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
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Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Andrea Meyerson
All Out Films founder Andrea Meyerson left the corporate trenches in 1995 to develop social networks for the Los Angeles area lesbian community. After the initial success of her lesbian social club, Women on a Roll, she created StandOut Productions, an event production company focused on LGBT fundraisers, comedy shows and concerts. Meyerson founded All Out Films in 2002, and produced and directed its hit 2003 documentary, Laughing Matters, a tribute to the lesbian pioneers of comedy, which she has since developed into a “docu-comedy” series on LOGO. She is currently working on Laughing Matters…Next Gen, featuring new faces on the LGBT comedy circuit, and I Stand Corrected, about the life of renowned jazz bassist John (more recently known as Jennifer) Leitham. Meyerson has received honors from the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, PowerUp, PlanetOut, and Human Rights Campaign, and made history in 2007 by becoming the first out lesbian to receive the YWCA’s Women of Achievement Award. –KL
In no particular order…
