Oscar Winberg on Remembering an Icon: Norman Lear

The death of Norman Lear, at age 101, late last year, on December 5, was a strange moment for me as a historian. I have spent the last ten years with the man. I have not only worn out my copy of his 2014 autobiography Even This I Get to Experience, but I have read, watched, and listened to everything I could get my hands on, including interviews, articles, speeches, and even his private correspondence. A personal highlight while working on my dissertation, a political history of Lear’s situation comedy All in the Family, was interviewing Lear, still working on television shows in his late-90s, at his production company in Beverly Hills in December 2017. When he passed, I consumed every obituary, memorial, and think piece on his remarkable legacy that I came across. Together, they illustrate not only the enormous influence Norman Lear had on television and American life, but they tell us something about history and memory.

Starting in the new entertainment medium in the 1950s, an age described as the “golden age” of television, and receiving his latest Emmy Award in 2020, an era referred to as “peak television,” Lear shaped television over the last eight decades. He was behind such groundbreaking sitcoms as All in the Family (CBS, 1971-1979), Maude (CBS, 1972-1978), Good Times (CBS, 1974-1979), The Jeffersons (CBS, 1975-1985), and One Day at a Time (CBS, 1974-1984). In the mid-1970s, Lear and his producer partner Alan “Bud” Yorkin were behind half of the ten highest-rated shows. According to one estimate the shows enjoyed a total audience of around 120 million. Younger viewers might remember him as one of the producers behind the One Day at a Time remake for Netflix (2017-2020).

Lear’s obituaries, however, make clear that his influence on television was not measured in ratings alone. He was, after all, not the first successful television producer. Rather, he was the first television producer to find success while, as Louis Bayard at the Washington Post remarked, transforming “the bland porridge of situation comedy into a zesty stew of sociopolitical strife and brutally funny speech.” His shows, the New York Times noted, “brought the sitcom into the real world.” All in the Family, which featured heated debates between the bigoted Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) and his “weepin’ nelly” daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and “bleedin’ heart” son-in-law Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner) about everything from civil rights and women’s liberation to the war in Vietnam and President Nixon, was Lear’s magnum opus. Honored with 22 Emmy Awards and 55 nominations, it was the most watched show on television for a record-breaking five consecutive seasons. Yet, the show, and in particular Archie Bunker, remains contested to this day.

The people behind All in the Family were committed to fighting bigotry with satire, but some in the audience worried that they were, in fact, bolstering prejudice. Following an influential, but flawed, 1974 study by social scientists Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach on audience reactions to Archie Bunker, the conventional narrative held and, as the commentary following Lear’s passing illustrates, still holds that the show only reinforced existing attitudes among viewers. Even though historians have since examined a wide variety of published and private audience research on the show and concluded that there is reason to believe the people who found a hero in Archie Bunker were marginal at best, the myth lives on. “People saw what they wanted in Bunker,” Lorraine Ali concludes in the Los Angeles Times, while a column on CNN goes as far as to call the character “dangerous.” Norman Lear himself addressed such charges in the New York Times back in 1971: “Conversation in the home, how bad can that be?”

Norman Lear thrived in conversation and collaboration. He talked himself into his first gig writing comedy, together with Ed Simmons, selling a comedy routine to Danny Thomas after getting his telephone number by pretending to be a reporter for the New York Times. In the late 1950s, Lear joined forces with television director Alan “Bud” Yorkin to establish Tandem Productions. Even while Lear became the public face of the enterprise (he even hosted Saturday Night Live), success depended on his eye for bringing talent together. Lear was more than comfortable in the spotlight but was also often generous in lifting up the efforts of the cast and writers for praise. Yet, his collaborators are often missing from the articles celebrating his legacy. Even as Yorkin was in charge of Sanford & Son, the former is largely forgotten while the show he produced is celebrated as part of Lear’s repertoire of sitcom successes. This oversight creates a “great man” narrative which misrepresents television history.

Part of Norman Lear’s genius and his transformative influence was giving opportunities for new voices to be heard on television. On All in the Family he introduced gay characters, on Maude an outspoken middle-aged woman, on Good Times a working-class Black family in public housing, on The Jeffersons an affluent Black family, and on One Day at a Time a divorced single mother. It is hardly surprising that the celebrations of Lear’s work note the ways he lifted up communities previously ignored on television. “Had it not been for Norman, there wouldn’t have been a path for me,” producer, writer, and director Tyler Perry reflects in the New York Times on the representation of Black families on Lear’s shows. Not everybody agrees, television writer Eric Monte, who together with Mike Evans (the actor who played Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family and later The Jeffersons) created Good Times, filed a lawsuit in 1977 accusing Lear of stealing his ideas (it was settled out of court) and has been a vocal critic of him ever since. With the exception of a few mentions of Monte, however, Lear was widely praised for his portrayals of Black families, middle-aged women, the LGBTQ-community, and the Latino community. A new, diverse, generation of television producers, including Gloria Calderón Kellet, Kenya Barris, and Quinta Brunson, all celebrated Lear as a pathbreaker and mentor.

Laughter was, of course, not the only thing Norman Lear cared about. More than a producer, he was a political activist. Variety called him “one of Hollywood’s most outspoken liberals.” Most, if not all, obituaries recognized his activist work on behalf of progressive causes. But outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times tended to divide Lear’s career into an entertainment era, with a particular focus on the success of the 1970s, and a political era, starting with the founding of the progressive advocacy organization People for the American Way in 1981. In fact, Lear’s political work was inextricably tied to his work in television entertainment.

Having lived through the television blacklist in the McCarthyite 1950s, Lear always recognized the power of television to address political and social issues that people cared about. All in the Family and Maude won acclaim and popularity in the early 1970s by honest engagement with issues such as racial segregation, anti-war activism, and alcoholism. Many remember breakthrough moments, such as Maude (Bea Arthur) finding herself pregnant at an advanced age and after reflection deciding on an abortion in November 1972, as milestones in television history. In fact, these were not only television milestones but political developments. Anti-abortion organizations mobilized to stop CBS from airing re-runs of the abortion episodes in the summer of 1973 while women’s rights activists rallied to defend the show. To make sure his shows served a political purpose, Lear brought in Virginia Carter from the National Organization for Women to work with various advocates and activists when addressing sensitive subjects. In the last two months, I have seen numerous references to episodes on Lear’s shows addressing political issues such as abortion, sexual violence, and gay rights. None of them have acknowledged Carter’s work at Tandem Productions.

With the founding of People for the American Way in 1981, Lear moved into formal political activism – including successfully mobilizing opposition to President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court – but he established himself as a political figure in the 1970s while running a handful popular prime-time shows. Tandem worked with various civil rights organizations, progressive advocacy groups, and members of Congress to make sure that the impact of the shows lasted longer than the actual broadcast (that’s what my work is all about!). When the networks and the Federal Communications Commission, under pressure from Congress, adopted new censorship policies in the mid-1970s, Norman Lear joined forces with other producers, writers, and directors to challenge the restrictive rules in federal court. The fight over the so-called family viewing hour was not just a judicial skirmish but a political campaign as the creative community fostered relationships among liberals in Congress while conservatives mobilized the religious right against “immorality on television.” These conflicts foreshadowed Lear’s work with People for the American Way to make sure that organizations like Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority not “impose their political and moral beliefs on the rest of us.” With a keen appreciation of the power of television, Lear relied on public service announcements, television specials, and broadcast advertisements to position the progressive People for the American Way as a political player. “Norman’s impact was not simply confined to the writer’s room,” Speaker of the House emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) noted on social media, “he defended free speech, the right to vote and the guardrails between church and state.”

Understanding the life and legacy of Norman Lear, and the way he is remembered in the news media, tells us a lot about historical memory – relying on conventional narratives, leaning towards “great man” narratives over collaborative projects, and understanding television entertainment and political activism as distinct endeavors. If journalism, including the obituaries and commentaries, is the first draft of history, I hope my research on Lear will constitute a second draft that challenges and complicates conventional narratives and make clear that television history is not only cultural history but also political and intellectual history. Personally, the most striking thing following the passing of Lear was how a man gone at an age of 101 time and time again was described as gone too soon.