--- description: I admired Jean Carroll since I was a little girl. I'd see her on The Ed Sullivan Show, and then I used to actually put on shows of my own and do her jokes. She had a cocktail dress and mink; I had my... title: Jean Carroll image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Jean Carroll by [Lily Tomlin](/author/lily-tomlin/) Jan 18, 2010 5:00 AM CUT by [Lily Tomlin](/author/lily-tomlin/) Jan 18, 2010 5:00 AM CUT I admired Jean Carroll since I was a little girl. I’d see her on The Ed Sullivan Show, and then I used to actually put on shows of my own and do her jokes. She had a cocktail dress and mink; I had my mother’s slip. So many women were influenced by Jean, the barrier-breaking comedian who died Jan. 1 at 98\. With her breezy style, she was much more subversive than anyone probably was aware of at the time. When stand-up comics were almost universally men, she leveled the playing field with lines like “I’ll never forget the first time I saw my husband standing on a hill, his hair blowing in the breeze–and he too proud to run after it.” She always talked about her “rotten kid,” when people didn’t do that. She was smart and attractive and chipped away at that hallowed idea of a wife and a mother–the idea that as a woman, you don’t have any complaints and that you’re all sacrifice. We have plenty of complaints; they just take a different form every decade. In 2006 we honored her at the Friars Club. She was 95 at the time and got up and did like a 10-minute set. She was hilarious. Tomlin, a comedian and actress, is currently touring in a one-woman show, An Evening of Classic Lily Tomlin ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6690365/jean-carroll/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6690365/jean-carroll/"},"headline":"Jean Carroll","datePublished":"2010-01-18T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-22T06:07:48.517Z","description":"I admired Jean Carroll since I was a little girl. I'd see her on The Ed Sullivan Show, and then I used to actually put on shows of my own and do her jokes. She had a cocktail dress and mink; I had my...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6690365/jean-carroll/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Tomlin","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-tomlin/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6690365/jean-carroll/","name":"Jean Carroll"}}]}] ```