100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
In no particular order…
Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Cheryl King
With 12 out of 16 shows sold out and extra runs scheduled, Cheryl King Productions’ 2008 Left Out Festival: A Celebration of Gay Performance Art was a runaway success. Built on “a beautiful community effort,” King says, roughly two-thirds of the Festival’s proceeds benefited Bailey House and Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). In addition to her success as a producer, King is an accomplished actor, having performed on TV and starred in Not a Nice Girl, her internationally acclaimed one-woman show. She also serves as acting coach for the Emmy Award-winning All My Children. “A good friend of mine asked me, in the category of the things I do, what my favorite part is,” she muses. The answer? “Actor…then acting coach…writer, producer…in that order.” –JB
In no particular order…
