July 27: Happy Birthday Norman Lear

[TMC]

https://lebeauleblog.com/2017/07/27/...lor-schilling/

Norman Lear is celebrating his 95th birthday today. He dropped out of college to join the Air Force in World War 2. He worked in PR and as a door-to-door salesman before getting into writing for television. He wrote for several series during the 1950s before creating his first series in 1959; given the times it was perhaps inevitable that it was a Western, The Deputy. After that show was canceled, Lear spent about a decade as a writer and producer on a variety of projects, before he came up with the idea of a comedy about a working-class American family. ABC didn’t like it, but CBS did, and the series was an instant critical success, although its ratings did not take off until its second season.



All in the Family was the #1 show on television for five consecutive seasons, from 1971-76, and won over 20 Emmys. All four of the main cast members—Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally Struthers—won at least one acting Emmy. The series also spawned two successful spinoffs, Maude and The Jeffersons, plus the “second generation” spinoff Good Times. Other successful Lear series that made their debuts in the seventies included Sanford and Son, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and One Day at a Time. Starting in the 1980s, Lear began to focus much more of his time and effort on political activism.

[MA]