The death of the groundbreaking writer and producer leaves behind a string of incisive and progressive sitcoms as well as a profoundly altered TV landscapeNorman Lear, celebrated US TV writer and producer, dies aged 101The canon of English letters has …
The death of the groundbreaking writer and producer leaves behind a string of incisive and progressive sitcoms as well as a profoundly altered TV landscape
Norman Lear, celebrated US TV writer and producer, dies aged 101
The canon of English letters has Shakespeare, Russian literature has Pushkin and American television has Norman Lear. No single figure has exerted a greater influence over the evolution of the sitcom in particular, but also the medium in general – the visual vocabulary for live-studio-audience cinematography, the rhythms of writing for the 21-minute format and especially the political conscience guiding the country’s preeminent populist art form through some turbulent decades. And yet with Lear now sadly departed at the dumbfounding age of 101, surveying the expansive scope of his small-screen achievements feels like reductive and incomplete portraiture. A decorated soldier, a crusading advocate for the arts and a stalwart advocate for progressivism, he was more than a writer, producer or director. He was a great statesman, his lifelong work on and off our TV sets inextricable from an overarching project to build and improve the US.
As a Jew growing up in the intermission between the world wars, ideological consciousness was a birthright foisted upon him from his youngest years; he traces his radicalization to age nine, when he stumbled upon an antisemitic radio broadcast from Father Charles Coughlin that rang in his ears once the time came to enlist. His tenure as an Army Air Corps gunner and radio operator in the Mediterranean and European theaters instilled in him a tireless work ethic, though as was the case for many men his age, it also left him without a clear path post-peace. Lear cut his teeth in public relations and door-to-door sales of home furnishings and family photos before catching a break in jokecraft through his cousin’s husband. He and Ed Simmons established themselves as dependable sketch-men with regular gigs on the Colgate Comedy Hour variety program, where they helped turn duo Martin and Lewis into a national sensation.
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