Las Vegas Weekly

October 29, 2009 · 5:58 PM

From operator to health care: Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine has a new job

By Robin Leach

Lily Tomlin.

Photo: Courtesy

For more than 40 years, actress, comedian, writer and producer Lily Tomlin has been making America laugh, but she’s never performed in Las Vegas. Lily finally makes her Strip debut with a nine-day run at MGM’s Hollywood Theatre on Nov. 10.

Back in 1969, Lily created the unbelievable character of Ernestine, a wicked, wisecracking, snorting and funny “ringy dingy” telephone company operator who was the personification of everything one hated about Ma Bell before the government broke up the monopoly.

Ernestine became a cult favorite, with Hollywood stars begging to do battle with her. Now in an updated version of the character, Lily has swapped Ernestine’s telephone taunts with hysterical health care habits, and the new persona will be unveiled with her MGM debut!

After attending Wayne State University in Michigan, Lily began doing standup comedy in Detroit and then went on to New York City. Her first TV appearance was on The Merv Griffin Show in 1965, and by 1969, Lily had joined Laugh-In and launched evil Ernestine and bratty 5-year-old Edith Ann in her rocking chair.

Ernestine:

Lily Tomlin & Cher:

Lily’s memorable work includes 9 to 5 with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, All of Me with Steve Martin and Big Business with Bette Midler. In this year’s Season 5 of Desperate Housewives, she has a recurring role as Roberta, Mrs. McCluskey’s sister, and also appeared on The West Wing.

In advance of arriving in Las Vegas for the rehearsals of her Not Playing With a Full Deck, Lily and I had a freewheeling and fun chat.

Lily Tomlin: I am kind of tickled to talk to you.

Robin Leach: : Let me try and make it a little different: Have you ever played with a full deck?

LT: No, not likely. No one has ever given me credit for that, at least.

RL: It’s a great name for a show. Where did it come from?

LT: My partner Jane really. The hotel wanted a title for the show, and that’s the title we gave it. I do a lot of skewed, off-the-wall things anyway, so it plays right into the title very happily.

RL: Were you always this screwy?

LT: Well, I was probably always in a devoted state of earnestness.

9 to 5 starring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton.

RL: Or of Ernestine?

LT: Yes, I should say a devoted state of Ernestine. As a kid, even I would imitate the neighbors, and my dad would come home from the track and would have too much to drink, and I would imitate him trying to put up his clothes and missing the hanger and all that stuff. I lived in an old apartment house in Detroit in the inner city, so I lived with so many different kinds of people, and I was infatuated with all of them. I would go from apartment to apartment and play the room, literally whatever they were doing I was doing.

RL: Is there some sort of comedic element in the water in Detroit? I mean, that is Robin Williams land?

LT: Robin Williams and Tim Allen. There are loads of showbiz people from Detroit. I went to the same high school as Diana Ross, and I went to the same junior high with … do you remember a kid from way called back called Sugar Charles Robinson who played the piano … he went to my grade school. Oh, God, I lived in a great neighborhood, and here I am playing Vegas for the very first time. This is my debut, a world Vegas premiere. This is my virginal debut, Robin.

RL: We won’t go there! Has Vegas sort of been threatening in the past or why have you changed your mind?

LT: I think a little bit, you know. I’m not sure, but to make fun of myself, I did a special back in 1981. Caesars Palace was dark for a week during Christmastime, and they let us have the big showroom for a special, and I won an Emmy that year for best special called Lily Sold Out. It was about going to Vegas, selling out for the money, and I was kind of swooping myself. I go in saying I am going to do a big artistic act called Seven Ages of Women, and of course it winds up to rival Ann-Margaret or Cher.

Naomi Watts, Mark Wahlberg, Lily Tomlin, Dustin Hoffman and Jude Law in David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees.

I created Tommy Valore for that show, who was a big headliner, and I think you may see a glimpse of that in this all-new show. One of my dreams if I ever played Vegas and had nine days in a room I could do so much -- opening for myself as Tommy Valore is the kind of thing that just turns me on. Being in the MGM for nine days, I have a whole bunch of things in a room that I wouldn’t ever be able to do in a one-nighter. We have a lot of playful perks planned and an upfront “joker section.”

RL: So the question everyone would like to know is Ernestine the telephone operator making a return engagement?

LT: You know, Ernestine has done several jobs over the years. When the government broke up Ma Bell, that was a blow to her because she had so much power working for the phone company. At one time, she had a really fabulous talk show, a web cast Internet chat show where she would call everybody, get everybody on the phone at the same time. Hussein, George W. Bush, Cheney. It was called Ernestine Calls, and if you were on it, you’d better have an answer.

Now Ernestine is working for a big health insurance corporation and denying heath care to everyone. There’s no better woman to do that. It is right up her alley, Robin. She is so happy in this new incarnation. There is nothing she likes better than not being nice to anybody. No matter how nasty I become, I am always holding back. It’s miraculous she became this extraordinary cult figure.

I don’t know how it happened. I think a big part of her is sexually repressed, and I think the audience senses it organically. They sense there is something really sexual going on underneath all that petty bureaucracy and intimidation. When I was first doing Ernestine, I was living in New York, and at the time, the phone company was in such ill will, everyone hated it. The private subscriber was just going down the drain because they had no recourse against the phone company. But as Ernestine called and threatened people and harassed them, her body got so kind of sexual. She was just turned on to be so intimidating.

Photo: Rolling Stone

Lily Tomlin on the cover of Rolling Stone.

RL: She was the underdressed dominatrix.

LT: Yes, you are right, she was a dominatrix. Maybe that will be her next incarnation. Maybe she can say Robin Leach turned me on to it. It was amazing all the celebrities who wanted to rip back with her. There was Cher. Ernestine called Nixon quite a bit, William Buckley, .J Edgar Hoover and even the original monologue Mr. Deedle, who was Gore Vidal.

RL: Lily, how do you perceive Vegas before you even come here, not having been here in ages?

LT: I have been there as a visitor quite often. I play casinos around the country, so it’s not the first time I played a casino. I am very excited to do it and play it -- to be in a theater for several days. Usually, you have to go to Broadway and develop something over time. I think there have been some feelers and invitation stuff to play Vegas in the past. That’s probably why I did that special in ’81, because I wanted to go, and I was a little leery of going. I wanted to make fun of myself. I think I got an offer or two back in the day, as did so many television personalities who played Vegas, but I turned it down.

RL: Lily, look over a long career, and do it from your viewpoint and then just the general viewpoint. Has your comedy changed? Has comedy changed?

Photo: BroadwayWorld.com

Lily Tomlin attends the Tony Awards.

LT: Sure, comedy has changed in that a lot of barriers have been broken. Whether they were worth breaking is questionable. I mean sometimes it’s just language to shock or titillate. It doesn’t matter to me what is said as long as there is some kind of artistic, mature hand that has real judgment about it. Just to do it to shock you is not entirely entertaining. Well, for me, I want something to be rich and layered. I want it to be funny, first of all enjoyable, and then if it can be richer or illuminating. Something that brings people together and doesn’t separate them. It’s the theatrical, the skills of theater than just standing and being obscene with quick one-liners. Language doesn’t mean a whole lot to me if it is apart. Something true in a meaningful way. I adored Richard Pryor, and his humanity was so deep, he brought other layers to the work and to the performance. Ugly, harsh, brutal kind of stuff I don’t think is great.

RL: Are you looking forward to spending some free time in Vegas while you are working?

LT: Yes, very much so. I’ll be able to do things there with you all that are impossible when you are on a one-nighter somewhere. I will be there for a few days rehearsing. I don’t think Cher will be there at the time. You know she is a dear friend, of course. I catch everybody else that I can. It’s great fun to be in Vegas. I play the slots a little bit, like the dollar slots.

RL: I’d love to see Ernestine playing the slots.

LT: I have a slot, Robin, you won’t believe it -- an Ernestine slot. It is the first interactive slot machine. It’s been test marketed, apparently, and is fairly successful. They may well have it at MGM in time for my opening night and run there. She says all kinds of stuff, like, “You missed that one, buddy,” “Oh, how exciting.” She just carries on and does all kinds of foolish stuff. It’s really kind of cute.

Photo: Courtesy

Lily Tomlin portrays telephone operator Ernestine.

RL: One final question : Did you ever run afoul of the phone company that triggered you to create Ernestine? Did you ever not pay your bill and get cut off?

LT: You know there were tough times when I was living in New York, a kid pounding the pavement. A friend of mine, I had taken over their apartment, and they hadn’t paid the last bill. I didn’t know it, and I could not get a telephone. It was impossible. I begged, I pleaded. If I got a phone, I had to put up a $500 deposit because of their address. I couldn’t get $500 together at one time, so I could not get a telephone. It was so difficult.

After Ernestine appeared on Laugh-In the first few weeks, the phone company actually kept sending people to the set to watch ’cause they thought I was going to cause them some difficulties and embarrassment. Then would you believe it, she was such a hit that they tried to get me to do commercials for Bell. In those days, I was such an idealist I turned them all down, but now Jane says tell them you would do it in a minute. But back then I literally burst into tears. My agent came into town and told me they wanted me to do commercials. Here I am thinking I am really bringing commentary to the culture, and they want me to do commercials. I just cried like I had failed miserably.

People do love her. They still do after all of these years, so she will be alive and well in Vegas, and I will probably add another 10 or 12 characters to her visit there.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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— From Vegas Deluxe

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