(Above: Lily in the 1970s and her brother Richard (I think), who is gay and lives now in Nashville with his longtime partner, gospel singer Tennessee Langston. Here is a link to his artwork highlighted at Lily Tomlin’s website where I found this photo. And here is a link to Richard’s website.)
In the wake of the imminent overturning of Roe v Wade, I have been thinking a lot about Lily Tomlin’s 2015 film Grandma, written and directed and produced by Paul Weitz, in which her character, a lesbian poet, sets out to raise the money for her granddaughter’s abortion. Julia Garner from Ozark plays her granddaughter. Laverne Cox is also in it. You can view the film on Amazon Prime for $3.99 or at Apple TV, iTunes, Hulu, YouTube, and GooglePlay. I plan to rewatch it myself when I get back to Hudson, New York, and settle in for a summer refocusing on America and taking to the streets with my sisters demanding dominion over their own bodies. Lily should have been nominated for an Oscar for her work in Grandma. Hell, she should have won it. Just as she should have for her work in Robert Altman’s Nashville, for which she was nominated. She worked with Altman a lot after that film and he was known for letting his actors improvise and for his overlapping dialogue. But it was Lily’s silent face as she sat listening to Keith Carradine sing “I’m Easy” in Nashville that I will always be haunted by - the silent, lonely longing that had almost come to rest in a resigned sort of resentment. The song did win the Oscar for Carradine who wrote it.
I have always thought there was also a lot of Ruth Draper in Lily and in my research for this RUBRICS today I was glad to find out that she agreed, calling Draper her greatest influence. I had no idea, however, that she once opened for Mabel Mercer in New York at Downstairs at the Upstairs. I had never thought of Lily and Mabel being part of the same sentence much less on the same bill. I don’t long for much anymore but I do long to talk to her about Mabel Mercer. Maybe I can convince someone to convince her to do that for all of us here at SES/SUMS IT UP.
One of the greatest experiences I have ever had in a theatre was seeing her in the 1980s in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe on Broadway. When my actual sister came to visit me in New York, I took her to see it and it became one of the greatest experiences I have ever had as a brother.
Also during my research last night, I discovered Lily has a gay brother. How had I not known that? So the memory of this gay brother and his lesbian sister with our Mississippi Methodist roots bonding while seeing this lesbian icon who has a gay brother and their having a Kentucky Methodist mama deepened the memory of that experience all these years later.
I have been fascinated by her and loved her since that Mississippi childhood of mine watching her on Laugh-In and instinctively responding to this new cast member when she joined the show in its third season with a certain sort of swagger that I felt swelling up in me as well as I tried literally to walk like her, arms swinging, her back straightened as she strode about just short of a strut. She never really came out of the closet in any corny way that reeked of a proclamation but just let her life with her partner Jane Wagner, who wrote The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe, unfold along with her fame.
(Above and below: Jane Wagner and Tomlin.)
(Photo by Graeme Mitchell for The New Yorker.)
Lily was a dear friend of Vito Russo, one of my political and journalistic heroes. Vito died of AIDS in 1990. His brother remembered her kindness to him three years go when Lily turned 80. He wrote on Facebook:
“Two months before we lost my brother Vito, he asked me to go with him to Fire Island with his best friend Arnie. He wanted to visit a special place in his heart one last time.
“We spent a few days visiting ‘old spots’ and listening to two friends reminisce about the good old days on the island. Vito walked the entire island and was given a superstar welcome when recognized. (Although in a very weakened state).
“Upon our return home he wanted to stop at Balducci’s for some food for home. When we arrived at his apartment, I asked him if he needed any money. He reached down into his jeans and took out a crumbled up check. It was $3,000 from Lily Tomlin.
“He said, ‘She has been sending me money since I got sick’. She did it quietly never saying a word about her kindness to her friend.”
I read lots of interviews with Lily last night. Here is one at Broadwayworld.com by Michael L. Quintos from 2013 that I really liked. Link here.
(Above: Tomlin and Russo.)
(TO SEE THE CURATED IMAGES OF LILY TOMLIN AND OTHERS IN HER LIFE, SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH OR $50 A YEAR. THANKS.)