Norman Lear, the prolific screenwriter who created tv classics like All within the Household, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, Good Occasions, and The Jeffersons, has died at age 101.
Lear died on Tuesday at his residence in Los Angeles, in keeping with the New York Occasions.
Norman Milton Lear was born on July twenty seventh, 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut. He enlisted within the Military in 1942, the place he served within the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator. Lear flew 52 fight missions throughout World Struggle II and was awarded the Air Medal with 4 oak leaf clusters earlier than being discharged in 1945.
Following his navy profession, Close to moved to Los Angeles to pursue a profession in public relations. Together with aspiring comedy author Ed Simmons, he started writing comedy sketches for the likes of Martin and Lewis and Rowan and Martin. Within the Nineteen Fifties, he labored on applications together with Actually, Celeste!, The Martha Raye Present, and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Present earlier than creating his first tv present, The Deputy, in 1959.
Lear briefly switched to movie — he wrote and produced the 1967 movie Divorce American Model and directed the 1971 movie Chilly Turkey, each starring Dick Van Dyke — within the Nineteen Sixties earlier than he actually struck gold with tv. He pitched a number of exhibits below numerous names a couple of working class household earlier than CBS lastly picked up All within the Household, which premiered in 1971. Via their on-screen disagreements, the politically divided Bunker household broke floor in its portrayals and discussions of racism, feminism, and warfare.
In 1972, Sanford and Son, one other Lear mission, premiered on NBC. Touted because the African American reply to All within the Household, the present was one of many first Black sitcoms and ran till 1977. Lear helmed various different widespread sitcoms all through the Seventies, together with Maude, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, and Good Occasions. All of his initiatives helped formed the structural and thematic constructing blocks of the style, from its stay studio viewers and multi-camera taping to its storylines that handled fashionable societal points.
Lear’s politics didn’t simply present up in his writing. Within the Eighties, he based Individuals for the American Approach, a progressive advocacy group meant to counteract the work of the far-right. He produced a tv particular referred to as I Love Liberty in 1982 as a response to the Ethical Majority. In 2001, he bought one of many first revealed copies of america Declaration of Independence for $8.1 million and arranged a so-called “tour” of the doc in order that People might see it in actual life. The Declaration visited quite a few presidential libraries and museums within the early 2000s, and even appeared on the 2002 Olympics and Tremendous Bowl. Together with Rob Reiner, Lear produced a dramatized studying of the doc on July 4th, 2001 that was become a movie.
Lear gained various awards in his profession, together with the Academy Award for Greatest Unique Screenplay for Divorce American Model and several other Emmy Awards for All within the Household. In 1991, President Invoice Clinton awarded him the Nationwide Medal of Arts, and in 2017, he was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize and the Kennedy Middle Honors. He was inducted into the Tv Academy Corridor of Fame in 1984.
