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In 1966 she came to New York, where she auditioned for Garry Moore's television variety show by dancing in bare feet—with taps taped onto the bottoms. Moore was charmed by the innocent grotesqueness of it all and hired her. The show—not Lily—was a bomb, however, and it took three years in both Detroit and New York cabarets before she got the Big Chance on Laugh-In. When she started rehearsing Ernestine, says Producer George Schlatter, "everybody onstage, every member of the crew knew that something important was happening. Lily did more for us than we did for her. We needed her desperately."
Ernestine was an instantaneous hit in the way only TV can create success. Little kids were immediately imitating Ernestine's "Is this the party to whom I am speaking?" the way they said "dyno-mite" like Good Times' Jimmy Walker last year. Schlatter left Laugh-In in 1972, and the show, reflecting the strait-laced Nixon years, had less room for Tomlin's wild, irreverent humor. Before it folded in 1973, she was suing NBC to be released.
Both CBS and ABC hired her for specials, with the possibility of a regular show, but the Sixth Avenue hot-shots ran nervously for their Di-Gel every time she appeared on the screen. Tomlin, went the word, was not safe—something Lily could have told them at the start. Says she: "Commercial television specializes in escapist fantasy. I deal with culture reality." Adds Jane Wagner, who co-produced two of the TV specials: "The network bosses think Lily is a genius, but they are also scared to death of her."
Luckily, Lily no longer needs them. With the success of The Late Show, her future in the movies seems boundless, if somewhat undefined at the moment. If she makes it big on Broadway as well, she can probably do just about anything she wants—including TV, if she will still deign to do it. "Appearing on Broadway legitimizes me as a concert performer," she says. "New York and Los Angeles have the most demanding, knowledgeable audiences in the country."
She will be ready for them. There is really very little that daunts Lily Tomlin. When the crew of The Late Show gave her a hard time—or what she thought was a hard time—she marched right up to them. "Listen, you bastards," she said, sounding a little like Mary Jean from Detroit. "I know what's going to happen to me after this movie. I'm going to get good notices and do another film. Do you know what's going to happen to you? Maybe you won't work again for another year. So shove it!" There was no more trouble. Lily is as devoted to the feminist cause as any performer in the country. She has appeared at benefits in support of the Equal Rights Amendment in St. Louis, Cleveland and Denver, and she has campaigned for Bella Abzug and Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso. A few years ago, she was appearing on the Dick Cavett Show when Actor Chad Everett referred to his wife as his property—along with his horse and dog. She stunned even herself by walking off the show.