1. Norman Milton Lear was an American screenwriter and producer who produced, wrote, created, or developed over 100 shows.
55 Facts About Norman Lear
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Norman Lear's works were introducing political and social themes to the sitcom format.
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Norman Lear has received many awards, including six Primetime Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, the National Medal of Arts in 1999, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017, and the Golden Globe Carol Burnett Award in 2021.
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Norman Lear was a member of the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
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Norman Lear was known for his political activism and funding of liberal and progressive causes and politicians.
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Norman Milton Lear was born on July 27,1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Jeanette and Hyman "Herman" 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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When Norman Lear was nine years old, he was 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, and 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 heard antisemitic Catholic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin while tinkering with his crystal radio set.
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Norman Lear enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in September 1942.
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Norman Lear served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator and gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; in a 2014 interview, he talked about bombing Germany.
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Norman Lear flew 52 combat missions and received the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters.
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Norman Lear was discharged from the Army Air Forces in 1945.
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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 named 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 monologs 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 attended a South Park writers' retreat, with some of his ideas making it onto South Park, and was the officiant at co-creator Trey Parker's wedding.
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In 2014, Norman Lear published Even This I Get to Experience, a memoir.
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Norman Lear 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 and Steven Kunes 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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Norman Lear has been honored for his influence on American television and culture.
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Norman Lear became the oldest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors later that year at the age of 95.
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Norman Lear was an outspoken supporter of First Amendment and liberal causes.
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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, was 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 held religious beliefs and integrated some evangelical Christian language into his Born Again American campaign.
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Norman Lear believed 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 served on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation.
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Norman Lear was a trustee of The Paley Center for Media.
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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, from 1956 to 1985.
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Norman Lear later became a documentary filmmaker through her production company Lyn Lear Productions.
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Norman Lear was a godparent to actress and singer Katey Sagal.
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Norman Lear died at his Los Angeles home on December 5,2023, from cardiac arrest, as a complication of heart failure.