A very brief appreciation I posted on Facebook on 9/2, which seems to have caught the attention of a number of my readers, corrected and edited a bit here:
It’s that time of the year when I’m pleased to hear that Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda (both a bit older than I am) are still flourishing.
The immediate trigger was LT’s birthday — 9/1/39 (so she’s a year older than me) — with JF’s birthday — 12/21/37 (so she’s three years older than me, as Ann Daingerfield Zwicky, born 5/9/37, was) coming soon. So they’re roughly my age, and their acting, their activisms, and their passionate public commentary have brightened my life and moved me since the 1960s. Despite the considerable differences in their class backgrounds, their personalities, and their sexuality, they have been good friends for many years and have frequently acted together, to my mind most satisfyingly in the comedy tv series Grace and Frankie (aired on Netflix from 2015 through 2022):
(#1) Fonda (as Frankie) and Tomlin (as Grace) in Grace and Frankie; their house in the story is set on the beach down (by San Diego) in La Jolla; the filming happened up (by Los Angeles) on Malibu’s Broad Beach (photo: Melissa Moseley / AP)
Background, LT. From Wikipedia:
Mary Jean “Lily” Tomlin (born September 1, 1939 [AZ: to working-class parents]) is an American actress, comedian, writer, singer, and producer. Tomlin started her career in stand-up comedy and sketch comedy before transitioning her career to acting across stage and screen.
… Tomlin started her career as a stand-up comedian as well as performing off-Broadway during the 1960s. Her breakout role was on the variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In from 1969 until 1973. Her signature role, which was written by her then-partner (now wife) Jane Wagner, was in the show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which opened on Broadway in 1985 and earned Tomlin the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play
… Tomlin is known for her collaborations with Jane Fonda starring in the films 9 to 5 (1980), 80 for Brady (2023), and Moving On (2023). She also starred with Fonda on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, which ran for seven seasons from 2015 to 2022 … From 2002 to 2006, she portrayed Deborah Fiderer on the Aaron Sorkin series The West Wing.
Background, JF. From Wikipedia:
Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress and activist. Recognized as a film icon, Fonda’s work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television.
… Born to socialite Frances Ford Seymour and actor Henry Fonda, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (1960). She rose to prominence acting in the comedies Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967), Barbarella (1968), Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), California Suite (1978), The Electric Horseman (1979), and 9 to 5 (1980). Fonda established herself as a dramatic actress, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress for her roles as a prostitute in the thriller Klute (1971) and the woman in love with a Vietnam War veteran in the drama Coming Home (1978).
… Fonda was a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War. She was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, during which she gained the nickname “Hanoi Jane”. Fonda protested the Iraq War along with violence against women, and she describes herself as a feminist and environmental activist.
As people. LT tends to the thoughtful and analytic; JF to passionate commitments, low on doctrine. LT has a lifetime of solid but unflashy work on behalf of gay and feminist causes and a long quiet life with one person, Jane Wagner; Jane Fonda has been a volatile, highly public exponent of political and social causes throughout her life, and has been extravagantly married three times — to French screenwriter, film director, and producer Roger Vadim (from 1968 through 1973), American social and political activist, author, and politician Tom Hayden (from 1973 through 1990), and American entrepreneur, television producer, and media figure Ted Turner (from 1991 through 2001).
But they both commit themselves fully to the characters they play, and they talk about these characters with all the generous humanity and empathy they use in talking about the people in their lives. JF talking about her father is a revelation: she recognizes that HF’s idealization of the common man as a fighter against social injustice and oppression led him to choose many of his most memorable roles, roles that inspired JF’s own passionate social and political commitments; at the same time, she sees HF’s thoughtless objectification of women, including her, as an especially unpleasant survival of his time and place, but comes to recognize that we are all of us — even parents, maybe especially parents — complex and imperfect, noble and gritty and foolish and nasty all at once.
G&F. From Wikipedia:
Grace and Frankie is an American comedy television series created by Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris for Netflix. The series stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the eponymous Grace Hanson and Frankie Bergstein, two aging women who form an unlikely friendship after their husbands reveal they are in love with each other and plan to get married. Sam Waterston, Martin Sheen, Brooklyn Decker, Ethan Embry, June Diane Raphael, and Baron Vaughn co-star in supporting roles.
The series premiered on Netflix on May 8, 2015. The second through sixth seasons were released from 2016 to 2020. The seventh and final season premiered on August 13, 2021 with four episodes, and the final twelve were released on April 29, 2022.
Yes, Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen as business partners who recognize their love for one another. (The casting is wonderful.)
(#2) Waterston (as Sol) and Sheen (as Robert) in Grace and Frankie (photo: Melissa Moseley / Netflix)
The series began slowly, looking too conventionally sitcom-ish, but then developed depth and complexity and a chain of remarkable plot shifts. It became one of the great sitcoms — comparable, in my judgment, to Taxi, Sports Night, and Murphy Brown. [If you feel yourself inclined to intervene here with a critical comment, write this piece of ancient advice down, commit it to memory, and follow it: dē gustibus nōn est disputandum.]
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