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!).
Marta Drury
After raising her daughter as a single mother on welfare, Marta Drury received an inheritance from her parents—a bequest that has allowed her to become an international philanthropist. She is currently the director of The Heart and Hand Fund (which supports women’s and LGBT groups in the Balkans), an advisor to The Global Fund for Women and is on the international panel of the Astraea Foundation. She was one of the 1,000 Women of Peace nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 and was honored with Astraea’s Philanthropic Activist Award. She’s found that helping women is beneficial to the entire community. “When women get their own families stabilized, then they look to their community to try to give back.” –LL
In no particular order…
