Norman Milton Lear was born on July 27,1922 and is an American producer and screenwriter, who has produced, written, created, or developed over 100 shows.
56 Facts About Norman Lear
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Norman Lear has continued to actively produce television, including the 2017 remake of One Day at a Time and the Netflix revival of Good Times in 2022.
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Norman Lear has received many awards, including five Emmys, the National Medal of Arts, and the Kennedy Center Honors.
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Norman Lear is a member of the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
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Norman Lear is known for his political activism and funding of liberal and progressive causes and politicians.
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Norman Lear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the first child of Jeanette and Hyman "Herman" Norman Lear, a traveling salesman.
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Norman Lear had a younger sister, Claire Lear Brown.
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Norman Lear grew up in a Jewish household in Connecticut and had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony.
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Norman Lear's mother was originally from Ukraine, while his father's family was from Russia.
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When Norman Lear was nine years old and living with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts, his father went to prison for selling fake bonds.
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Norman Lear thought of his father as a "rascal" and said that the character of Archie Bunker was in part inspired by his father, while the character of Edith Bunker was in part inspired by his mother.
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However, Norman Lear has said the moment which inspired his lifetime of advocacy was another event which he experienced at the age of nine, when he first came across infamous anti-semitic Catholic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin while tinkering with his crystal radio set.
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Norman Lear has said he would hear more of Coughlin's radio sermons over time, and found out that Coughlin would at times find different ways to promote anti-semitism by targeting people whom Jews considered to be "great heroes," such as US President Franklin Roosevelt.
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Norman Lear attended Samuel Tilden High School in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1940 and attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces.
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Norman Lear enlisted in the United States Army in September 1942.
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Norman Lear flew 52 combat missions and was awarded the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters.
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Norman Lear was a press agent so I wanted to be a press agent.
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Norman Lear had a first cousin in Los Angeles, Elaine, who was married to an aspiring comedy writer called Ed Simmons.
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Simmons and Norman Lear teamed up to sell home furnishings door-to-door for a company called The Gans Brothers and later sold family photos door-to-door.
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Norman Lear acknowledged in 1986 that he and Simmons were the main writers for The Martin and Lewis Show for three years.
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Norman Lear wrote some of the opening monologues for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show which aired from 1956 to 1961.
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In 1959, Norman Lear created his first television series, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called The Deputy, starring Henry Fonda.
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Norman Lear changed the setting to the Watts section of Los Angeles and the characters to African-Americans, and the NBC show Sanford and Son was an instant hit.
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The Norman Lear organization was one of the most successful independent TV producers of the 1970s.
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Norman Lear developed the cult favorite TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman which was turned down by the networks as "too controversial" and placed it into first run syndication with 128 stations in January 1976.
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Norman Lear planned in 1977 to offer three hours of prime-time Saturday programming directly having stations place his production company in the position of an occasional network.
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In 1980, Norman Lear founded the organization People for the American Way for the purpose of counteracting the Christian right group Moral Majority which had been founded in 1979.
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In March 1982, Norman Lear produced an ABC television special titled I Love Liberty, as a counterbalance to groups like the Moral Majority.
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On February 2,1989, Norman Lear's Act III Communications formed a joint venture with Columbia Pictures Television called Act III Television to produce television series instead of managing.
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In 2003, Norman Lear appeared on South Park during the "I'm a Little Bit Country" episode, providing the voice of Benjamin Franklin.
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Norman Lear served as a consultant on the episodes "I'm a Little Bit Country" and "Cancelled".
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Norman Lear has attended a South Park writers' retreat, and was the officiant at co-creator Trey Parker's wedding.
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Norman Lear has hosted a podcast, All of the Above with Norman Lear, since May 1,2017.
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On July 29,2019, it was announced that Norman Lear had teamed with Lin-Manuel Miranda to make an American Masters documentary about Moreno's life, tentatively titled Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.
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In 2014, Norman Lear published Even This I Get To Experience, a memoir.
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On May 12,2017, Norman Lear was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize presented by the Woody Guthrie Center based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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The Producers Guild of America instituted the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television in his honour and he was a recipient in 2005.
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Norman Lear supported John Anderson because he considered the Carter administration to be "a complete disaster".
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Norman Lear was one of the wealthy Jewish Angelenos known as the Malibu Mafia.
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In 1981, Norman Lear founded People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right.
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Norman Lear, a longtime critic of the Religious Right, is an advocate for the advancement of secularism.
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Prominent right-wing Christians including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy Swaggart have accused Norman Lear of being an atheist and holding an anti-Christian bias.
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Marty noted that while Norman Lear and his family had never practiced Orthodox Judaism, the television producer was a follower of Judaism.
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Norman Lear holds religious beliefs and has integrated some evangelical Christian language into his Born Again American campaign.
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Norman Lear does believe that religion should be kept separate from politics and policymaking.
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In 1989, Norman Lear founded the Business Enterprise Trust, an educational program that used annual awards, business school case studies, and videos to spotlight exemplary social innovations in American business until it ended in 1998.
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Norman Lear announced in 1992 that he was reducing his political activism.
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Norman Lear serves on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation.
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Norman Lear is a trustee emeritus at The Paley Center for Media.
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Not a document collector, Norman Lear said in a press release and on the Today show that his intent was to tour the document around the United States so that the country could experience its "birth certificate" firsthand.
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In 2004, Norman Lear established Declare Yourself which is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign created to empower and encourage eligible 18- to 29-year-olds in America to register and vote.
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Norman Lear was one of 98 "prominent members of Los Angeles' Jewish community" who signed an open letter supporting the proposed nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers led by the United States.
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Norman Lear was married to Frances Loeb, publisher of Lear's magazine from 1956 to 1985.
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Norman Lear is a godparent to actress and singer Katey Sagal.
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From his three marriages, Norman Lear has six children and six grandchildren as of 2022.
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Norman Lear plays the protagonist in the video to "Happy Birthday to Me," the first single on musician and actor Paul Hipp's 2015 album The Remote Distance.