I feel sure that Lily Tomlin’s skeleton is made up almost entirely of funnybones, even down to the tiniest bone in her ear. Because how else do you explain someone who has been consistently hilarious for more than 50 years? QED.
My earliest exposure to Tomlin, now 75, was unwitting. Like many children of my generation, I watched The Magic School Bus, but it would be years before I realised Tomlin was the voice of Ms Frizzle, the wacky and warm teacher who took her class on great adventures (“Seatbelts, everyone!”).
I didn’t know then of her stellar comedy chops, first as a standup in Detroit and later New York: she imbues her characters with real wit – not just from the script, but donated from her own supply. I had no idea of her many films – Nashville, 9-To-5, Short Cuts – movies that I would come to love. (Playing opposite Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda, it’s saying something that Tomlin is the 9-To-5 stand-out.)
Since then, I’ve caught up with her sketch characters, among them Ernestine the phone operator and Judith Beasley, former vibrator saleswoman. Tomlin serves up a wry, knowing face like few others: her eyes narrow, her brow furrows, and she never seems scripted.
Now she’s co-starring with Fonda again, in Netflix’s Grace And Frankie, as one of two women suddenly facing life without husbands who have come out as gay (Tomlin herself is gay, and married to her longtime collaborator Jane Wagner). She’s unsurprisingly great, a Gone With The Wind, hippie-lite character with occasional spikes. The material hardly matters: Tomlin is pure funnybones, and you can’t fight science.
