Norman Lear

Lear was born in New Haven, Connecticut,[3][4] the son of Jeanette (née Seicol) and Hyman "Herman" Lear, a traveling salesman.[4] He had a younger sister, Claire Lear Brown (1925–2015).[5] Lear grew up in a Jewish household in Connecticut and had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony.[6] His mother was originally from Ukraine, while his father's family was from Russia.[7][8][9]

When Lear was nine years old and living with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts,[10] his father went to prison for selling fake bonds.[11] Lear thought of his father as a "rascal" and said that the character of Archie Bunker (whom Lear depicted as white Protestant on the show) was in part inspired by his father, while the character of Edith Bunker was in part inspired by his mother.[11] However, Lear has said the moment which inspired his lifetime of advocacy was another event which he experienced at the age of nine, when he first came across infamous anti-semitic Catholic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin while tinkering with his crystal radio set.[12] Lear has also said he would hear more of Coughlin's radio sermons over time, and found out that Coughlin would at times find different ways to promote anti-semitism by also targeting people whom Jews considered to be "great heroes," such as US President Franklin Roosevelt.[13]

Lear 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.[14]

Lear enlisted in the United States Army in September 1942.[15] He served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator/gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; he also has talked about bombing Germany in the European theater.[11] Lear flew 52 combat missions and was awarded the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters. Lear was discharged from the Army in 1945, and his fellow World War II crew members are featured in the books Crew Umbriago, by Daniel P. Carroll (tail gunner), and 772nd Bomb Squadron: The Men, The Memories, by Turner Publishing and Co.

After World War II Lear had a career in public relations.[11] The career choice was inspired by his Uncle Jack: "My dad had a brother, Jack, who flipped me a quarter every time he saw me. He was a press agent so I wanted to be a press agent. That's the only role model I had. So all I wanted was to grow up to be a guy who could flip a quarter to a nephew."[6] Lear decided to move to California to restart his career in publicity, driving with his toddler daughter across the country.[11]

His first night in Los Angeles, Lear stumbled upon a production of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara at the 90-seat theater-in-the-round Circle Theater off Sunset Boulevard. One of the actors in the play was Sydney Chaplin, the son of actors Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey. Charlie Chaplin, Alan Mowbray, and Dame Gladys Cooper sat in front of Lear, and after the show was over, Charlie Chaplin performed.[11]

Lear had a first cousin in Los Angeles, Elaine, who was married to an aspiring comedy writer called Ed Simmons. Simmons and Lear teamed up to sell home furnishings door-to-door for a company called The Gans Brothers and later sold family photos door-to-door. Throughout the 1950s, Lear and Simmons turned out comedy sketches for television appearances of Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, and others. They frequently wrote for Martin and Lewis when they appeared on the Colgate Comedy Hour and a 1953 article from Billboard magazine stated that Lear and Simmons were guaranteed a record-breaking $52,000 each to write for five additional Martin and Lewis appearances on the Colgate Comedy Hour that year.[16] In a 2015 interview with Vanity Magazine, Lear said that Jerry Lewis had hired him and Simmons as writers for Martin and Lewis three weeks before the comedy duo made their first appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1950.[17] Lear also acknowledged in 1986 that he and Simmons were the main writers for The Martin and Lewis Show for three years.[18]

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 monologues for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show[17][19] 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.

2000s and 2010s

Norman Lear in 2014, at the Austin Book Festival

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 has attended a South Park writers' retreat,[45] and was the officiant at co-creator Trey Parker's wedding.[46]

Lear is spotlighted in the 2016 documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You.[47] In 2017, Lear 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 has hosted a podcast, All of the Above with Norman Lear, since May 1, 2017.[48][49] On July 29, 2019, it was announced that Lear had teamed with Lin-Manuel Miranda to make an American Masters documentary about Moreno's life, tentatively titled Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.[50] In 2020, it was announced that Lear and Act III Productions would executive produce a revival of Who’s The Boss?[51]

In 2014, Lear published Even This I Get To Experience, a memoir.[52]

[53] [54]

Norman Lear's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6615 Hollywood Boulevard.[55]

In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded the National Medal of Arts to Lear, noting, "Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it." Also in 1999, 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.[56][57]

On May 12, 2017, Lear was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize presented by the Woody Guthrie Center based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[58] The event took place in the Clive Davis Theater at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

The Woody Guthrie Prize is given annually to an artist who exemplifies the spirit and life work of Guthrie by speaking for the less fortunate through music, literature, film, dance or other art forms and serving as a positive force for social change in America. Previous honorees include Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples and Kris Kristofferson.[59]

On August 3, 2017, it was announced that the Kennedy Center had made Lear, along with Carmen de Lavallade,[60] Lionel Richie,[60] LL Cool J,[60] and Gloria Estefan,[60] a recipient of the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors.[60] US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were scheduled to be seated with the honorees during the Kennedy Center ceremony, which took place on December 3, 2017,[60] and they were planning to host a reception with them at the White House earlier in the evening.[60] Variety magazine's senior editor Ted Johnson reacted saying "That in and of itself will be an interesting moment, as Lear and Estefan have been particularly outspoken against Trump and his policies."[60] It was afterwards announced that Lear would boycott the White House reception.[61] In the end, the President and First Lady did not attend.[62] The Producers Guild of America instituted the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television in his honour and he was a recipient in 2005.

In addition to his success as a TV writer and producer, 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 supported John Anderson because he considered the Carter administration to be "a complete disaster".[63]

Lear was one of the wealthy Jewish Angelenos known as the Malibu Mafia.[64] 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,[65] and they backed the struggling progressive magazine The Nation to keep it afloat.[66] In 1975, they formed the Energy Action Committee to oppose Big Oil's powerful lobby in Washington.[65]

In 1981, Lear founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right.[65] PFAW ran several advertising campaigns opposing the interjection of religion in politics.[67] PFAW succeeded in stopping Reagan's 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.[68] Lear, a longtime critic of the Religious Right, is an advocate for the advancement of secularism.[69][70]

Prominent right-wing Christians including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy Swaggart have accused Lear of being an atheist and holding an anti-Christian bias.[69][70] 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.[70] Marty noted that while Lear and his family had never practiced Orthodox Judaism,[70] the television producer was a follower of Judaism.[70]

In a 2009 interview with US News journalist Dan Gilgoff, Lear rejected claims by right-wing Christian nationalists that he was an atheist and prejudiced against Christianity. Lear holds religious beliefs and has integrated some evangelical Christian language into his Born Again American campaign. He does believe that religion should be kept separate from politics and policymaking.[69] In a 2014 interview with The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles journalist Rob Eshman, Lear described himself as a "total Jew" but said he was never a practicing one.[71]

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.[72] In 2000, he provided an endowment for a multidisciplinary research and public policy center that explored the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. It was later named the Norman Lear Center in recognition.

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.[73]

Lear has been married three times.[14] He was married to Frances Loeb, publisher of Lear's magazine from 1956 to 1985.[79] They separated in 1983, with Loeb eventually receiving $112 million from Lear in their divorce settlement.[80] In 1987 he married his current wife, producer Lyn Davis. Lear is a godparent to actress and singer Katey Sagal.[81] On July 27, 2022, he turned 100.[82]

Lear plays the protagonist in the video to "Happy Birthday to Me," the first single on musician and actor Paul Hipp's 2015 album The Remote Distance.

The top of my bucket list always included a desire to sing. More than that — a desire to enchant an audience with my voice. I ached to be Sinatra or Tormé for just a night. You say a night's too much? How about just one song?" My friend, actor, singer-guitarist and composer, Paul Hipp, wrote the happy birthday song when he turned fifty. I loved it and asked if I could perform it as I turn ninety-three. That was the result, and I don't care what you say, I love it.[83]

Note: The above chart does not include the made-for-television movies The Wave, which aired on October 4, 1981, or Heartsounds, which aired on September 30, 1984.

• Lear, Norman. "Liberty and Its Responsibilities". Broadcast Journalism, 1979–1981. The Eighth Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Survey, Ed. By Marvin Barrett. New York: Everest House, 1982. ISBN 978-0-896-96160-9. OCLC 8347364.
• Lear, Norman. "Our Political Leaders Mustn't Be Evangelists", USA Today, August 17, 1984.
• Lear, Norman and Ronald Reagan. "A Debate on Religious Freedom", Harper's Magazine, October 1984.
• Lear, Norman. "Our Fragile Tower of Greed and Debt", The Washington Post, April 5, 1987.
• Lear, Norman. Even This I Get to Experience. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-594-20572-9. OCLC 870919776.

• Carroll, Daniel P., and Albert K. Brown. Crew Umbriago. [S.l.]: D.P. Carroll, 1986.
• Turner Publishing Co. 772nd Bomb Squadron: The Men - the Memories of the 463rd Bomb Group (The Swoose Group). Paducah, KY: Turner Pub. Co, 1996. ISBN 978-1-563-11320-8
• Campbell, Sean. The Sitcoms of Norman Lear. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co, 2007. ISBN 978-0-786-42763-5
• Just Another Version of You. PBS American Masters documentary. 2016.
• Miller Taylor Cole. Syndicated Queerness: Television Talk Shows, Rerun Syndication, and the Serials of Norman Lear. dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2017.

• CBS News Sunday Morning interview with Norman Lear on January 10, 2021. "What makes Norman Lear, at 98, still tick?".

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Norman Lear.

• Official website
• Norman Lear at IMDb
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• 2007 biography of Norman Lear at the Museum of Broadcast Communications website (archived)
• Norman Lear Interview Silver Screen Studios - Dispatches from Quarantine (June 29, 2020)