"Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs." -- Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear (born July 27, 1922) is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude. As a political activist, he founded the civil liberties advocacy organization People For the American Way in 1981 and has supported First Amendment rights and liberal causes.
"At great, great remove sit the head of General Electric, the head of News Corp, the head of Viacom, or the head of this giant international corporation that wants these ratings.""But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.""But you know, my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down a race of people to call me lazy, his answer was that's not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.""Even when they don't know who Nixon was, these shows will continue to play.""Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make.""I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.""I stop and look at traffic accidents. I won't hang around, but when I hear something is terrible, as bad as it is, I've gotta look at it.""I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.""I wanted to just do a one-act play for 26 minutes, with commercials at the beginning and end. For years, I couldn't get my way. They wanted to interrupt three times.""In the area we're discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.""In this nation, leadership is dollars.""It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could get them caring - the more they cared, the harder they laughed.""Life goes on pretty much the same way. I've been working on a couple of films on the side. You may see some more. You may even see another television show.""Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case.""Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.""Maybe they continued to agree with Archie Bunker - as I said earlier, you can't change people's minds, but you can get them to think.""Nobody doubts my partisanship, but a lot of the activity is nonpartisan.""So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.""That's the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.""The American people may not be the best-educated, but they're very wise at heart.""The trafficking of sex and violence is comes after the demand for ratings.""There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end.""TV that people will never see, that giant international corporations will never touch, will never pay your salary.""We are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition.""We did an episode on Good Times which came out of a newspaper article about the incidence of hypertension in black males being higher than whites, and increasing. So we did a show in which James, the father on Good Times, had hypertension.""We got ratings. It isn't that they won't quarrel with you, or say you're always right. But as long as you stay strong and the ratings are good and you're reasonable - I don't think we fought unreasonably. We basically won that right.""When we went on the air, I didn't want to be interrupted for an act-one curtain.""You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings."
Lear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Jeanette (née Seicol) and Herman Lear, who worked in sales. He grew up in a Jewish home and had a Bar Mitzvah. Lear went to high school in Hartford, Connecticut and subsequently attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces. During World War II, he served in the Mediterranean Theater as a radio operator/gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bombardment Squadron, 463rd Bombardment Group (Heavy) of the Fifteenth Air Force. He flew 52 combat missions, for which he was awarded the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters. Lear was discharged from the Army in 1945. He and his fellow World War II crew members are featured in the book "Crew Umbriago" by Daniel P.Carroll (tail gunner), and also in another book: 772nd Bomb Squadron: The Men, The Memories by Turner Publishing Company.
In 1954, Lear was enlisted as a writer hoping to salvage the new Celeste Holm CBS sitcom, Honestly, Celeste!, but the program was canceled after eight episodes. In 1959, Lear created his first television series starring Henry Fonda, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called The Deputy. 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 filmed. After a third pilot was shot, CBS picked up the show, known as All in the Family. It premiered 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 1971-1972 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, well after it transitioned into Archie Bunker's Place. The show was based on the British sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, about an irascible working-class Tory and his Socialist son-in-law.
Lear's second big TV hit 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 lead character of which was reportedly based on Lear's then-wife Frances), The Jeffersons (both spin-off of All in the Family), and One Day at a Time.
What most of the Lear sitcoms had in common was that they were character-driven, had sets that more resembled stage plays than common sitcom sets, were shot on videotape in place of film, used a live studio audience, and most importantly dealt with the social and political issues of the day. Ironically, although Lear's shows are often considered somewhat autobiographical and closely identified with his personal experiences, his early hits were actually all adapted from someone else's creations: the two aforementioned British adaptations and Maude, while reputedly based on Lear's wife, was actually the brainchild of series producer Charlie Hauck.
Lear's longtime producing partner was Bud Yorkin, who served as executive producer of Sanford and Son, split with Lear in 1975. He started a production company with writer/producers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, but they had only two shows that ran more than a year: What's Happening!! and Carter Country. The Lear/Yorkin company was known as Tandem Productions. Lear and talent agent Jerry Perenchio founded T.A.T. Communications (T.A.T. stood for "Tuchus Affen Tisch", which is Yiddish for "Putting one's butt 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.
He also developed the cult favorite TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.Lear himself stepped down as production supervisor on his shows in 1978 to work on a film dealing with his concerns about the growing influence of radical right-wing evangelists. The film was never fully developed, but the process stimulated his long engagement in political activism.
In 1982, the company bought out Avco Embassy Pictures from Avco Financial Corporation, and the Avco part of its name was dropped. Embassy Pictures was led by (current Warner Bros. President) Alan Horn and Martin Schaeffer, later co-founders of Castle Rock Entertainment with Rob Reiner. In 1985, Lear sold all his film and television production holdings to Columbia Pictures (then owned by the Coca-Cola Company) which acquired Embassy's film and television division (which included Embassy's in-house television productions and the television rights to the Embassy theatrical library) for $485 million in shares of The Coca-Cola Company. Lear and his longtime partner Jerry Perenchio split the net proceeds (about $250 mm). Coke later sold the film division to Dino De Laurentiis and the home video arm to Nelson entertainment (led by Barry Spikings).
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 1987, having been split into different components owned by different entities. The Embassy TV division became ELP Communications in 1988, but shows originally produced by Embassy were now under the Columbia Pictures Television banner from 1988—1994 and the Columbia TriStar Television banner from 1994-1998.
Lear attempted to return to TV production in the 1990s with the shows Sunday Dinner, The Powers That Be, and 704 Hauser, the last one putting a different family in the house from All in the Family. None of the series proved successful, despite critical acclaim.
Today, Lear's TV library is owned by Sony Pictures Television.
However, Lear was successful as a businessman, especially with his leveraged acquisition vehicle Act III Communications, founded in 1986 and led initially by Tom McGrath (who met Lear while negotiating on behalf of Coca-Cola the acquisition of Lear's old company) and later by Hal Gaba, a former Embassy executive. This included: Act III Theatres, sold to KKR in 1997 at what is to this day considered a record premium; Act III Broadcasting, sold to Abry Communications; and Act III Publishing, sold to PriMedia. Lear is also the owner of Concord Records and in 2005 consummated a 50% interest in the film library and production assets of Village Roadshow Productions Pty Ltd.
Lear is unofficially credited with giving Rob Reiner, son of Carl Reiner (and a star of All in the Family) his start as a director by financing the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap. Lear's Act III Communications, founded in 1986 with Tom McGrath as President, produced several notable films, including Rob Reiner's next two films: Stand By Me, and The Princess Bride as well as Fried Green Tomatoes.
Lear helped finance his then wife's magazine, Lear's Magazine, started by Frances Lear in the late 1980s. The magazine ceased publication in 1994.
In 1997, Lear teamed up with Jim George to produce the Kids' WB cartoon series, Channel Umptee-3. It premiered on Kids WB's Saturday morning lineup on October 25, 1997. The cartoon made television history, as it was the first to meet the Federal Communications Commission's then-new educational/informal programming requirements. Like Lear's other television works, it received positive reviews, but ratings were low due to the network's focus on their core high-rated programming at the time. A time switch from a concrete Saturday schedule to a revolving Friday timeslot caused the show's ratings to dip even more, and it was eventually canceled after one season. September 4, 1998 marked the last airing of Umptee-3 on the WB.
In 2003, Lear made an appearance 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 has attended a South Park writers' retreat, and served as the officiant at Trey Parker's wedding.
In October 2010, it was reported that Lear is writing a new sitcom, which would star Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson as retirement home residents. It is currently being pitched for the 2011 TV season.
In 1967, Lear was nominated for an Academy Award for writing Divorce, American Style. Lear was among the first seven television pioneers inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. He received four Emmy Awards (two in 1971, and one each in 1972 and 1973) and a Peabody Award in 1978. He received the Humanist Arts Award from the American Humanist Association in 1977. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at6615 Hollywood Boulevard.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded the National Medal of Arts to Lear, noting that “Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it.”
In addition to his success as a TV producer and businessman, Lear is 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: he voted for John Anderson because he considered the Carter administration to be "a disaster".
In 1981, Lear founded People For the American Way, a civil liberties advocacy organization. People For ran several advertising campaigns opposing the interjection of religion in politics. In 1987, People For campaigned against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. The organization is still active.
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. In 2000, he established the Norman Lear Center, a multidisciplinary research and public policy center for exploring the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society, at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication.
Lear serves on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation. He has written articles for The Huffington Post.
Lear is a trustee emeritus at The Paley Center for Media.
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. Not a document collector, 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 in the Declaration of Independence Roadtrip, 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, introduced by Morgan Freeman, features Kathy Bates, Benicio del Toro, Michael Douglas, Mel Gibson, Whoopi Goldberg, Graham Greene, Ming-Na, Edward Norton, Winona Ryder, Kevin Spacey, and Renée Zellweger as readers. The film was directed by Arvin Brown and scored by John Williams.
In 2004, Lear established Declare Yourself, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign created to empower and encourage eligible 18-29 year-olds in America to register and vote. Since then, it has registered almost 4 million young people and contributed significantly to the unprecedented turnout of young voters.
As part of the ongoing drive to promote active and thoughtful citizenship, Lear premiered BornAgainAmerican.org at the Presidential Inauguration in 2009. The BornAgainAmerican campaign includes a specially commissioned song and an interactive website, reminding visitors of the American values expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
