Lily Tomlin's Evolutionary Career

With Tomlin (and Richard Pryor), Wagner ended up co-writing four TV specials of The Lily Tomlin Show in 1971. From there, Wagner and Tomlin's partnership bloomed, and the shows it produced from the mid seventies to mid eighties — 1977's Appearing Nitely, 1981's Lily — Sold Out, and 1985's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe just got better and better.

In 1991, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe was released as a film, and in 2000 it returned to Broadway to continued acclaim.

Alongside Tomlin's stand-up routines and one-woman shows, the comedienne has acted in a number of films. Notable film roles include those in: Nashville (1975), Nine to Five (1980), The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981; written by Wagner), All of Me (1984), Short Cuts (1993), Tea with Mussolini (1999; wherein Tomlin plays a lesbian archeologist), and now I Heart Huckabees (2004).

Recently, Tomlin narrated (and was interviewed for) Superstar in a Housedress (2004), a documentary about Andy Warhol's transvestite Jackie Curtis, one of Tomlin's personal friends.

But her most important narration for a documentary to date has got to be for 1996's The Celluloid Closet. Gay author Armistead Maupin wrote the script of Tomlin's voice-over for the documentary based on Vito Russo's groundbreaking book on homosexual representations in film. Russo, who died of AIDS in 1990, would have been proud to see his landmark 1980 book for queer media studies put into such an effective film form, and equally proud to see Tomlin as its narrator.

As evidenced by Tomlin's appearance in the gay media (interviewed by Russo) as early as 1976, her lending her talents to essential GLBTQ documentaries like The Celluloid Closet, and her work with organizations like GLAAD and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, Tomlin has never been one to shirk away from the gay cause.

Her own private life has remained, for the most part, just that: private, and yet Tomlin has never worked to hide Wagner, nor lied when asked directly about Wagner's important place in her life and home.

In an era when most of our out-front lesbian role models are relationship-hopping, and relationships, whether straight or gay, that last a lifetime seem to be increasingly few and far between, Tomlin and Wagner's thirty four years together are not only commendable, they are an inspiration.