- Even when I was starting out and people would say, "Oh, how can you do standup?"

Which I, of course, I didn't really do conventional standup, but I did do standup because I stood up and tried to entertain an audience by myself in a nightclub.

And but people would say, "Oh, you'll lose your femininity."

You know, because it was a really, it was an incredible frame of mind that the society had, that a woman couldn't stand up and tell jokes because it was too...

It was too powerful to make an audience laugh once you had control of them in some way.

Or that's some conventional idea.

And it's really nothing, it's just human beings exchanging, communicating about something.

And I never saw it that way, I saw if anybody was aggressive or you know, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, the old... That old kind of style or thinking, I thought, "Well, I don't like a man who does that kind of comedy either."

You know, I want some...

I want some enlightenment, I want some kind of...

Some kind of communion about our common experience.

And so it never...

I never was affected by that.

I mean, one of my favorite stories to tell about women doing comedy, I was working at the Upstairs at the Downstairs in the review and I didn't even have enough sense to know that there was a character woman, an ingenue, and a leading lady.

I thought, well, if you're an actor or a performer, you play anything you are able to play.

And the girl who was in the show who was the ingenue was like, as boring as you could.

I mean, like, you know... You might as well have been like a mud fence with a vanilla frame on it.

And but when we were in the dressing room, she'd tell me stories that were so funny and she would characterize them or act them out.

And I'd be screaming, I'd say, "You've got to do that on stage."

And she'd pull herself up and her hair would get like really huge, sort of like mine is now.

And she'd say, "Oh, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was unattractive."

You know and I... That didn't compute for me, I didn't understand that.

I thought people aren't, they're not gonna...

They don't think you are that person or that idea, or that expression.

You know that shows some braininess on your side, that you have that, on your part, that you have that perception or that synthesis that...

Cause I was, you know, people would say to me in the beginning when I first would go on talk shows, they'd say, "Oh, it's too bad you're so normal as an individual, you know, like such a... You're like a regular person talking."

And I... And they'd say, you can't do all those characters, they won't know who you are.

And I said, "Well, you think the audience is that stupid?"

I think it's just being an actor.

And you say, "Well, what else can I do?"

Well, you know, age, gender, culture type.

And I wanted to do a kid because I knew I could say things as a kid that you couldn't say in the mouth of any other character.

And I'd started working on Edith and all I did to create her life, I put her between my brother and me, and made her a middle child so that I could draw on all that real stuff.

Like I talk about going to Pars Bar, which I went with my father when I was a kid.

And my mother and whatever my brother did to me, whatever I did to my baby brother, I had her older sister, me, theoretically do it to Edith.

And I had Edith do stuff to her baby brother that... You know, I just took all that life stuff that I'd really experienced and had a reality for me, you know, so it really lived in my body.

And that's how I started working with Jane Wagner because I'd seen a thing she'd written for television called "J.T."

and it was about a kid in Harlem.

And it was 1969, it's a long, long time ago.

And it was so satiric and edgy, and sweet, and tender, and loving, and affirming, and yet... You know, and so intelligently written and every phrase, every sentence almost, line was like a perception sort of essenced.

And yet it seemed naturalistic, and carried plot and character forward.

And I'd say, I thought, "Oh my God, this is just what I love in a monologue."

How can you get in five minutes or six minutes, compress something so that you understand a culture type or you create some kind of metaphorical invention that conveys something else about the culture.

And I called Jane and asked her to work on my "Edith Ann" album.

And I didn't hear from her for weeks and I had to go into... And I had to go in, in about five days, I had to go and record and I got a bunch of material from her.

And it was so much better than anything I'd been doing, and I persuaded her to come to California and work on the album with me, and record it.

And that... And we began a relationship immediately.

I mean, it was just, she was, I under... She's from Tennessee, my family's from Kentucky.

I totally understood her sensibility, but she had such a brain, such a beautiful, you know, loving, embracing brain that she could write with such informed content and feeling.

I went on "Laugh-In" on the third season, and so everybody was already a big star.

The show was the top, maybe number one show in the nation, and I stepped into it.

So there's nothing like stepping into a hit show and then to step into it.

Fortunately with a character like Ernestine that just hit like mad, you know, overnight she was a hit.

Not me necessarily but Ernestine, because I never planned for her to be the way she was physically.

I was in New York, I didn't know I'd be on TV eventually.

And I was just kind of...

I was gonna do a tough New York operator, you know, and I started, but as I threatened people with all this information I had and taped conversations, her body just got tighter and tighter, and tighter, you know?

And it was just like she was just getting off on this, abusing people this way and wielding this bureaucratic power.

And when my face got tight, (Lily snorts) then I would snort and my hand went in my blouse just unconsciously so that's a kind of serendipitous thing that happens sometimes for an actor, is that really organic character comes bubbling up.

And I swear that has to be why she was so popular.

You know, people sense something, they sense that this person all twisted up, you know, with their legs all crossed and tight, it has to be a little something going on.

Nothing will get 'em like sex anyway.

(Lily laughs) - [Interviewer] Was the making of it as sort of wonderfully chaotic as- - Yeah.

- [Interviewer] Just briefly.

- Yeah, okay "Laugh-In" was...

Yes, it was pretty chaotic and wonderful.

What you would do is we would have racks and racks of clothes, each one of us, see?

And one of the tricks we had was we'd run down there early and try to get clothes off of someone's else rack that we liked better, you know, and switch 'em.

So that, we went through that because we had so many changes.

'cause we would be running constantly.

On certain days we did just the... Like a, you know, joke crossovers or walk-by's.

They'd have Johnny Carson would come in, or God only knows who anybody in the world could come.

And George would be there writing jokes on the set, and the writers would be there, just, you know, and they'd be coming up with as much stuff as they could.

And we would be sent downstairs, change and change, change, change, change, and come back up and do a line or fool around and cross over and say something.

And it was just con just done like that, like boom, boom.

Like a, you know, like a free for all, like hells-a-popping or something.

And we worked really hard.

The kids worked really hard 'cause on Wednesdays we had to do the cocktail party, and the news, and all that stuff.

And Dan and Dick would come in, they only came in, you know, very briefly, and they would do...

They would do that, you know, they might do a couple of sketches, but they didn't work nearly as long or as much as we did.

We were really...

They got their money's worth out of us.

And I was doing all that material, like, you know, "According to our files, your present bank balance plus stocks, securities...

Pardon me?

Privileged information?

(Lily laughs) Oh, that's so cute."

You know, "Here at the phone company, we are not subject to city, state, or federal regulations."

So it had a lot of good content and you know, both the government and the AT&T.

And I didn't go on the air for seven or eight weeks, so the phone company heard about the fact that we were doing this character.

And my manager at the time, a English woman named Irene Pinn, she took me to my dressing room.

We were on the set working, and she said, "I have something to tell you and it's... You know, it's very important."

Or something and we sat down and she said, "The phone company has made you an offer to do television commercials with Ernestine."

And literally tears sprang to my eyes because I was so hurt that my character could be co-opted.

You know, that...

Here I thought I was such an important satirist, satirizing the phone company now they wanted to buy Ernestine, so that was a heavy blow to my satirist heart.

And of course I was fighting.

"I'm not gonna be Ernestine."

I'm just not gonna let... You know, I'm not gonna let Ernestine become...

Dominate my professional life.

And I wouldn't do anything.

I wouldn't do Ernestine on a guest shot.

I just refused to do it because it was just too big.

She was overwhelming, you know?

I think if I'd been a male, you know, a boy comic, I think I would've probably made movies.

I just don't think it was, I mean, I did specials that I think could have been movies.

A couple of them particularly I did one where I go... Called "Lily: Sold Out" where I went to Vegas.

And I think that it was so ambitious as a special that we won, we actually won an Emmy for it and that year.

And but I think if we'd been...

If I had had had that frame of mind, you know, to...

I think a lot of stuff that we did would've gone... Would've been made into movies as young comics did, they kept evolving, you know, and even like Steve.

Steve Martin, I mean, he sort of, you know, he rolled into that kind of thing.

And I just don't think it's the kind of thing, both me as a female in the culture, I didn't think of it.

It didn't dawn on me that I could go that far with a piece of... With an idea or an invention.

It is a boy...

It is a boys club pretty much.

I mean, boys don't think girls are funny.

And boys draw the line at a different... A different kind of a line, in a different kind of place.

And or, you know, if any, if you do draw a line.

I mean, the line is sort of like, well, what appeals to you?

What do you think is funny?

It's not like you're afraid of that kind of thing.

It's just like, well, do I really think, you know, a fart joke is that funny?

I don't necessarily think it is, you know?

It's a human, a bodily function (Lily laughs) and, you know, I'd rather have Mrs. Beasley talk about it.

Cause she'd talk about it like a, you know, a mother.

A mother and a wife and had boys, if I have sons and there's a lot of that farting going on around the house.

But, you know, but she's... (Lily laughs) I'm not gonna make it like it's really like, you know, it would be how you take...

Your take on it.

I mean, I've had little...

I've been at party...

I was at a party at somebody's house, I don't remember who, this is years and years ago, and they had like a 4-year-old boy and he would run up, and turn his behind to us and fart.

And he thought that was just, you know, oh my God, he thought it was great.

And I like that little rebellion in that child, but I certainly wanna see a grown man running up and doing it.

Running up to our tables.

And there's just a, you know, there's a certain civility in society that there's no reason to transgress it all the time.

(Lily laughing) I mean, listen, you know, even "Laugh-In", why do you think we have Fickle Finger of Fate and the Farkle Family?

Cause they want so desperately to say the F word on TV.

Now they can on cable but in those days they couldn't.

(Lily laughs) And that's, boy...

The boys are...

Even, I was on, when I was on "Music Scene", or maybe this was on "The Smothers", you know, nothing more.

If they, you know, they do a sketch about, at a gas station where they're filling up the car, they have to come in for a big closeup on sticking the... You know, the... What do you call that thing that goes into the gas tank?

You know, it's a preoccupation with basal functions and genitalia, and the sex act.

(ambient music) (uplifting music)