Tomlin On Her Own Terms

By Loren King

She’s a national treasure and a living legend, but to gays and lesbians in general and to Bostonians in particular, Lily Tomlin has always been one of us.

It seems almost quaint now, but before TMZ and Perez Hilton and YouTube rendered everything about celebrities fair game and created an insatiable public, a star, even a major star, could be out without much mainstream attention. To be a fan who understood was to be an insider; it was one of the privileges of an exclusive club.

Coming Out on Her Own Terms

“It was never a secret in the business,” says Tomlin over the phone from Los Angeles. “In the early ‘70s, journalists protected people they liked and journalists, even feminists, protected me at the time. Jane [Wagner] was always there for the interviews; then the article would say that I lived alone or that I shared a house with writer Jane Wagner.”

It was an era of media complicity and deference. “It was not a free-for-all like it is today. ‘Time’ offered me the cover in 1975 if I agreed to come out,” she says. “They needed a gay person and ended up going with [Sgt. Leonard] Matlovich in September of ‘75 when we were in the studio making ‘Modern Scream’ [a comedy album]. To say, ‘Yes I’m gay’ just to be on a magazine cover, well, I was a little insulted. It’s how I reacted at the time.”

Tomlin countered with trademark humor. “Modern Scream” featured a tabloid-style interview with Tomlin’s arsenal of characters. In one, the prying journalist asks Lily herself about portraying a heterosexual in a movie. Tomlin quips, “You don’t have to be one to play one.” The satire, she says, “was my answer to ‘Time.’ I was saying, ‘I’ll do it on my own terms.’”

That wasn’t enough for some activists. Long before writer Armistead Maupin publicly criticized her in 1995 for not being out enough when she narrated and helped produce “The Celluloid Closet” (“I adored Vito Russo; it was a labor of love,” Tomlin says.), activists had balked at her degree of openness. “Back in ‘70 or ’71, when I first met Jane, Jill Johnston of the Village Voice called me at Jane’s apartment—I have no idea how she got the number—and she threatened me: ‘If you don’t come out, I’ll tackle you onstage,’ something like that. I’ve never responded to threats; if you threatened me, I will fight back. This happened with activists over the years. I identified more as a feminist than a lesbian.”

After 39 years together in March, Tomlin laughs when she’s asked why the couple isn’t touted as one of the rare, long-term Hollywood marriages. “We’ve never been newsy and we’re less so now at our age,” she says. “Movies can’t even get me insured.”

The Boston Connection

Besides her deep connection to LGBT audiences, Tomlin has strong ties to Boston that date back to the early ‘70s when she appeared several times at the late, great nightspot Pall’s Mall. In 1977, her first one-woman show, “Appearing Nitely,” had its pre-Broadway run at the Wilbur Theater (“My good luck theater,” she calls it.) She returned there in 1985 with “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” before the show headed to Broadway and earned Tomlin her second Tony award. She will be back at the Wilbur March 27 for two performances, 7 p.m. and 9:45 p.m., in a show she’s billing as “an evening of classics,” a tailored version of her recent Las Vegas debut at The MGM Grand Hotel in “Not Playing with a Full Deck.”

It was while doing “Appearing Nitely” that Tomlin headlined a benefit at the Berklee Performance Center for out State Rep. Elaine Noble who was mounting a 1978 bid for the U.S. Senate. The benefit was a favor to Noble’s campaign manager, Santa Ferrari, who called Tomlin and asked for her help. The resulting friendship brought Tomlin to Boston many times for benefits over the years, most notably the “Lunch With Lily” events for Rosie’s Place. The 2009 Fenway Health’s Women’s Dinner Party honored Tomlin with the Susan M. Love Award for her longtime support of Fenway Health.

Besides her nonstop stage performances across the country, Tomlin, at 70, has found a comfortable niche on the small screen, most recently guest starring on “Desperate Housewives” and “Damages.” Fans were treated last season to her appearance on Kathy Griffin’s “My Life on the D-List” and to the sight of Tomlin wincing as Griffin telephoned Jane Fonda, Tomlin’s friend and “9 to 5” co-star.

“I called Jane ahead of time,” says Tomlin. “I didn’t want to be responsible for getting a friend in trouble. You never know what Kathy’s going to do.”

As her own star was rising, Tomlin says she had another, more personal reason for not wanting to make too-public pronouncements about her sexuality  “My mother is dead now, but she was very fundamentalist, living in Paducah, Kentucky. She was stoic and intelligent and funny … My brother is gay, too. My mother had trouble with other people knowing, old friends and family. As long as it was not in the papers, it was OK.”

But it was in the papers—at least if you could read the large type between the lines. Tomlin remembers an interview with the New York Times, after actress Maria Schneider of “Last Tango in Paris” had proclaimed to journalist Leticia Kent that she’d “slept with 50 men and 20 women.” “It was OK because there were more men than women. I went on a rant about it and I told Leticia, ‘Why don’t you say I’ve slept with 50 women and 20 men.’ Then Lee Israel did another Times piece on me and she said, ‘I don’t think she’d had 50 of anything.’ Leticia told her, ‘I pulled her out of the closet and you put her back in!”

But often it was the interviewer who appeared clueless. Tomlin recalls a 1973 appearance on “The Tonight Show” when Johnny Carson asked if she was married, then followed up with a question about whether Tomlin wanted children. “The audience got very quiet. The audience knows you. I said I never wanted biologically to have a child; I thought it too daunting a task. Back then, it was a scandal not to want children. You were suspect. I turned to him and said, ‘And who has custody of yours?’” Carson and the audience laughed.

She did it in her own inimitable style, and on her own terms.

Lily Tomlin performs in “Not Playing with a Full Deck” at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston on March 27 at 7 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. For more information, check out www.lilytomlin.com.