Tributes have been pouring in for Norman Lear, the legendary producer, writer and political activist who died at his Los Angeles home from natural causes on Tuesday, aged 101.
Every major broadcast network in the US took the rare steop of simultaneously airing an in memoriam card in Lear’s honour on Wednesday evening.
“I loved Norman Lear with all my heart,” filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner, who played Michael “Meathead” Stivic in Lear’s seminal 1970s sitcom All In The Family, posted on X. “He was my second father. Sending my love to Lyn and the whole Lear family.”
Talk show host, writer and filmmaker Jon Stewart posted, “Goodnight Norman. Love you. Thanks for raising me.”
The actor Cary Elwes, who starred in The Princess Bride on which Lear served as executive producer, posted: “I am heartbroken. We’ve lost a titan who didn’t just change TV but changed my life forever with The Princess Bride. His sweetness, humor & intelligence will never be unmatched.”
In a statement fellow activist Jane Fonda said, “Today is a very sad day. Norman Lear, a man who meant a lot to many on a personal level and who changed the face and soul of American comedy, has passed. My heart is heavy. I loved Norman.”
Lear shared an Oscar nomination with Robert Kaufman in 1968 for writing the comedy Divorce American Style starring Dick Van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds and went on to earn legendary status in the television world.
His fierce social conscience led him to create classic American 1970s sitcoms like All In The Family, which was inspired by the BBC comedy Till Death Do Us Part and centred on the working class bigot Archie Bunker from Queens.
Sanford And Son followed the lives of a Black family in Los Angeles, while Diff’rent Strokes centred on two Black children adopted by a wealthy white man.
Lear wrote the late 1960s-early 1970s features The Night They Raided Minsky’s and The Thief Who Came To Dinner, helped finance Reiner’s Stand By Me, and served as executive producer on Fried Green Tomatoes, and The Princess Bride.
Born in Newhaven, Connecticut, on July 22 1922, to Jewish parents, Lear left his studies at Emerson College in Boston to join the US Air Force in 1942. He flew dozens of B-17 bomber missions over Europe to fight Fascism.
Later in life he formed People For The American Way, a non-profit set up to monitor civic life, and in the early 2000s established the non-profit Declare Yourself to mobilise youth voters.
After diving deep into the music industry in the late 1990s he returned to television with the remake of One Day At A Time in 2017, which ran for four years and became the first Netflix show to be renewed for network television.
Lear is survived by his third wife Lyn Davis Lear; six children, and four grandchildren. A private service for immediate family will be held.
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