Comedy / Film & TV / Theatre & dance
Lily Tomlin
born 1939 · comedian, actress, writer
Comedy legend raised in Detroit's Virginia Park area; Cass Tech and Wayne State alumna whose characters grew out of the neighbors on her childhood block.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 87- Birth name
- Mary Jean Tomlin
- Also known as
- Ernestine · Edith Ann
- Detroit years
- 1939–1965
- Field
- Comedy, Film & TV, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Lily Tomlin was born in Detroit on September 1, 1939, to Southern Baptist parents who had come north from Paducah, Kentucky, during the Depression; her father worked in a factory. She grew up in an apartment house at Hazelwood and Byron streets in the Virginia Park area of the west side, a mixed, working-class block whose residents later resurfaced in her comedy characters. She went to Crosman Elementary, Hutchins Junior High and Cass Technical High School, graduating in 1957, then enrolled at Wayne State University to study biology. A theatre class there changed her course. She began doing improvisations and sketches, spent about a year and a half performing at the Unstabled, a bohemian coffeehouse theatre, and played Detroit nightclubs before moving to New York. Her mother had warned that nobody would pay to see people from the neighborhood; Ernestine the telephone operator and little Edith Ann on Laugh-In proved otherwise.
Highlights
- Breakout on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1969–1973)
- Grammy for This Is a Recording (1972), the first solo woman to win Best Comedy Album
- Tony Award for The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
- Oscar nomination for Nashville (1975); star of 9 to 5 and Grace and Frankie
- Kennedy Center Honors (2014); Michigan Women's Hall of Fame (1998)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 4
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Lived here · 1940s–1950s
Childhood apartment house (Hazelwood and Byron)
Demolished
The apartment building where she grew up; it was gutted by fire after 1967 and torn down.
Studied here · 1954–1957
Cass Technical High School
She graduated in 1957. The school now uses a 2005 building beside the site of the old one, demolished in 2011.
Studied here · late 1950s–early 1960s
Wayne State University
She enrolled in biology, took a theatre class and switched to performing.
Performed here · early 1960s
The Unstabled coffeehouse
Closed
A bohemian coffeehouse and cabaret theatre where Tomlin spent about a year and a half doing sketches and improvisations.