X-Nico

9 unusual facts about Lily Tomlin


An Apology to Elephants

Narrator Lily Tomlin campaigned on the subject for several years, in the course of which she met Pat Derby.

Ann Elder

She won Emmy awards also for comedy writing, (co-shared for Lily Tomlin's 1974 CBS special among others).

Jerry Goodman

He scored Lily Tomlin's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and is the featured violinist on numerous film soundtracks, including Billy Crystal's Mr. Saturday Night and Steve Martin's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels .

Karyl Geld Miller

Her Emmy was for Best Writing for the TV special Lily, starring Lily Tomlin and featuring Richard Pryor (1974).

Mimi Fariña

Fariña used her connections with the folksinging community to elicit help in her focus with Bread and Roses, including Pete Seeger, Paul Winter, Odetta, Judy Collins, Taj Mahal, Lily Tomlin, Carlos Santana, and Bonnie Raitt, amongst others.

Nick Broomfield

This shift in film-making style was also heavily influenced by Broomfield's experience in attempting to release his earlier film Lily Tomlin, which chronicled Tomlin's one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.

North American Outgames

Among the highlights of OutFest was a 90-minute performance by Lily Tomlin, her first comedic performance in Calgary.

The Flip Wilson Show

Wilson's clout allowed him to get both the new breakout performers (such as The Jackson 5, Roberta Flack, Sandy Duncan, Lily Tomlin, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Albert Brooks, Lola Falana and Melba Moore all of whom became very popular during this period) as well as established singers.

Will Lamartine Thompson

It has been featured in the films The Trip to Bountiful, Junebug, and A Prairie Home Companion (sung by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), in the Anne Tyler novel The Accidental Tourist, and the television series True Blood.


9 to 5 and Odd Jobs

A concept album about working, the album was centered on Parton's hit "9 to 5", which served as the theme song to the film of the same name (co-starring Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin), and topped both the U.S. country and pop charts.

Jason Brett

In 1978, Brett co-founded Chicago's famed Apollo Theater, where he produced over forty-five plays and musicals, including such award-winning productionsvague as the Steppenwolf Theater Company's production of True West, starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinese; Balm in Gilead, featuring Laurie Metcalfe; And a Nightingale Sang, with Joan Allen; Appearing Nightly, with Lily Tomlin; and David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, with James Belushi.

John L. Wasserman

He counted Woody Allen, Joan Baez, poet Michael McClure, Clint Eastwood, Lily Tomlin, Bill Graham and numerous other celebrities among his friends.

Peggy Pope

Pope is most recognizable as "the office lush" (and later, recovered alcoholic) Margaret Foster in the 1980 movie 9 to 5 starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dabney Coleman.

Telephone company

Comedian Lily Tomlin frequently satirized the telephone industry (and the country's then-dominant Bell System in particular) with a skit playing the telephone operator Ernestine.

Vito Russo

His work was posthumously brought to television in the 1996 HBO documentary film The Celluloid Closet, co-executive produced and narrated by Lily Tomlin.

Ziggy Steinberg

He then went on to write "The Bob Newhart Show," "The David Steinberg Show," "The American Music Awards" (from 1976 through 1980), "It's Garry Shandling's Show," several Lily Tomlin specials for CBS, including "Lily: Sold Out" for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award and which won an Emmy Award in the category of Best Musical or Variety Show.

Zoellner Arts Center

The venue has had a wide array of performers, including: the New York Philharmonic and Itzhak Perlman, the Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur-Tu and Laurie Anderson, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, MOMIX, the Aquila Theatre Company, Lily Tomlin, Bernadette Peters and Queen Latifah.


see also