Posted on 12/06/2023 7:03:09 AM PST by Red Badger
Lear leaves behind a legacy of trailblazing shows that redefined the subject matter traditional sitcoms could cover.
Norman Lear, the prolific and groundbreaking TV producer whose portfolio of comedies focused on social issues and advanced the idea that sitcoms could help drive the conversation about relevant and taboo subjects, has died. He was 101.
Lear died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles surrounded by family members, his family said. His death was attributed to natural causes.
"Norman lived a life of curiosity, tenacity, and empathy. He deeply loved our country and spent a lifetime helping to preserve its founding ideals of justice and equality for all," his family said in a statement.
"He began his career in the earliest days of live television and discovered a passion for writing about the real lives of Americans, not a glossy ideal. At first, his ideas were met with closed doors and misunderstanding. However, he stuck to his conviction that the “foolishness of the human condition” made great television, and eventually he was heard," the statement said.
A private funeral service will be held for immediate family, the statement said.
Born July 27, 1922, the five-time Emmy Award winner was a TV legend, with his first credit as a writer listed as “All Star Revue” in 1950, according to the entertainment website IMDb. He climbed the ranks, writing sketches for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and a slew of variety shows. He also wrote the screenplays for multiple movies in the 1960s, earning an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay in 1968 for “Divorce American Style.”
Lear struck gold in 1971 when he created the CBS sitcom “All in the Family,” based on the British comedy “Till Death Do Us Part.” The show revolved around working-class bigot Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, whose old-world views were often challenged in the new era in which he and his wife, Edith, were living.
All In The Family
The pioneering series, which Lear revisited in the 2021 book, “All in the Family: The Show That Changed America,” often appears atop lists of greatest shows ever and addressed subjects that were never discussed on prior sitcoms, including racism, the Vietnam War, women’s rights, abortion, religion and homosexuality.
The show initially struggled to find viewers but would go on to become the most-watched show in the country. It won 22 Emmy Awards, including four for outstanding comedy series, before it signed off in 1979, spawning the spinoff “Archie Bunker’s Place,” which ran for another four seasons.
“The kinds of topics Archie Bunker and his family argued about — issues that were dividing Americans from one another, such as racism, feminism, homosexuality, the Vietnam War and Watergate — were certainly being talked about in homes and families. They just weren’t being acknowledged on television,” Lear wrote in a 2021 op-ed in The New York Times.
“All in the Family” was a game-changer in the annals of TV, but Lear said he had no clue at the time about its potential impact.
“I didn’t even think I was breaking a mold,” he told NBC News in 2014.
Lear, who would be among the inductees in the first class of the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984, would once again hit pay dirt with “Sanford and Son,” a show about an irascible Los Angeles junkyard owner (Redd Foxx) and his son. That series, which premiered in 1972, lasted six seasons and garnered seven Emmy nominations.
Lear continued to create shows that proved to be critical and commercial hits, including “Maude” and “The Jeffersons,” both spinoffs of “All in the Family.” He also developed “One Day at a Time” and “Good Times.”
Beatrice Arthur As 'Maude'
“Good riddance to liberal trash. 12/6/2023, 8:12:02 AM by nwrep”
Couldn’t agree with you more. We got assigned to watch this crap in grade school, I remember it clearly, I was already starting to hate television and then we were forced to watch this absolute garbage. Like popular entertainment is supposed to make your skin crawl, right? You’re supposed to be “challenged” and blah-de-blah.
The best part it was roman catholic priests and nuns telling our folks not to object to it, it’s culture, and “challenging” and all this and that. So we had to sit there trying to do our “assignment” while Dad was in the background dissing it with scathing rhetoric that scared us.
Young people on social media acting like “Oh, Archie Bunker is VERY COOL, actually!” like “this is conservatism” when Lear was mocking patriotic working-class conservatives and goading an entire generation into mocking them. (And it worked.)
*spits*
May you be reborn as the retarded son of a moslem illegal immigrant cab driver and his 2nd wife who is also his cousin living on the 485th story of a highrise in a 15-minute city in Pakistan.
"Leftist Propaganda" is a much pithier way of saying the same thing.
AITF was enjoyable in the day. Archie wasn,t always the brightest bulb. And meathead was to represent the younger generation with the cause of the day. Of course Jean Stapleton was the greatest character as Archie’s victim of husbandness
People tend to forget that many liberals didn’t like Lear’s character of Meathead - a stereotypical hippy who couldn’t hold a job. Yes, there was Archie the racist, but Lear also created black characters who were bigots George Jefferson frequently had issues with his mixed-race neighbors - he often used words like honky and zebra. And the character Fred Sanford had his prejudices, too, like when he had an appointment with a white nurse and said, “I ain’t goin’ in there with that ugly old white woman!” Lear created some good balance in that regard, showing that all people can have prejudices.
Neither John Amos, not Esther Rolle, if she were still alive, would agree with you. They felt Good Times was nowhere near a true experience and Esther was furious that Lear wanted her ‘husband’ to abandon the family to cover Amos’ contract dispute with Lear.
“He deeply loved our country”
He just hated the people who lived in it.
Trivia question:
What was Redd Foxx real name?
.
.
.
.
.
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.....John Sanford......................
>The best part it was roman catholic priests and nuns telling our folks not to object to it, it’s culture, and “challenging” and all this and that. So we had to sit there trying to do our “assignment” while Dad was in the background dissing it with scathing rhetoric that scared us.
Young people on social media acting like “Oh, Archie Bunker is VERY COOL, actually!” like “this is conservatism” when Lear was mocking patriotic working-class conservatives and goading an entire generation into mocking them. (And it worked.)<
Exactly! Not only was AITF slamming white males, it was slamming patriotism. It became cool to make fun of my class of people.
I still think that was Michelle Obama’s secret service code name.
Agreed. Lear may have been intending to make Archie look bad for lack of a better word, but instead millions of white men directly identified with Archie or knew someone like him "at the docks" or as a drinking buddy, and Lear portrayed him having a heart.
AITF jumped the shark fairly fast, though, having Luciferian Sammy Davis Jr. on to shuck and jive his way through S2E21.
In his day Lear was a raving leftist trying to subvert everything in sight....
but by today’s standards he was open minded on many topics and most of his shows would be banned immediately as right wing extremist insurrectionist and racist.
Rush doing that with someone at ideological odds made an impression on me. It said that conservatism must always have the high ground, no matter how ugly and mean the opposition gets. Conservatives should never compromise but they can be the better person.
Andy Griffith left "The Andy Griffith Show" in 1968, "All In The Family" debuted 1971. OTOH "Mayberry RFD" was indeed cancelled as part of the Rural Purge or Hickstallnacht or Exurbageddon or Appalachidoom.
Every TV show or movie depicts blacks as drug dealers, drug abusers, gangstas, criminals or deadbeats on welfare with few redeeming qualities.
^^^^^^^^^
Well that’s what they teach at “Black Acting School”
Language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ASZ6K9cPNk
He capitalized on the trend but he didn't start it. Just look at 'The Honeymooners' (1955) which inspired the Flintstones (1960).
Ditto that....
Yep, Norm Lear was obviously a huge racist, what with his writing and creating all those tv shows that were so racist they would not be allowed to broadcast today.
Leftists loved WWII because they were fighting on behalf of their beloved Soviet Union.
They were hardcore isolationists before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.
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