You remember the raspberry. That wet, messy, defiant "Pfft!" that capped off every monologue. But even before the sound, there was the visual: a grown woman, legs dangling like limp spaghetti, swallowed whole by a piece of furniture that looked like it belonged to a giant.
The lily tomlin big chair wasn't just a prop. It was a piece of surrealist architecture that fundamentally changed how we viewed children on television.
When Lily Tomlin first dragged Edith Ann onto the set of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In in 1969, she didn't just want to "play" a five-and-a-half-year-old. She wanted to physically become one. The problem with adults playing kids is usually the scale. No matter how much you slouch, you're still an adult. So, she and the production team decided to flip the script. If they couldn't make Lily smaller, they’d make the world bigger.
The Engineering of a Childhood Icon
People always ask if the chair was real wood. It was. It was a massive, custom-built yellow rocking chair designed to a specific ratio. The goal was to make a full-grown woman look exactly forty-two inches tall.
If you look at the old clips, the chair is roughly 8 feet tall. It’s heavy, too. We’re talking hundreds of pounds of lumber and upholstery. Because it was a functional rocker, the physics were tricky. If Lily leaned too far back, the momentum of a chair that size could have sent her backward through the studio wall.
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Why the scale worked
- The Dangling Feet: By sitting Lily high enough that her feet couldn't touch the floor, the audience instinctively felt her "smallness."
- The Rag Doll: Her companion, Doris, was a standard-sized doll, but next to Lily in that chair, Doris looked like a tiny trinket.
- The Perspective Shift: It forced the cameras to tilt up, mimicking the way a child looks at the world—or the way an adult looks down at a child.
Honestly, it’s kind of a miracle she never fell out. She’d squirm, kick her legs, and shift her weight with the restless energy of a kid who’s been told to sit still for too long. That physical discomfort was part of the charm. It felt real because, for Lily, navigating a chair that big was a physical struggle.
Where is the Lily Tomlin big chair now?
This is where the history gets a bit murky, as things often do with TV props from the sixties. There wasn’t just one chair. Over the decades—from Laugh-In to Sesame Street to her various comedy specials—several iterations were built.
One of the most famous "big chairs" ended up in the hands of private collectors, while others have been replicated for museum exhibits and comedy history tours. There's a long-standing rumor that one of the originals was gifted to a children's hospital, though that’s hard to verify. What we do know is that the "Big Chair" became such a cultural touchstone that it spawned a whole genre of roadside attractions.
If you’ve ever stopped at a tourist trap in the Midwest and seen a 12-foot-tall rocking chair in a parking lot, you’re looking at the legacy of Edith Ann.
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The Philosophy of "And That’s the Truth"
Edith Ann wasn't just a gimmick. Jane Wagner, Lily’s long-time partner and brilliant writer, gave that character a voice that was surprisingly dark and philosophical.
While Ernestine the telephone operator was all about bureaucratic power, Edith Ann was about the powerlessness of childhood. She talked about her "battling parents" and her bullying sister, Mary Jean. She’d tell these rambling, non-sequitur stories that ended with profound, accidental wisdom.
"Acting childish seems to come naturally, but acting like an adult, no matter how old we are, just doesn't come easy to us."
That’s a heavy line for a five-year-old in a yellow chair. But that was the secret sauce. The oversized furniture made us lower our guard. We thought we were watching a "cute" kid sketch, so we didn't notice when Lily and Jane started slipping in social commentary about the messiness of the American family.
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Why We Are Still Obsessed With the Scale
There is something deeply psychological about the lily tomlin big chair. Psychologists often talk about "perspective-taking," and that chair was a literal machine for empathy. It reminded adults what it felt like to have your legs dangle. It reminded us what it felt like to have the world feel too big, too loud, and too confusing.
Kinda makes you realize why the character worked so well on Sesame Street. Kids saw a peer; adults saw their former selves.
If you’re looking to capture a bit of that Edith Ann energy today, you won’t find the original chair on Amazon (shipping would be a nightmare). However, the best way to experience it is to revisit the 1994 animated specials or the classic Laugh-In archives. You’ll notice that even without the physical prop in the cartoons, the "scale" of her voice—that mix of innocence and weary wisdom—remains perfectly intact.
Actionable Next Steps:
To truly appreciate the craft, watch a clip of Edith Ann side-by-side with a clip of Ernestine. Notice how Lily’s entire center of gravity changes. In the big chair, she is all limbs and nervous energy; as Ernestine, she is rigid and controlled. If you're a student of acting or comedy, pay attention to her feet in the big chair sketches—they are never still, and that constant motion is what sells the illusion of being five years old.