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Lily Tomlin brings evening of classics to San Diego

January 27th, 2010 by Scott Marks

At 7:45 p.m., fifteen minutes after the scheduled start of Lily Tomlin’s show on Wednesday at the Balboa Theatre, the packed house began stomping their feet and clapping in unison, restless and eager for the star to take to the stage and entertain them as she has been doing for the past 40 years.

The mere sight of a prop man placing two water bottles onstage brought about thunderous applause. Within minutes the houselights dimmed and the crowd was treated to a brief video retrospective, most of it taken from the 1981 television special “Lily: Sold Out.”

The stage bill, which heralded “An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin,” lived up to its title. Between the video and her live performance, virtually all of the seventy-year old comedian’s vast array of comic incarnations were represented.

Baby-boomers weaned on Rowan and Martin’s “Laugh In” can’t help but remember her two quintessential creations: Ernestine, the surly, chortling telephone operator, and the precocious six-year old Edith Ann whose first name always ends with a Bronx cheer. While little Edith hasn’t aged a day, Ernestine is no longer in the employ of Ma Bell. She now works for an insurance company, where her job is denying people health care coverage.

Tomlin was one of the first female comics to appear in drag and both of her male embodiments were represented in the clip reel. Fans will surely remember the chain-smoking Vegas lounge lizard Tommy Velour, but only diehards will recall Pervis Hawkins, the black rhythm-and-blues soul singer patterned after Luther Vandross.

When the actress and champion monologist took to the stage, her coltish deportment instantly sliced forty years off her age. In her best Susie the Sorority Girl affectation, Tomlin regaled the audience with a tailor made cheer that blessed the weather in America’s finest city and lamented the Chargers failure to make it to this year’s Super Bowl. She appeared to take it personally. After all, Tomlin does share the same initials as a certain All Pro running back.

Tomlin never aims for cheap, smutty laughs. The closest she came to working blue was a flashback to the squeaky clean fifties when a “certain word” spray painted on an overpass would be altered overnight to read “Buick.”

The show opened with a solid set of observations aimed at poking holes through life’s endless stream of contradictions. For Tomlin, “No matter how cynical you become it’s never enough.” She later asked, “Why is it that when we talk to God we’re said to be praying, but when God talks to us we’re schizophrenic?”

This last aside formed a perfect segue to Trudi, the semi-coherent street person, and from then on it was an evening of Lily’s greatest hits. Why not? If Mick Jagger can still take to the stage and wail about his inability to “get no satisfaction,” why shouldn’t Tomlin be able to rekindle her past glories?

Judith Beasley — the uptight suburbanite for whom sexual freedom means the freedom not to have sex — was there. So was Madame Lupe, the world’s oldest living beauty expert. The moment Tomlin parked herself center stage and pulled her knees up to her chest, the audience knew it was time for the bratty musings of Edith Ann, Tomlin’s forerunner to Pee-Wee Herman.

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Scott Marks flies solo on KPBS Radio’s “These Days”

August 27th, 2008 by Scott Marks

It is not as though I have never done the Film Club before, but this morning’s ride to the station found me shaking harder than a Katherine Hepburn Jell-O mold. This was the first time since my days on The Lounge where I would be the sole guest

Beth Accomando and I make a good team, and the thought of not having her to bounce off of made me nervous. Very nervous. In the words of Daffy Duck, I was as black as a sheet. It’s not that the material was unfamiliar — if I can’t talk about the Marx Brothers and Jerry Lewis, who can? For some reason, I felt that the pressure was on to be brilliant. My producer, the indispensable Angela Carone, put a lot of work into today’s show and I didn’t want to let her down. Nor did I want to come off as the guy who hates everything. Truth be told, I love more movies than most people have seen, it’s just that the majority of them were made before 1975. Generally, my batting average on the show is 1 for 10. For every ten movies we review, I like one of them.

Instead of assuming my usual position on the opposite side of the console, I sat next to host Tom Fudge and we couldn’t have been more comfortable had we been sitting in a living room. As soon as the “On the Air” light was turned on, the 45 minutes flew by faster than Sherlock, Jr.

Some of the listeners threw me for a loop. This was a show about classic comedy and calling in to praise Soapdish is kind of like referencing The Apple Dumpling Gang during a discussion of John Ford, Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher. And of all the directors, I never expected Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night to be on a caller’s mind.

There were many discussion points that we didn’t have time for and I failed to mention that it was Ms. Accomando’s idea to give me an hour to myself. In the words of Ricky Riccardo, “Thanks, par’ner!”

Four badges of honor:

1) Tom sat and watched Sherlock, Jr. with his kids. Nothing makes me happier than exposing a new generation to Buster’s brilliance.

2) Lewisophobe Fudge was actually laughing his head off during The Nutty Professor clip. :P

3) I was able to mention Thomas Racz’s recent discovery of a longer print of A Night at the Opera. Hopefully someone in L.A. was listening.

4) And this is the big one — Angela actually took home my copy of The Nutty Professor to watch…actually. Can’t wait for her breathless phone call begging to borrow my copy of Cracking Up.

Listen to the show here.

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