Norman Lear

Norman Lear — latest news, discussion & facts — IJR

1950–1959

After World War II Lear had a career in public relations. The career choice was inspired by his Uncle Jack: "My dad had a brother, Jack, who flipped me a quarter every time he saw me. He was a press agent so I wanted to be a press agent. That's the only role model I had. So all I wanted was to grow up to be a guy who could flip a quarter to a nephew." Lear decided to move to California to restart his career in publicity, driving with his toddler daughter across the country.

His first night in Los Angeles, Lear stumbled upon a production of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara at the 90-seat theater-in-the-round Circle Theater off Sunset Boulevard. One of the actors in the play was Sydney Chaplin, the son of actors Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey. Charlie Chaplin, Alan Mowbray, and Dame Gladys Cooper sat in front of Lear, and after the show was over, Charlie Chaplin performed.

Lear had a first cousin in Los Angeles, Elaine, who was married to an aspiring comedy writer named Ed Simmons. Simmons and Lear teamed up to sell home furnishings door-to-door for a company called The Gans Brothers and later sold family photos door-to-door. Throughout the 1950s, Lear and Simmons turned out comedy sketches for television appearances of Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, and others. They frequently wrote for Martin and Lewis when they appeared on the Colgate Comedy Hour, and a 1953 article from Billboard magazine stated that Lear and Simmons were guaranteed a record-breaking $52,000 (equivalent to $630,000 in 2025) each to write for five additional Martin and Lewis appearances on the Colgate Comedy Hour that year. In addition, their revised 1953 contract also removed exclusive writing requirements for Lear and Simmons and allowed them to take on other work, such as developing their own TV film package, and writing scripts for other TV shows, either live or on film. In a 2015 interview with Variety, Lear said that Jerry Lewis had hired him and Simmons as writers for Martin and Lewis three weeks before the comedy duo made their first appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1950. Lear also acknowledged in 1986 that he and Simmons were the main writers for The Martin and Lewis Show for three years.

In 1954, Lear was enlisted as a writer and asked to salvage the new CBS sitcom starring Celeste Holm, Honestly, Celeste!, but the program was canceled after eight episodes. During this time he became the producer of NBC's short-lived (26 episodes) sitcom The Martha Raye Show, after Nat Hiken left as the series director. Lear also wrote some of the opening monologs for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show which aired from 1956 to 1961. In 1959, Lear created his first television series, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called The Deputy, starring Henry Fonda.

Though not reported to have taken part in writing the 2000 Year Old Man, it was revealed in 1973 that Lear's home in Fire Island, New York was in fact the place where Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks initially performed their 2000 Year Old Man routines.

1967–1977

Starting out as a comedy writer, then a film director (he wrote and produced the 1967 film Divorce American Style and directed the 1971 film Cold Turkey, both starring Dick Van Dyke), Lear tried to sell a concept for a sitcom about a blue-collar American family to ABC. They rejected the show after two pilots were taped: Justice for All in 1968 and Those Were the Days in 1969. After a third pilot was taped, CBS picked up the show, known as All in the Family. It premiered on January 12, 1971, to disappointing ratings, but it took home several Emmy Awards that year, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The show did very well in summer reruns, and it flourished in the 1971–72 season, becoming the top-rated show on TV for the next five years. After falling from the No. 1 spot, All in the Family still remained in the top ten, with the exception of the 1976-1977 television season where it ranked No. 12, and eventually became Archie Bunker's Place. The show was based loosely on the British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, about an irascible working-class Tory and his socialist son-in-law.

Lear's second big TV sitcom, Sanford and Son, was also based on a British sitcom, Steptoe and Son, about a west London junk dealer and his son. Lear changed the setting to the Watts section of Los Angeles and the characters to African Americans, and the NBC show Sanford and Son was an instant hit. Numerous hit shows followed thereafter, including Maude, The Jeffersons (both spin-offs of All in the Family), One Day at a Time, and Good Times (which is a spinoff of Maude).

Most of these Lear sitcoms share three features: they were shot on videotape in place of film, used a live studio audience, and dealt with current social and political issues. Maude is generally considered to be based on Lear's wife Frances, which she confirmed, with Charlie Hauck serving as main producer and writer.

Lear's longtime producing partner was Bud Yorkin, who also produced All in the Family, Sanford and Son, What's Happening!!, Maude, and The Jeffersons. Yorkin split with Lear in 1975. He started a production company with writers and producers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein; however, only two of their shows lasted longer than a year: What's Happening!! and Carter Country. The Lear/Yorkin company was known as Tandem Productions and was founded in 1958. Lear and talent agent Jerry Perenchio founded T.A.T. Communications ("T.A.T." stood for the Yiddish phrase tuchus affen tisch, "putting one's ass on the line") in 1974, which co-existed with Tandem Productions and was often referred to in periodicals as Tandem/T.A.T. The Lear organization was one of the most successful independent TV producers of the 1970s. TAT produced the influential and award-winning 1981 film The Wave about Ron Jones' social experiment.

Lear also developed the cult favorite TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (MH MH) which was turned down by the networks as "too controversial" and placed it into first run syndication with 128 stations in January 1976. A year later, he added another program into first-run syndication along with MH MH, All That Glitters. He planned in 1977 to offer three hours of prime-time Saturday programming directly having stations place his production company in the position of an occasional network.

In 1977, African-American screenwriter Eric Monte filed a lawsuit accusing ABC and CBS producers Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin, and others of stealing his ideas for Good Times, The Jeffersons, and What's Happening!! Monte received a $1-million settlement and a small percentage of the residuals from Good Times and one percent ownership of the show. Monte, due to his lack of business knowledge and experience as well as legal representation, would not receive royalties for other shows that he created. However, Lear and other Hollywood producers, outraged over the lawsuit, reportedly blacklisted Monte and labeled him too difficult to work with.

1980–1999

In 1980, Lear founded the organization People for the American Way for the purpose of counteracting the Christian right group Moral Majority which had been founded in 1979. In the fall of 1981, Lear began a 14-month run as the host of a revival of the classic game show Quiz Kids for the CBS Cable Network. In January 1982, Lear and Jerry Perenchio bought Avco Embassy Pictures from Avco Financial Corporation. In January 1982, after merging with company with T.A.T. Communications, the Avco was dropped, and the combined entity was renamed as Embassy Communications, Inc. Embassy Pictures was led by Alan Horn and Martin Schaeffer, later co-founders of Castle Rock Entertainment with Rob Reiner.

In March 1982, Lear produced an ABC television special titled I Love Liberty, as a counterbalance to groups like the Moral Majority. Among the many guests who appeared on the special was conservative icon and the 1964 U.S. presidential election's Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.

On June 18, 1985, Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy Communications to Columbia Pictures (then owned by The Coca-Cola Company), which acquired Embassy's film and television division (including Embassy's in-house television productions and the television rights to the Embassy theatrical library) for $485 million of shares of The Coca-Cola Company. The brand Tandem Productions was abandoned in 1986 with the cancellation of Diff'rent Strokes, and Embassy ceased to exist as a single entity in late 1986, having been split into different components owned by different entities. Coca-Cola sold the film division to Dino De Laurentiis and the home video arm to Nelson Holdings (led by Barry Spikings). The TV properties continued under the Columbia Pictures Television banner.

Lear's Act III Communications was founded in 1986 and in the following year, Thomas B. McGrath was named president and chief operating officer of ACT III Communications Inc after previously serving as senior vice president. On February 2, 1989, Norman Lear's Act III Communications formed a joint venture with Columbia Pictures Television called Act III Television to produce television series instead of managing.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Act III Communications purchased several business journals, including Channels magazine that had been founded by Les Brown, former New York Times TV correspondent. Channels closed in 1990, by which time Act III and Brown published and edited Television Business International (TBI). Act III Broadcasting would at one point own numerous Fox-affiliated televisions stations as well. Act III Broadcasting would be sold in 1995 for $500 million. In 1992, Act III was sued by Platt Amusement, which claimed that the company had in 1990 “induced and persuaded” GE Capital Corporate Finance to deny them a loan, which gotten approved financing, and then created a theater monopoly in the Pacific Northwest. Act III's theater division would eventually by sold in October 1997.

In 1997, Lear and Jim George produced the Kids' WB series Channel Umptee-3. The cartoon was notable for being the first television show to meet the Federal Communications Commission's then-new educational programming requirements. In his memoir Even This I Get To Experience. Lear made an allegation that he and his son provided writing and creative input for two books in the late 1990s, including Hillary Clinton's book Dear Socks. Contrary to this claim, however, Hillary's collaborator, and potential ghostwriter, for Dear Socks, Dear Buddy was acknowledged to be Washington D.C.-based journalist Linda Kulman.

Awards, honors, and legacy

Lear wrote and produced more than 100 television shows during a career that lasted over 70 years. He has been honored for his influence on American television and culture. His works introduced political and social themes to the sitcom format. Before All in the Family, television sitcoms in the 1950s and 1960s generally portrayed white American family life as comfortable and avoided raising issues such as racial discrimination and patriarchy. Beginning in 1971, All in the Family openly discussed current social and political topics and became the country's most popular show for five straight years. Lear's subsequent shows widened television's representation of racial and gender diversity, such as Good Times, the first television show centered on an African-American nuclear family; Television screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky said that Lear "put the American people [on screen] ... he took the audience and put them on the set".

In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded Lear the National Medal of Arts, noting: "Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it." That year, he and Bud Yorkin received the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of excellence and innovation in creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television. The Producers Guild of America awarded Lear its Achievement Award in Television in 2006; by the next year, the honor was named the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television. In 2017, he was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize presented by the Woody Guthrie Center, recognizing an artist whose work represents the spirit of Woody Guthrie "as a positive force for social change". He became the oldest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors later that year at the age of 95. In 2018, Lear's alma mater, Emerson College, unveiled a bronze statue of him on campus.

Lear's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6615 Hollywood Boulevard. He received other numerous honorary accolades, including:

1977: Peabody Awards: Lifetime achievement

1977: American Humanist Association: Humanist Arts Award

1980: Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award

1984: Television Academy: Hall of Fame

2007: Britannia Awards Excellence in Television

2017: National Hispanic Media Coalition Media Icon

2017: Peabody Awards: Lifetime achievement

People for the American Way

In 1981, Lear founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right. PFAW ran several advertising campaigns opposing the interjection of religion in politics. PFAW and other like-minded groups succeeded in their efforts to block Reagan's 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Lear, a longtime critic of the Religious Right, was an advocate for the advancement of secularism.

Prominent right-wing Christians including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy Swaggart have accused Lear of being an atheist and holding an anti-Christian bias. In the January 21, 1987, issue of The Christian Century, Lear associate Martin E. Marty (a Lutheran professor of church history at the University of Chicago Divinity School between 1963 and 1998) rejected those allegations, stating the television producer honored religious moral values and complimenting Lear's understanding of Christianity. Marty noted that while Lear and his family had never practiced Orthodox Judaism, the television producer was a follower of Judaism.

In a 2009 interview with US News journalist Dan Gilgoff, Lear rejected claims by right-wing Christian nationalists that he was an atheist and prejudiced against Christianity. Lear held religious beliefs and integrated some evangelical Christian language into his Born Again American campaign. He believed that religion should be kept separate from politics and policymaking. In a 2014 interview with The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles journalist Rob Eshman, Lear described himself as a "total Jew" but said he was never a practicing one.

In 1989, Lear founded the Business Enterprise Trust, an educational program that used annual awards, business school case studies, and videos to spotlight exemplary social innovations in American business until it ended in 1998. He announced in 1992 that he was reducing his political activism. In 2000, he provided an endowment for a multidisciplinary research and public policy center, the Norman Lear Center, that explored the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Lear served on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation. He wrote articles for The Huffington Post. He was a trustee of The Paley Center for Media.

In his memoir, Lear alleged that he offered Bill Clinton, who has himself acknowledged to have befriended Lear after meeting him in New York in 1981, the position of honorary chair of People for the American Way after meeting him for the first time in 1982, with Clinton declining Lear's offer but still "had a great time together and remained friends;" despite Lear's claim of offering him this position in 1982, Clinton was in fact seeking to win back his previous post as Governor of Arkansas that year.

Personal life and death

Lear was married three times. His first marriage was to Charlotte Rosen in 1943. They divorced in 1956.

He was married to Frances Loeb from 1956 to 1985. They separated in 1983. Loeb eventually received $112 million from Lear in their divorce settlement, and she used part of the settlement to found Lear's magazine.

In 1987, Lear married Lyn Davis, who survived him. When she met Lear in 1984, Lyn was reportedly in the process of earning a doctorate in clinical psychology. She later became a documentary filmmaker through her production company Lyn Lear Productions. At the time of 2016 documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, Lyn acknowledged that she and Norman had "very different worlds," with their daytime relationship at that point being largely centered around occasional conversations, while having nightly dinners together.

From his three marriages, Lear had six children. He was a godparent to actress and singer Katey Sagal.

At the ATX 2016 ATX Television Festival, Lear publicly noted to Sagal that he by that point in time didn't "try to keep up any more" with the modern day array of television, though he still regularly watched South Park. Though also openly expressing some positive support for work of Seth MacFarlane, Lear actually did not regard Family Guy or American Dad! in the same way he regarded South Park, which he and his son could also bond over, noting in a 2015 public conversation with MacFarlane that despite the quality of MacFarlane's work, he also felt that it was among the shows that had "very little context now;" MacFarlane has also acknowledged that Family Guy was heavily influenced by not just All In The Family, but also South Park rival The Simpsons. Lear even alleged at his 2022 Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter TV special that "There's nobody in our business I have admired more over a long time, than [South Park creators] Trey Parker and Matt Stone."

Lear died at his Los Angeles home on December 5, 2023, from cardiac arrest as a complication of heart failure. He was 101. Lear's body was cremated.

Norman Lear

Norman Lear

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