One of the most influential people in television, Lear died at his Los Angeles home of natural causes, Variety reported on Wednesday, citing his publicist.
Lear, who won six Emmy awards for his work in television, was known for his campaigning for liberal causes, including voting rights, and worked well into his 90s.
In 2017, he rebooted his 1970s TV series “One Day at a Time” to focus on a Cuban-American family, and in 2020 he earned his sixth Emmy for a live special broadcast of “All in the Family” and “Good Times”.
In February 2021, Lear received the Carol Burnett lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes for his contributions to television.
In addition to “All in the Family” and “Maude”, Lear dominated American TV screens in the 1970s and ’80s with the situation-comedy series “Sanford and Son”, “The Jeffersons”, and the soap-opera spoof “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”. At one point in the 1970s, Lear had eight shows on the air with an estimated 120 million viewers, Time magazine said.
By drawing material from social themes of the time, Lear’s shows made network executives nervous as they had a depth and air of controversy.
“For him to say that he didn’t have an impact on not only television but society is a little too humble,” said Rob Reiner, who had a co-starring role on “All in the Family” before becoming a film director.
Lear and production partner Bud Yorkin put “All in the Family” on the air in January 1971, and the show would go on to win four Emmys for best comedy in its nine seasons. It was based on a British show, “Til Death Do Us Part”, and gave US television one of its most memorable and controversial characters – Archie Bunker.
Carroll O’Connor portrayed Archie as a crude, loud, blue-collar New Yorker who spouted racist, homophobic and anti-semitic comments. He was cast against a scatterbrained wife he called “Dingbat”, a liberal daughter, and an even more liberal son-in-law he referred to as “Meathead”, played by Reiner.
“All in the Family” was the top-rated show on American television for five straight years, according to CBS, and TV Guide ranked it fourth on its list of television’s all-time greatest shows.
‘Complexity of humanity’
Born on July 27, 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut, Norman Milton Lear’s most lasting creation was partly based on fact. Many of the harsh words that came out of Archie’s mouth had first been spoken by Lear’s own father Herman, who had gone to prison for selling fake bonds, frequently told his wife to “stifle” herself, and called his son “the laziest white kid I ever saw”.
“I grew up in a family that lived at the top of its lungs and the ends of its nerves,” Lear told Esquire magazine.
Some critics said the Archie Bunker character put a laughing face on bigotry but Lear said it only pointed to the complexity of humanity.
A year after “All in the Family” started, Lear aired “Maude”, a spinoff that starred Bea Arthur as Archie’s acerbic sister-in-law and political opposite.
As with Bunker, the character was like none previously seen on US television. Maude was on husband No. 4, protested marijuana laws, and had an abortion before the US supreme court legalised the procedure nationwide. Her husband battled alcoholism, had two nervous breakdowns, and attempted suicide.
Black characters in US television in the ’70s were mostly limited to minor roles until Lear made them the focus of some of his shows. “The Jeffersons” was another spinoff of “All in the Family” and featured an upwardly mobile Black couple who moved to Manhattan’s glitzy upper eastside neighbourhood. The show’s lead character George was often rude and loud.
Lear’s other hits included “Sanford and Son”, a sitcom about a Black junkyard owner in a Los Angeles neighbourhood, and “Good Times,” a portrayal of a working-class Black family in a Chicago housing project.
Other Lear-produced hits included “Diff’rent Strokes”, “Fernwood 2 Night”, and the “All in the Family” spinoff “Archie Bunker’s Place”. But Lear also had flops such as “All That Glitters”, “Sunday Dinner”, and another “All in the Family” spinoff, “Gloria”.
Lear, who grew up in Connecticut, dropped out of college in World War II to join the Army and flew 52 combat missions. He went to Los Angeles in 1950 with the intention of being a publicist but began writing for TV stars such as Danny Thomas, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Andy Williams.
Lear shifted focus in 1981 and founded the liberal activist group People for the American Way to boost voting rights and fight right-wing extremism. He also established the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication.
Lear is survived by his third wife, Lyn, and his six children.