Life Lessons from Lily Tomlin

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, we revisit some highlights from our January 1976 and May 1988 interviews with the Laugh-In luminary Lily Tomlin. Sit down, relax—you just might learn a thing or two. 

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“I like the idea of working fast and hard.”

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“I got a job as a waitress, and I had the job as an assistant bookkeeper. We had kids from college crashing on our floor. And I’d get up on Sunday morning at 6 o’clock and go do breakfast over in Howard Johnson’s. But then I moved. One of the most wonderful things that happened to me on Fifth Street was that I had a little blue laminated coat and a blue princess dress, and I had a pair of Ferragamo shoes. I’d dance in the fountains at the Seagram [building]. I went out one night with a friend and her boyfriend, and we danced in as many fountains as we could find. [laughs] I was just totally invested in Holly Golightly and Suzy Parker in The Best of Everything [1959]. Oh god, it’s embarrassing.”

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“I have a whole lot against reality. Are you kidding? I have absolutely no interest in reality whatsoever.”

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“I was in my early twenties and I was playing Winnie, who’s supposed to be, like, 50, buried to her neck in the sand hill. And that’s where I discovered Ruth Draper [the 20th-century monologist, known for her repertoire of characters], at the Unstabled. Jack Slain, an older guy who was a lawyer, would come and hang out at the Unstabled, and I would do sketches. He said to me, ‘Have you heard of Ruth Draper? I think there are recordings of her at the library. You should go listen to her.’ And that was an epiphany.”

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“Bette [Midler] and I had dinner with Lucy [Lucille Ball]. Lucy is unbelievable. She told this whole story about how she had to have an emergency root canal the morning she had to fly to New York, and how she didn’t want to take painkillers, so the doctor told her to just take some cognac and swish it around in her mouth. Of course, she does this whole thing at dinner, about settling down in the seat on the airplane and ordering a double cognac, and sitting there and swishing it in her mouth—just like Lucy—then looking to spit it out and there’s no place to spit it, so she swallows it. Well, she does that about ten times. It was just wonderful. Of course, she never called afterward…”

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“I always wanted to have white hair like my mother. Her hair turned white in her 40s.”

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“One night at my show in New York, coincidentally, Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, and Barbra Streisand were all there. Streisand got sick and left during the first act; she had to be taken up to the office until her car came. Thank god I didn’t know they were there. I would have literally had a heart attack, and thank god I did a fairly presentable show. Afterward, somebody came to tell me that Hepburn was coming back to see me. I ran out of the dressing room and met her on the stairs. She was a step below me—looking up with that face—and I just kissed her all over it. She never called again. I just couldn’t believe it. I got to kiss Hepburn’s face.”

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“When I started doing waitress of the week at Howard Johnson’s on 46th and Broadway, I ducked down behind the counter and used the microphone. I’d say, ‘Attention, diners. Lily Tomlin, our waitress of the week, is about to make an appearance on the floor. Let’s give her a big hand.’ And then I’d go out and perform, because my tips would rise. I didn’t think of it as performing. I just thought I was having a good time, pulling a prank.”

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“I always made stuff for myself to do.”

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“I got [Bette Midler] laughing one day. I was so proud of myself, because she just had to sit down on the floor. We got onto this whole thing about the Midler Institute of Mugging. I’d bee working internally and trying to evolve something, and she’d say, ‘Come on, lighten up. Every scene can’t be an Academy Award winner.’ She was getting into all this—you know how she does it—that big jaw, her eyes, everything. Those classic mugs. So I started practicing to see if I could mug as well as she could. That’s how the Midler Institute for Mugging was founded. We started developing courses; at the end I was doing, like, postgraduate work with the founding light. One day I had a scene where I was eating peanut butter on a celery stalk. This course was ‘Working with Sticky Substances.’ She had great courses—’Upstaging Your Co-Star’ was an important one. The last day she gave me a big graduation plaque.”

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“I don’t feel like I’m ever going to do die. I mean, if you felt like you were really going to die, you’d be more mature than I am.”