Posted on 01/11/2021 10:14:04 AM PST by Borges
It's been a good 40 years since I watched that show.
Norman Lear was a credited writer on several programs in the 1960’s and also did uncredited work on several other programs in the 1960’s “funnying up” scripts and sometimes fine tuning dialogue and storylines. This is a common practice in Hollywood that continues to this day.
Lear did frequent work for Screen Gems (which made the The Partridge Family) and themes from these shows often showed up in Lear’s later productions and you could argue he was plagiarizing them except for the probability that he was the original writer anyway.
I’m kind of surprised the Cancel Culture hasn’t come after Lear, because he portrayed black people as racists, and according to the new dogma, people of color cannot be racist.
“They were responding to the culture around them.”
No, they were influencing the culture around them. And kindly don’t tell me TV had no effect on people when trillions have been spent on TV advertising over the decades.
No question, that TV changed society, and not for the better.
And now we’ve seen the disruption that Social Media has brought about.
I just wonder how you could have stopped it.
Two words, “The Fog”
Agree. I thought it sucked.
“All in the Family” was a remake of a British show with the exact same concept. Even on AITF he was hardly involved as a writer at all. He was a Producer/Show Runner who hired the writers.
To me that is the salient point. We couldn’t have people laughing *with* Jed Clampett - tbey must ne taught to laugh *at* Archie Bunker.
It goes both ways. But TV was generally way behind the general culture till the 70s.
Ditto for Sanford & Son, it was based on the British show, “Steptoe and Son”.
Archie Bunker was Right!
Yeah, I mentioned that scene earlier.
And in general Lionel truly liked Archie, he understood him, and saw him as a decent guy, he understood he came from a different time.
I’ll let you on something I won’t post in public:
My primary career is in IT but over the years I’ve written for a number of people including then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, Lyn Nofziger, Phil Gramm, Pat Buchanan, and more recently I was tapped by a friend to fine tune dialogue in the first season of “Jack Ryan”.
When I attended the writer’s meeting for Ryan I got to meet Jay Leno who was there to tweak some of the sly humor and then he proficiently tweaked some of the military dialogue. Impressed the hell out of me.
He’s not credited and neither am I.
The uncredited writing work/phenomenon in Hollywood is quite fascinating and it grew out of the blacklist period when communists were tapped by friends to tweak scripts (or write them entirely).
Ditto to all those who realize that the show back fired. America loved Archie and despised meathead. Of course communist hypocrite Lear would never turn down a $ and / or was so blind to the fact that America was laughing with Archie not AT him.
Edith: “Archie you’re home”
Archie: “No Edith, I’m still at the plant!”
Always loved that line.
Oh I’m well aware of script doctoring etc. Some of them want credit but the WGA won’t allow it. The point is that Lear is not really a great enough comedy writer to have that much of an effect. They had top tier comedy writers on AITF.
I could be wrong, but I think Lear made Maude to exhibit what an "enlightened" liberal was, and how "superior" she was to that brute Archie Bunker.
Maude is an elitist snob who thinks she is better than everyone else.
Watch how Bea Arthur walks around.
Literally with her nose in the air.
A totally repulsive, unlikable character.
AITF is funny, even today.
Maude is unwatchable.
Maude went unwanted in syndication. That’s why you rarely saw reruns of it. Local stations didn’t want it.
I also recall an episode where Laurie Partridge was in a beauty contest just so she could win and give a speech about how beauty contests oppress women.
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