TV Legend Norman Lear Dies at 101
by EG
Norman Lear, whose resume as a TV sitcom creator includes All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, and Good Times, as dies at the age of 101. Lear also played a key role in the production of such hit theatrical films as This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. Read on for details.
Norman Lear, the writer, producer and citizen activist who coalesced topical conflict and outrageous comedy in such wildly popular sitcoms as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and The Jeffersons, has died. He was 101.
Lear died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by his family who, according to a statement on his official Instagram account, sang songs until the very end.
“Norman lived a life in awe of the world around him. He marveled at his cup of coffee every morning, the shape of the tree outside his window, and the sounds of beautiful music,” read the post. “But it was people — those he just met and those he knew for decades — who kept his mind and heart forever young. As we celebrate his legacy and reflect on the next chapter of life without him, we would like to thank everyone for all the love and support.”
One of the seven original inductees into the TV Hall of Fame in 1984 (he entered with David Sarnoff, William S. Paley, Edward R. Murrow, Paddy Chayefsky, Lucille Ball and Milton Berle), the six-time Emmy winner, who teamed often with fellow writer-producer Bud Yorkin, also developed Sanford & Son and One Day at a Time, among many other comedies.
He and Yorkin came came to prominence writing for Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin’s variety show in the 1950s, and at one time, Lear had nine shows on the air and finished one season with three of the top four highest-rated series.
Lear adapted Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn for a 1963 film directed by Yorkin and cajoled Frank Sinatra into starring in it, received an Oscar screenplay nomination for porce American Style (1967) and co-wrote and produced William Friedkin’s The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), at the time the most expensive movie to be made in New York City.
Later, he provided the funding for such films as This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Stand by Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987) and Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). The first three were directed by Rob Reiner, who taught Lear’s daughter Ellen how to play jacks when the kids were both 9 years old and went on, of course, to star as “Meathead” Michael Stivic on All in the Family.
In 1981, Lear, a famed Hollywood liberal, co-founded the the nonprofit People for the American Way, whose vision “is a vibrantly perse democratic society in which everyone is treated equally under the law, given the freedom and opportunity to pursue their dreams and encouraged to participate in our nation’s civic and political life.” Twenty years later, he purchased an original copy of the Declaration of Independence at auction for $8.1 million and took it on a tour around the country for a decade.
A two-fingered typist, Lear also was known for the headwear he first donned so he wouldn’t pick at his bald head during bouts of writer’s block. “One day [his second wife] Frances came into my study and threw a little white boating hat on my head to keep me from picking. It worked, and that is how my nearly 50-year love affair with that white hat began,” he wrote in his 2014 memoir, Even This I Get to Experience.
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