie to bond you together"), and no ... she's never seen Dolly without her wig.

Tomlin called Steve Martin, her costar in the 1984 comedy All of Me, sweet and real. Her Prairie Home Companion costar Meryl Streep also received praise, with Tomlin describing her as a blithe spirit, often prone to fits of laughter and known to unleash Ernestine-like snorts at times.

One of Tomlin's most beloved movies, especially among Generation X-ers, is the Wagner-penned The Incredible Shrinking Woman from 1981. Wagner has been Tomlin's creative partner since 1971, when the comedian met the writer to discuss an Edith Ann album. "I fell madly in love with her as I laid eyes on her," Lily said of Jane. They just celebrated their 39th anniversary.

Wagner also wrote The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, a starring vehicle for Tomlin that played on Broadway in the '80s, before being made into a film in 1991. Adored for its satirical look at modern mores -- as viewed by aliens studying the human race -- it attracted a cult-like following. Tomlin spoke of Katharine Hepburn taking in a performance; the younger star showered the legend with kisses when she was brought to her dressing room. Barbra Streisand was also in the audience that same night, but by most accounts she left halfway through because she "wasn't feeling well."

The two-hour-plus conversation -- which included clips of Tomlin's most recent work, on the lauded legal drama Damages -- ended emotionally with Peru whipping out a flier from September 1977. It was the announcement of a charity performance at the Hollywood Bowl starring entertainers including Bette Midler and Tomlin -- the event was a fund-raiser against California's Briggs Initiative, an unsuccessful attempt to bar gays from teaching.

Peru cried as he read the pamphlet, finally uttering through whimpers that, "Even in 1977, you were fighting for us." That's a testament to Tomlin's power -- this class act can even make a hardened drag queen sob, no wig-pulling needed.