Norman Lear - Biography

Last Editor: megmeg4787				Norman Lear Biography -   Name : Norman Lear Date of birth : 27 July 1922 Place of birth : New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Norman Lear Trivia -

In 1959 Lear produced a pilot for a situation comedy called "Band of Gold" in which James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette played a different couple each week. The program was considered too "experimental" and was never broadcast. Long a renowned supporter of liberal political causes, he changed his party registration to Republican in 1980 and endorsed John Anderson for President, after calling the administration of Jimmy Carter a "complete disaster." Supposedly based Archie Bunker, at least in part, on his own father. The elder Lear was a salesman and, by all accounts, a vulgar, reactionary bigot who was constantly railing against women and minorities. He consistantly referred to Afro-Americans as "schwartzes," a Yiddish-American term with racially perjoritive connotations, and once called young Norman "the laziest white kid I ever knew." In 1980, he founded a public interest group "People For The American Way" which is a liberal group. Is a brother of the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity based out of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. Acted as a consultant for Trey Parker and Matt Shone's South Park. He assisted on Cancelled and I'm A Little Bit Country.

Norman Lear Detailed Biography -

Norman Lear (born July 27, 1922) is an American television writer and producer who produced such popular 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son and Maude. Some consider him the most successful television producer of all time, given the shows he and his production companies produced. Lear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Air Force during World War II. He received a decorated Air Medal for his wartime accomplishments before leaving the military in 1945. Starting out as a comedy writer, then a film director (he wrote and produced the 1969 film Divorce, American Style and directed the 1971 film Cold Turkey, both starring Dick Van Dyke), Lear tried to sell a concept for a sitcom about a blue-collar American family to ABC. They rejected the show after two pilots were filmed. After a third pilot was shot, CBS picked up the show, known as All in the Family. It premiered January 12, 1971 to disappointing ratings, but it took home several Emmy Awards that year, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The show did very well in summer reruns, and it flourished in the 1971-1972 season, becoming the #1 rated show on TV; for the next five years, All in the Family would be the top-rated show of each season, and after falling from the #1 spot, would still remain in the top ten, well after it transitioned into Archie Bunker's Place. The show was based on the British sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, about an irate working-class Tory and his Socialist son-in-law. Lear's second big TV hit was Sanford and Son, also based on a British sitcom (Steptoe and Son) about a Cockney junk dealer and his son. Lear changed the setting to Los Angeles and the characters to African-Americans, and the NBC show was an instant hit. Numerous hit shows followed thereafter, including Maude (the lead character of which was reportedly based on Lear's then-wife Frances), Silver Spoons and the long-running hit Who's the Boss. What most of the Lear sitcoms had in common are that they were character-driven, had a flat, theatrical look similar to soap operas, and very often dealt with social or political issues of the day. Ironically, although Lear's shows are often considered somewhat autobiographical and closely identified with his personal experiences, his early hits were actually all adapted from someone else's creations: the two aforementioned British adaptations and "Maude", while reputedly based on Lear's wife, was actually the brainchild of series producer Charlie Hauck. Lear's longtime producing partner was Bud Yorkin, who served as executive producer of Sanford and Son, split with Lear in 1975. He started a production company with writer/producers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, but they had only one show that ran more than a year: What's Happening!!. The Lear/Yorkin company was known as Tandem Productions. Lear and talent agent Jerry Perenchio founded T.A.T. Communications (T.A.T. stood for "Tokas-Adamn-Tokin", which is Yiddish for "Putting one's butt on the line") in 1975, which co-existed with Tandem Productions and was often referred to in periodicals as Tandem/T.A.T. The Lear organization was one of the most successful independent TV producers of the 1970s. Lear himself stepped down as production supervisor on his shows in 1978, as there were too many for him to personally supervise while running the business itself. In 1982, the company bought out Avco Embassy Pictures from Avco Financial Corporation, and the Avco part of its name was dropped. Embassy Pictures was led by Alan Horn and Martin Schaeffer, later co-founders of Castle Rock Entertainment with Rob Reiner. The film venture was a collossal failure in film production, which led to the subsequent sale of the entire company. In 1985, Lear sold all his film and television production holdings to other entities, with Columbia Pictures (then owned by the Coca-Cola Company) acquiring Embassy's television division (which included Embassy's in-house television productions and the television rights to the Embassy theatrical library) for $465 million in shares of The Coca-Cola Company. Lear and his longtime partner Jerry Perenchio split the net proceeds (about $250mm). The brand Tandem Productions was abandoned in 1986 with the cancellation of Diff'rent Strokes, and Embassy ceased to exist as a single entity in late 1987, having been split into different components owned by different entities. The Embassy TV division became ELP Communications in 1988, but shows originally produced by Embassy were now under the Columbia Pictures Television banner from 1988-1994 and the Columbia TriStar Television banner from 1994-1998. Lear attempted to return to TV production in the 1990s with the shows Sunday Dinner, The Powers that Be, and 704 Hauser, the last one putting a different family in the house from All in the Family. None of the series proved successful, despite critical acclaim. However, Lear was extremely successful as a businessman, especially with his leveraged acquisition vehicle Act III Communications, founded in 1986 and led initially by Tom McGrath (who met Lear while negotiating on behalf of Coca-Cola the acquisition of lear's old company) and later by Hal Gaba, a former Embassy executive. This includes: Act III Theatres, sold to KKR in 1994 at what is to this day considered a record premium; Act III Broadcasting, sold to Abry Communications; and Act III Publishing, sold to PriMedia. Lear is also the owner of Concord Records and in 2005 consummated a 50% interest in the film library and production assets of Village Roadshow Productions Pty. Lear is unofficially credited with giving Rob Reiner, son of Carl Reiner (and a star of All in the Family) his start as a director by financing the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap. Lear also produced Reiner's next two films, Stand by Me and The Princess Bride. Throughout the 1980s Lear's Act III Communications, founded in 1986 with Tom McGrath as President, produced several notable films, including Stand by Me, Fried Green Tomatoes, and The Princess Bride.