Norman Lear, the influential television writer, producer, and developer who dominated the American prime-time comedy lineup in the 1970s and destroyed barriers with sitcoms that wrung humor out of the country’s culture wars, has died, according to his family. He was 101 years old.
Lear’s family said in a statement, “Thank you for the moving outpouring of love and support in honor of our wonderful husband, father, and grandfather. Norman lived a life of creativity, tenacity, and empathy. He deeply loved our country and spent a lifetime helping to preserve its founding ideals of justice and equality for all. Knowing and loving him has been the greatest of gifts. We ask for your understanding as we mourn privately in celebration of this remarkable human being.”
In an astoundingly prolific career that spanned over 60 years, Lear developed or created some of the most influential comedies in television history, including “Sanford and Son,” “Maude,” “All in the Family,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons,” and “One Day at a Time,” including its 2017 reboot anchored by a Latino cast. Lear’s hugely popular shows discussed hot-button issues that network executives and some viewers had long considered taboo, like sexism, racism, homophobia, the women’s liberation movement, and class conflict. In his off-screen life, Lear was a committed progressive and outspoken champion of civic responsibility.
Lear was born Norman Milton Lear in 1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Hyman “Herman” and Jeanette Lear. When he was 9 years old, his father was arrested and imprisoned for selling fake bonds. Lear described it as one of his life’s defining episodes. He said in an interview with PBS News Hour, “The night that he was taken away, there were a ton of people at the house, and somebody puts their hand on my shoulder, and says, ‘You’re the man of the house now, Norman.’ What a fool that person was. But somehow, I got it. You know, a sense of the foolishness of the human condition.”
He got his first break in entertainment in the early 1950s, teaming up with comedy writer Ed Simmons and collaborating on sketches for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, and other popular comics of the Eisenhower era. Lear eventually found work as a TV writer and producer on short-lived sitcoms, and in 1959, he created his first series: “The Deputy,” a Western starring Henry Fonda.
He then turned to writing and producing movies such as “Come Blow Your Horn” (1963), the Oscar-nominated “Divorce American Style” (1967), and the satire “Cold Turkey” (1971), which he directed. In the course of his celebrated career, Lear received an array of honors, including induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, six Emmy Awards, a Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award, a National Medal of Arts, and, most recently, the Carol Burnett Award for lifetime achievement at the virtual Golden Globes in February 2021.
Lear was revered by generations of showrunners, writers, producers and performers, who saw him as a gifted master of small-screen entertainment and a revolutionary who made television more politically vital, morally urgent and socially relevant. Lear’s imprint can be found in innumerable contemporary series that confront the American status quo. Lear leaves behind his wife, Lyn Davis Lear, six children, and four grandchildren.