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Lily Tomlin.
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Tomlin, Lily (1939—)
Lily Tomlin, a gifted comedienne, writer, and actress, emerged on American television in the early 1970s as a featured performer on the highly innovative and successful com...
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Critical Essay by Amy Gross
[Lily Tomlin's] operating, more and more, from a comic perspective she discovered, and from there, things are not so much funny ha-ha as funny amazing. Watching her ...
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Critical Essay by David Felton
When we caught Lily recently at the Boarding House, in orange overalls and black turtleneck, without costumes or props, we were introduced to at least five strange chara...
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Critical Essay by Tracy Young
Lily Tomlin's career, thus far, straddles a decade. It is not a specific, chronological decade like the fifties or sixties, but rather an amorphous period of cultu...
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Critical Essay by Elizabeth Stone
Lily Tomlin's humor is a victory of the comic spirit in a world closer to [Jonathan] Swift's than to [George] Meredith's, as her … one-wom...
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Critical Essay by Jonathan Takiff
Lily Tomlin is that rare creature who can make you laugh and cry, almost simultaneously. She is not so much comedienne as impressionist, or better yet, social observe...
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Critical Essay by Richard L. Coe
Lily Tomlin is more than a comedienne. Whereas Alice went "Through the Looking Glass" to find a topsy-turvy but delightful world, Lily breaks through the...
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Critical Essay by Peter Buckley
[Tomlin's] more than a comedienne, she's a clown….
A carefully constructed pyramid of wit and wisdom, [Tomlin's humor is] by and for the peo...
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Critical Essay by Stephen Holden
On Stage [is] more than just a recorded stage show; it's a self-sufficient album comparable to the best of the Firesign Theater. (p. 93)
The bulk of the album c...
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Critical Essay by Lester Bangs
"On Stage" is a recording of highlights from [Appearing Nitely], and it reveals both Tomlin's virtuosity and her limitations….
Appearing Nite...
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Critical Essay by Robert Ward
The thread that weaves through all of Tomlin's work is a great respect for her inventions. [Tomlin] never condescends to even the most absurd of her characters. An...
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Critical Essay by James Wolcott
Modern Scream (great title: movie-mag trashiness crossed with primal therapy) is not the usual recorded-live-stage-show-comedy album, as Lily Tomlin's first two ...
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Critical Essay by Ellen Cohn
What [Tomlin's] unique perspective has given us is a repertory of nearly 20 characters ranging from a cheeky adenoidal 5 1/2-year-old named Edith Ann to Sister Boog...
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Critical Essay by Lynn Van Matre
I've found Tomlin funny and perceptive at times in the past; her Ernestine the operator routine, which she did not reprise has sent me into hysterics. But I hav...
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Critical Essay by Elliot Norton
Miss Tomlin is a SATIRIST, and a genius. She mocks her own generation in somewhat the same way that Jules Feiffer does. She puts them on the stage, and "puts the...
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Critical Essay by Clive Barnes
The important thing about Miss Tomlin—and the lady is very important—is that she defines her generation and her time. She is the Anti-Establishment Establi...
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Critical Essay by Jack Kroll
Tomlin's Broadway show ["Appearing Nitely"] may well be a crossroads in one of the most extraordinary careers in our popular culture…. [Tomlin]...
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Critical Essay by Brendan Gill
[The occasion of Lily Tomlin's Broadway début with "Appearing Nitely"] is a personal triumph on a scale not unlike that of, say, Alexander sw...
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Critical Essay by Ross Wetzsteon
[Lily Tomlin's] cult says she identifies so deeply with her characters she becomes them, but I feel she identifies so deeply with her characters she ignores us....
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Tomlin, Lily (1939—)
Critical Essay by Amy Gross
