Norman Lear, responsible for revolutionizing television in the 1970s with such groundbreaking hit series as All in the Family, Good Times, The Jeffersons and One Day at a Time, has died. He was 101.
Lear died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, a spokesperson said.
“Norman lived a life of creativity, tenacity and empathy,” his family said in a statement. “He deeply loved our country and spent a lifetime helping to preserve its founding ideals of justice and equality for all. Knowing and living him has been the greatest of gifts.”
Lear remained active in the entertainment industry as he neared the centenary mark, winning Emmy Awards in 2019 and 2020 for installments of Live in Front of a Studio Audience, in which episodes of All in the Family, The Jeffersons and Good Times were reenacted with new performers.
Lear’s success in television helped make him a prominent and influential political voice behind the scenes, leading to his founding in the early 1980s of People for the American Way, a group to counter the influence of the religious right. Like his creative efforts, he remained active in politics throughout his life, including in 2017 when, upon learning that he would receive a Kennedy Center honor, he said that he would not attend a White House reception beforehand to protest Donald Trump’s moves to defund the arts. That led to other recipients also canceling their plans to attend the Trump ceremony. Trump himself skipped the ceremony. At this year’s ceremony on Sunday, honoree Billy Crystal made a point to reporters that it was Lear who gave him his first major role, a guest spot on All in the Family.
Lear already had an established career as a writer and director in TV and movies in 1970, when in the late 1960s, he tried to sell a sitcom about a blue collar American family. Two pilots were rejected by ABC. But CBS picked up the show, based in part of the British sitcom Til Death Due Us Part. When it debuted on Jan. 12, 1971, the ratings were not stellar, but it was lauded creatively, even as the network worried about its content.
In a 2014 interview, Lear recalled that 20 minutes before the show was to debut, he threatened to walk out in protest over CBS censors’ threats to remove one line from the show. “It was a little battle, but I knew that I just simply had to win that or I would lose from then on,” he said. The show aired intact and, as he was fond of saying, “not one state seceded from the union.”
The audience for All in the Family picked up in subsequent months, and by the next season it was in the top ten. With its unvarnished portrayal of a bigot in Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), often warring against his liberal son-in-law, Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner), the show actually resonated with audiences of all political stripes. But it also ushered in a new era of the primetime TV landscape, with more topical — and controversial — fare replacing rural and fantasy sitcoms. Shows like Gomer Pyle USMC and The Andy Griffith Show were huge hits in the 60s, but they ignored the Vietnam war and civil rights movement happening in real life. In contrast, few episodes of All in the Family went by without some mention of Archie Bunker’s love of the then-current president, Richard Nixon, or railing against liberal causes like the peace movement and women’s liberation.
By 1972, networks were craving the type of fare that was relevant to the times. Lear and his production company unleashed a string of hits, including Sanford and Son, an NBC sitcom about a Black junk dealer (Redd Foxx) and his son (Demond Wilson). That helped pave the way for a number of shows that centered on African-American characters, whose stories were all but absent from primetime. Maude, a CBS spinoff of All in the Family, turned the Bunker concept on its head, featured Bea Arthur as liberal Maude Finlay, whose principled stands on causes often found her at odds with her neighborhood or in hypocritical situations. Other shows a Maude spinoff, Good Times, debuting in 1974, centering on Finlay’s housekeeper and her family, living in the housing projects, and The Jeffersons, debuting in 1975, about a well-to-do Black couple living in a “deluxe apartment in the sky.”
The string of hits continued with One Day at a Time, debuting in 1975, and even in late night, with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a weeknight series that satirized soap operas, followed by spinoffs Fernwood 2-Night and America 2Night, parodies of late night talk shows.
Perhaps the most controversial of all episodes Lear produced was a Maude two-parter in 1972 when, at age 47, she learns that she is pregnant. She struggles with whether to have an abortion, which she eventually does. Although Richard Nixon disliked All in the Family, the wife of his successor, Betty Ford, did. She was a big fan of Maude, and Lear recalled sending her tapes of episodes. When it came time to sell the show into syndication, she even helped him convince stations to buy it.
Lear is survived by his wife, Lyn Davis Lear, hit six children Ellen, Kate, Maggie, Ben, Madeleine and Brianna, and four grandchildren, Daniel, Griffin, Noah and Zoe.
A private service for immediate family will be held. In lieu of flowers or gifts, his family asked that contributions be made to People for the American Way.
More to come.
