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Obituary

LOS ANGELES — Legendary television creator, writer, film producer, and political activist Norman Lear died after a lifetime of laughter surrounded by family on Tuesday, December 5, 2023 at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes. A private service for immediate family will be held.

Lear transformed American television with a groundbreaking series of shows in the 1970s that dominated ratings and generated national conversations by dealing openly with issues that challenged families and the country as a whole. Lear wrote and produced American classics that spanned an over 75 year career, beginning with All In the Family (1971-79), which featured the Bunkers of Queens, New York, whose domestic lives and strife illuminated the social upheavals of the times. Lear’s other hit shows included Sanford and Son (1972-78), Maude (1972-78), The Jeffersons (1975-85), One Day At A Time (1975-84), Good Times (1974-79), and the cult hits Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), Fernwood 2-Night (1977) and America 2-Night (1978). “Norman Lear took television away from dopey wives and dumb fathers… and in their place, he put the American people,” the late playwright Paddy Chayevsky once observed. “He took the audience and he put them on the set.”

Lear’s shows reflected an inclusive vision of America that included Black and Latino characters and diverse families dealing with everyday problems as well as broader topics like racism, feminism, and sexuality. Still active half a century later, Lear became the oldest recipient of an Emmy Award in 2019, and then broke his own record in 2020, both for installments of LIVE In Front of a Studio Audience, which featured live reenactments of episodes from All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times.

Lear’s lasting impact on American culture was recognized with the National Medal of Arts in 1999. “Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it,” President Bill Clinton said in presenting the medal. 

Lear was part of the legendary inaugural class inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984, alongside Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Paddy Chayefsky, Edward R. Murrow, William S. Paley, and David Sarnoff. Lear was twice the recipient of a prestigious Peabody Award, in 1977 and 2016. In 2017, he was celebrated by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as a Kennedy Center Honoree.

Lear was born in 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut. As a teenager, Lear won a scholarship to Emerson College in an American Legion oratorical contest about the U.S. Constitution, drawing on his experience as a child hearing antisemitic radio broadcasts by the notorious Father Coughlin. These broadcasts deeply impacted Lear and awakened in him a love of country and a lifelong devotion to the democratic ideals of justice, equality, and the preservation of First Amendment rights. When the United States was drawn into World War II, Lear dropped out of Emerson College to fight fascism, and he flew on 52 combat missions over Europe in a B-17 bomber. 

In the 50’s, Lear began a successful career writing and producing television programs like The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Martha Raye Show, and The Martin and Lewis Show. By the 60’s he had moved on to writing and producing films such as Come Blow Your Horn, Never Too Late, Divorce American Style, The Night they Raided Minsky’s, and he wrote, produced, and directed Cold Turkey. He then returned to television and his string of hits that began with All in The Family.  

Lear understood that television—like life itself—is about collaboration. In accepting the Carol Burnett Award for outstanding contributions to television at the 2021 Golden Globe Awards, he devoted much of his remarks to recognizing the producers, writers, actors, and other colleagues who contributed to his successes. Alongside his partners Bud Yorkin, Jerry Perenchio, Alan Horn, Mark E Pollack, Hal Gaba, Brent Miller and Ed Simmons, he created television and built media companies Tandem, T.A.T., Embassy, Concord and Act III Productions. Said Lear on his 100th birthday,  “I attribute my long life and success to the laughs, the wisdom and the hard work of so many hundreds of people over my lifetime.  To think of them now is to bring me enormous joy, of course I’m too old to remember your names but I’ll never forget your faces.”

At the end of the 1970s, at the height of his success in entertainment, Lear put his television career on hold to mobilize Americans on behalf of the freedoms for which he had fought as a young man. Lear was alarmed by the divisiveness and rising political influence of televangelists who suggested that only people who shared their religious beliefs and political worldview could be good Americans. Recognizing such exclusionary rhetoric as a threat to a diverse democratic society, Lear recruited civic, religious, business, and civil rights leaders, including the late Rep. Barbara Jordan, to join him in creating People For the American Way, and in campaigning to defend freedom of expression, oppose censorship, uphold religious liberty, support access to the ballot, and more. He was an active member of the progressive advocacy organization’s board until his death.  In a Washington Post op ed published in 2021 on his 99th birthday, Lear wrote, “I am a patriot, and I will not surrender that word to those who play to our worst impulses rather than our highest ideals.”

Even when the political winds were not blowing in his direction, Lear remained optimistic that love of country could bring Americans together across political and religious lines to defend American ideals. He was intensely proud of “I Love Liberty,” a star-studded television special broadcast in 1982 that brought together Jane Fonda and Barry Goldwater and featured a young Robin Williams portraying the American flag. 

Lear, who was convinced that laughter had lengthened his own life, used humor to enrich the lives of others. He said that his upbringing, which included his father being sent to prison when Lear was a child, convinced him of the absurdity of the human condition. “I’ve never been in a situation in my life, however tragic, where I didn’t see comedy,” Lear said in the 2016 documentary, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. That outlook provided a fertile source for comedy that reached beyond a simple punch line to strike a deeper chord. In his 2014 memoir, Even This I Get to Experience, Lear wrote that “to me, laughter lacks depth if it isn’t involved in other emotions. An audience is entertained if it’s involved to the point of laughter or tears—ideally, both.”

Lear’s work in television continued in recent years with a reimagined One Day at a Time (2017- 2020) which was the first Netflix series to be renewed for network television (PopTV and CBS.)  Lear Executive Produced and Co-Hosted three installments of LIVE In Front of a Studio Audience…, alongside Jimmy Kimmel. The franchise set record ratings for ABC and won two consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Variety Special. He was the only Producer to have a signed deal with an entertainment company, Sony Pictures, as he turned 100.  Sony recognized him by naming the commissary and the building housing the television executives after him in 2019.

Lear and his companies frequently returned to feature films, continuing his legacy of presenting and Executive Producing films including the classics This is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride and Fried Green Tomatoes. Lear was an EP on the award winning documentary Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It and the film I Carry You With Me, which garnered the NEXT Innovator and Audience Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.  Lear was an Executive Producer, along with his producing partner, Brent Miller, for the upcoming independent film For Another Time, directed by Juan Pablo Di Pace. 

Throughout the decades, Lear’s patriotism and civic generosity continued to be a defining part of his life. He was an active member of multiple boards throughout his years. Lear and his wife Lyn purchased a rare, original Dunlap broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence and sent it on a cross-country road trip that kicked off on July 4, 2001. For ten years, the document traveled to big cities and small towns in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, giving thousands of Americans of every generation and political persuasion an opportunity to experience the awe that Lear felt in the presence of a document that was first sent out from Philadelphia in 1776 to declare freedom to the American colonists. One outgrowth of the road trip was Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan project that registered almost 4 million young people and encouraged them to vote.

Among Lear’s other civic engagements was The Norman Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment, Media & Society at the University of Southern California. The nonprofit interdisciplinary research and public policy center, created by Marty Kaplan, studies the social, political, economic, and cultural impact of entertainment on the world. The Center’s work honors Lear’s “willingness to take extraordinary creative and commercial risks in the name of quality” and “his passion for wrestling with issues of conscience while building a remarkable entertainment career.” He also co-founded with James E. Burke the former Chairman and CEO of Johnson and Johnson, the Business Enterprise Trust, an organization designed to identify and celebrate exemplary acts of courage, integrity and social vision in American business.  The business cases developed from that work are still taught at Harvard Business School. 

Lear’s patriotism, devotion to family, and commitment to the values of freedom and pluralism were throughlines to his creative, activist, and philanthropic work. Lear himself was widely known to interrupt any meeting (including a live interview on CNN) to take a phone call from his family. 

Throughout his career, Lear was a mentor and supporter of younger creative people, fostering intergenerational friendships that he valued deeply. Lear’s impact on multiple generations of performers, producers, and activists was reflected in the outpouring of tributes celebrating his 100th birthday, including the September 2022 ABC special Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter.

In 2021, complete seasons of some of Lear’s groundbreaking series were released on streaming platforms Amazon Prime Video and Freevee for the first time. The streaming partnership included All in the Family, Good Times, Maude, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Diff’rent Strokes, and Sanford & Son. 

This year, centenarian Lear was Executive Producing an animated, reimagined Good Times, and an original drama based on the memoir The Pink Marine – both for Netflix, as well as an original half hour comedy with Laverne Cox and George Wallace called Clean Slate, and a continuation of the beloved series Who’s The Boss that reunites original cast members Tony Danza and Alyssa Milano.

Lear’s memoir, Even This I Get to Experience, was published in October 2014 by The Penguin Press. An American Masters documentary, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, had its world premiere as the opening night film of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. 

Mr. Lear is survived by his wife Lyn Davis Lear; his six children — Ellen Lear, Kate Lear (Jonathan LaPook, M.D.), Maggie Lear (Daniel Katz), Ben Lear (Lily Blau), Madeline Lear (Justin Romeo), Brianna Lear; and his four grandchildren — Daniel, Noah, Griffin and Zoe.

In lieu of flowers or gifts, Lear requested that contributions be made to People For the American Way. His family has requested privacy at this time.