And our hindsight is 20/20, so we may find a work that was lauded as progressive 30 years ago inadequate by today’s “woke” standards. In our neurotic minds, the pen is mightier than the sword.
It is amazing, in this sensitive media landscape, that Norman Lear was able to celebrate his 99th birthday recently with near universal acclaim. Lear’s career longevity is due to the depth of his thinking and the honed skill of his craft. He is a national treasure.
Lear wrote in The Washington Post on July 27, “I am a patriot, and I will not surrender that word to those who play to our worst impulses rather than our highest ideals. When the United States entered World War II, I dropped out of college to fight fascism. I flew 52 missions with a crew in a B-17, dropping bombs 35 times. Unlike so many others, I returned from that war safely, to another 70-plus years of life, love, family, failure and triumph.”
After World War II, Lear used his creativity, open mind and language skills to help form the television landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. The Jewish-born producer was a member of The Greatest Generation who understood his younger peers, the Baby Boomers. The Connecticut-born Lear was the rare businessman in that era who truly valued and promoted multiculturalism. Sympathy is part and parcel of Lear’s creative process.
Around 1967, Norman Lear wrote and produced the film Divorce American Style. The movie portrayed divorce in a more realistic and sympathetic light than the films of many of his predecessors, and Lear garnered an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay.
All in the Family premiered on CBS in 1971. According to Brittanica, “The comic exchanges between Bunker and his liberal son-in-law Michael (“Meathead”) Stivic (Rob Reiner) explored many of the most-loaded topics of the day, from civil rights to the Vietnam War. Lear received four Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award for the series.”
In 1972, Maude aired, featuring as its protagonist a 47-year-old grandmother. A Chicago Tribune article by Lewis Beale later stated, “With its large, loud protagonist and her messy family life, Maude was presented as a realistic contrast to the perfection of such TV mothers as Donna Reed and Harriet Nelson. It was also a perfect vehicle to explore the burgeoning feminism of the era.”
That same decade, Mr. Lear created Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons, two sitcoms with Black protagonists. The dynamic characters, family dynamics and comedic storylines of these shows brought them success.
Lear continued to produce in the decades that followed, giving us such hits as the films The Princess Bride (1987), and Fried Green Tomatoes (1991).
As TheWrap reported on July 14: “Lear has been recognized as a 2017 Kennedy Center Honoree, a recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 1999, a winner of the Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 and as a member of the inaugural group of inductees into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984.”
Currently, Norman Lear is working on projects including an update of his previous sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Lear is also still an activist. He wrote in The Washington Post, “Protecting voting rights should not be today’s struggle. But it is. And that means it is our struggle, yours and mine, for as long as we have breath and strength.”
The writer is a columnist published by USA Today, US News & World Report, Gannett, Hearst Newspapers, and other media outlets. He is a former associate editor of Hearst Magazines.