Lily... Ernestine...Tess...Lupe...Edith Ann..

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There are no better comedians around now, and on the evidence of Nashville and The Late Show, few better actresses. In the latter she plays Margo, a pill-pushing whacko on the edge of survival in Los Angeles. She and Art Carney, as a patient private eye, may just be the oddest—but most likable —mix since Tracy and Hepburn were thrown together a generation ago.

Carney thinks Tomlin has "the greatest range of any actress now.'' Nashville showed it. As Linnea, the dutiful mother of two deaf children, she acts mesmerically with her eyes. Says Co-Star Henry Gibson: "I will always cherish the bar scene when Lily listens to Keith Carradine. The look on her face —a combination of love for this rock singer and guilt for the adultery she knew would take place—why, it just tears you." He is right.

Broadway revues are a tough challenge for any performer, however gifted, but Lily Tomlin brings along the advantage of having not only an audience but a following. For all the people who think that there is no one like her—and there isn't—seeing her live for the first time is a little like the old days when you finally got to see your favorite radio comedian in a movie.

Tomlin's following began to gather in her three years on Laugh-In (1969-'72), where her oldest characters, like Ernestine and Edith Ann, were born. Several television specials and two socko sessions as host of NBC's Saturday Night have added to her fans. She has crisscrossed the country with various one-woman shows (the Broadway evening, which was S.R.O. in its Chicago and Boston tryouts, has largely new material). "My instincts tell me now's the time to do it," she says. "But I'm still scared stiff."

Her show is, in fact, very fast and funny, but humor is secondary to the development of character. She follows a comic rule Charlie Chaplin laid down a long time ago. "Comedy must be real and true to life," said Chaplin. "My comedy is actual life with the slightest twist or exaggeration." To that, Tomlin adds: "I construct a compressed accuracy, a character essence that is as true and real as I can get it. I don't go for laughter. I never play for a joke, per se. If the joke gets in the character's way, I take it out."

Though she has never been to one of Lee Strasberg's classes, Tomlin carries method acting to its limit. She does not take on a character; the character takes her on. Lily speaks of a creation in the third person and tells stories about her as if she were an eccentric cousin or a peculiar aunt. When the box office opened for her Broadway show a few weeks ago, for example, Mrs. Beasley showed up in a Red Cross uniform to give coffee and donuts to those standing in line. "I wouldn't go out there," says Lily, "so Mrs. Beasley went out there to take care of them in the cold."

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