Norman Lear

Norman Milton Lear was born on July 27, 1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, Both parents were of Russian-Jewish descent. He had a younger sister, Claire Lear Brown (1925–2015). Lear grew up in a Jewish household in Connecticut and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. When Lear was nine years old and was living with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts, his father went to prison for selling fake bonds. Lear thought of his father as a "rascal"; he said that the character of Archie Bunker in All in the Family (whom Lear depicted as white Protestant) was in part inspired by his father, while the character of Edith Bunker was in part inspired by his mother. After hearing more of Coughlin's radio sermons, Lear said he found Coughlin would promote antisemitism by targeting people whom Jews considered to be "great heroes", such as US President Franklin Roosevelt. Lear attended Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1940 and attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces. ==Military career==

Lear enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in September 1942. He served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator and gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; in a 2014 interview, he talked about bombing Germany. Lear was discharged from the Army Air Forces in 1945. His World War II crew members are featured in the book Crew Umbriago by Daniel P. Carroll. ==Career==

1950–1959 After World War II Lear had a career in public relations. 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. 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 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. 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). in 2014. 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. 2000–2023 In 2003, Lear appeared on South Park during the "I'm a Little Bit Country" episode, providing the voice of Benjamin Franklin. He also served as a consultant on the episodes "I'm a Little Bit Country" and "Cancelled". Lear attended a South Park writers' retreat, with some of his ideas making it onto South Park. Further, he was the officiant at co-creator Trey Parker's wedding. South Park served as a bond between Lear and his son Benjamin, who was not familiar with his more known work from the 1970s. In 2014, Lear published Even This I Get to Experience, a memoir. Lear is spotlighted in the 2016 documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. In 2017, he served as executive producer for One Day at a Time, the reboot of his 1975–1984 show of the same name that premiered on Netflix starring Justina Machado and Rita Moreno as a Cuban-American family. He hosted a podcast, All of the Above with Norman Lear, since May 1, 2017. On July 29, 2019, it was announced that Lear had teamed with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Steven Kunes to make an American Masters documentary about Moreno's life, tentatively titled Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It. In 2020, it was announced that Lear and Act III Productions would executive produce a revival of ''Who's the Boss?. At the time of his death in 2023, he was overseeing multiple shows in development, including a planned reboot of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. His last finished project to come out was the Amazon series Clean Slate'', which came out in February 2025, and was in the editing process after finishing filming when he died. ==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". recipients. 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. 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 ==Political and cultural activities==

and Norman Lear at a climate change awareness rally in 2020 Lear was an outspoken supporter of First Amendment and liberal causes. The only time that he did not support the Democratic candidate for president was in 1980 when he supported John Anderson over Jimmy Carter because he considered the Carter administration to be "a complete disaster". Lear was one of the wealthy Jewish Angelenos known as the Malibu Mafia. In the 1970s and 1980s, the group discussed progressive and liberal political issues, and worked together to fund them. They helped to fund the legal defense of Daniel Ellsberg who had released the Pentagon Papers, and they backed the struggling progressive magazine The Nation to keep it afloat. In 1975, they formed the Energy Action Committee to oppose Big Oil's powerful lobby in Washington. In 2015, Lear was one of 98 "prominent members of Los Angeles' Jewish community" who signed an open letter supporting the proposed nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers led by the United States. The letter called for the passage of the bill and warned that the ending of the agreement by Congress would be a "tragic mistake". 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 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. 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. 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. Declaration of Independence In 2001, Lear and his wife, Lyn, purchased a Dunlap broadside—one of the first published copies of the United States Declaration of Independence—for $8.1 million. John Dunlap printed about 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. As of 2000, 25 copies were still in existence and only four were in private hands. Lear said in a press release and on the Today show that his intent was to tour the document around the United States so that the country could experience its "birth certificate" firsthand. Through the end of 2004, the document traveled throughout the United States on the Declaration of Independence Road Trip, which Lear organized, visiting several presidential libraries, dozens of museums, as well as the 2002 Olympics, Super Bowl XXXVI, and the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia. Lear and Rob Reiner produced a filmed, dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence—the last project filmed by famed cinematographer Conrad Hall—on July 4, 2001, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The film is introduced by Morgan Freeman and Kathy Bates, Benicio del Toro, Michael Douglas, Mel Gibson, Whoopi Goldberg, Graham Greene, Ming-Na Wen, Edward Norton, Winona Ryder, Kevin Spacey, and Renée Zellweger appear as readers. It was directed by Arvin Brown and scored by John Williams. ==Personal life and death==

Lear was married three times. 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. 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. 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, 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. ==Filmography==

Film Television Timeline ImageSize = width:1200 height:auto barincrement:20 PlotArea = left:25 right:150 top:10 bottom:30 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal format:mm/dd/yyyy DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy Period = from:01/01/1959 till:12/05/2023 Colors = id:white value:white id:grid1 value:black id:grid2 value:gray(0.7) id:revue value:gray(0.9) legend:Revue_Studios id:tandem value:pink legend:Tandem_Productions id:tat value:skyblue legend:ELP_Communications id:actiii value:green legend:ACT_III_Productions BackgroundColors = canvas:white AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = start:01/01/1959 unit:year grid:grid1 increment:5 ScaleMinor = start:07/01/1959 unit:month grid:grid2 increment:6 BarData = bar:Deputy bar:All bar:Sanford bar:Maude bar:Good bar:Jeffersons bar:Hot bar:One bar:Mary bar:Dumplings bar:Alls bar:Nancy bar:Glitters bar:Fernwood bar:Year bar:America bar:Diff'rent bar:Hanging bar:Baxters bar:Palmerstown bar:Pablo bar:Sunday bar:Powers bar:Hauser bar:Channel bar:One17 PlotData = align:left anchor:from fontsize:M width:15 shift:(4,-6) textcolor:black bar:Deputy from:09/12/1959 till:07/01/1961 color:revue text:The Deputy bar:All from:01/12/1971 till:04/08/1979 color:tandem text:All in the Family bar:Sanford from:01/14/1972 till:03/25/1977 color:tandem text:Sanford and Son bar:Maude from:09/12/1972 till:04/22/1978 color:tandem text:Maude bar:Good from:02/08/1974 till:08/01/1979 color:tandem text:Good Times bar:Jeffersons from:01/19/1975 till:06/25/1985 color:tat text:The Jeffersons bar:Hot from:01/24/1975 till:04/25/1975 color:tat text:Hot L Baltimore bar:One from:12/16/1975 till:05/28/1984 color:tat text:One Day at a Time bar:Mary from:01/06/1976 till:05/10/1977 color:tat text:Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman bar:Dumplings from:01/28/1976 till:03/31/1976 color:tat text:The Dumplings bar:Alls from:09/20/1976 till:04/30/1977 color:tat text:All's Fair bar:Nancy from:09/30/1976 till:12/23/1976 color:tat text:The Nancy Walker Show bar:Glitters from:04/18/1977 till:07/15/1977 color:tat text:All That Glitters bar:Fernwood from:07/04/1977 till:09/08/1977 color:tat text:Fernwood 2 Night bar:Year from:08/05/1977 till:09/02/1977 color:tat text:A Year at the Top bar:America from:04/10/1978 till:07/07/1978 color:tat text:America 2-Night bar:Diff'rent from:11/03/1978 till:03/07/1986 color:tandem text:Diff'rent Strokes bar:Hanging from:08/08/1979 till:08/29/1979 color:tat text:Hanging In bar:Baxters from:09/01/1979 till:08/01/1981 color:tat text:The Baxters bar:Palmerstown from:03/20/1980 till:06/09/1981 color:tat text:Palmerstown, U.S.A. bar:Pablo from:03/06/1984 till:04/17/1984 color:tat text:a.k.a. Pablo bar:Sunday from:06/02/1991 till:07/07/1991 color:actiii text:Sunday Dinner bar:Powers from:03/07/1992 till:01/16/1993 color:actiii text:The Powers That Be bar:Hauser from:04/11/1994 till:05/16/1994 color:actiii text:704 Hauser bar:Channel from:10/25/1997 till:09/04/1998 color:actiii text:Channel Umptee-3 bar:One17 from:01/06/2017 till:06/16/2020 color:actiii text:One Day at a Time Legend = orientation:vertical position:right ==Bibliography==