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!).
Lorri L. Jean
As CEO of the LA Gay & Lesbian Center, the world’s largest LGBT center, Lorri L. Jean is a major figure in today’s LGBT equality movement. Her 25 years as an activist are marked with many milestones. She was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Georgetown University to ban LGBT discrimination. When Jean was the Deputy Regional Director in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), she became the first gay or lesbian person in history to receive top-secret security clearance from the CIA, which made her the highest-ranking openly gay person in federal government. Barring a brief tenure as the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Jean has served as the CEO of the LA Center since 1993. In that time, she’s dramatically increased the Center’s budget, programs, and facilities. Today, Jean oversees the Center’s annual budget of $43 million, 300 full-time employees and 3,000 active volunteers. –KL
In no particular order…
