E-mail a friendNorman Lear
airdate June 2, 2009
Emmy-winning producer Norman Lear was a pioneer in socially conscious TV. The creative force behind many of the most groundbreaking programs in history, such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons and Maude, he featured families that regularly confronted major political and social issues of the day. A longtime activist, Lear also founded the public interest group People for the American Way and established a multidisciplinary research and public policy center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication.
Pioneering TV producer talks about his relationship with his father. (3:12)
Full interview. (22:36)
Norman Lear
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Norman Lear back to this program. The iconic television producer, social activist and philanthropist is as busy as ever. If you are a fan of his classic TV work, as I certainly am, then you'll want to pick this up - it's "The Norman Lear Collection," featuring the entire first seasons of all of his hit series, including "All in the Family," "Good Times," "Maude," and "The Jeffersons." You can also pick up a copy of his new CD, "Playing for Change -" more on that in a moment.
But first, just a small sampling of the classic material from "The Norman Lear Collection."
[Montage of clips from Norman Lear shows]
Tavis: (Laughter) I'm laughing, but so are you. You still think this stuff is good after all these years?
Norman Lear: The performers are undeniable. They're just undeniable. Yes, I will laugh as I did the first time with any of it and all of it.
Tavis: The performance is undeniable, but the writing was pretty doggone good, too.
Lear: Yeah. We had the best collaboration in the business. I'm 36 years old, and the reason I look so good is because laughter adds time to your life. (Laughter) That's the truth.
Tavis: This is a - speaking of being 36, this is really a box set. Everybody has a box set, but this really is a box set - 19-disk. Obviously you had sign-off on this; it's your stuff. When you look back on this body of work, what do you make of it? And I ask that because everybody that comes on this show agrees about one thing - that every one of us, me included, wants to be judged by our body of work.
Not a particular series; God knows, in my case, not a particular interview. Please judge me by the body of my work. You are now being judged by the body of your work. What do you think of it?
Lear: I'm looking at America when I look at this. I've been asked over the years why the topicality, why the difficult subjects, why the edginess or however other people frame it. And this is American life and American families living the problems as I've seen it all the years I've grown up in this country, and that's all we were doing, was dealing with - when we came together, writers, producers, directors, to sit around a table and talk about the next episode, we're all people who were used to reading our newspapers, paying attention to the evening news, and paying special attention to our families, what our kids and our wives and our significant others were going through.
And we were scraping the barrel of our own experiences and bringing them into our stories. So I look back at it as a celebration of American life.
Tavis: Two things strike me. One, though, as modest as you are about it, it was, at the time - you look back at these series - it was, at the time, the writing, that is, risky, number one, and number two you look back on it and it was ahead of its time. Sad to say, you look at that clip, there were more Black folk on television then than there are starring in TV series now. That's sad. So you were risky and in many ways you were ahead of your time.
Lear: You know what I thought of a lot, too, that - speaking of Black folk on television and so forth - they were the first families, and over time the audiences who were attracted to that show became predominately Black, also. And they - just as in Black churches, and I love going to church on a Sunday morning at a Black church, just as every bit of their reaction is different from in a White church - it's just another celebration of life, very different - that's the way, gradually, those audiences behaved.
So you could hear them exclaim. You could hear them react audibly, not just because they were laughing but because they were, "ah, ooh," and carrying on. And I believe that the audiences coming to those tapings over time influenced the American audience totally. So audiences in the theater, audiences everywhere in the country are very different as a result of the audiences that attended those original tapings.
Tavis: I'm curious as to how you got this way. You're born and raised in Connecticut. Tell me about your upbringing. I'm just trying to figure out how a guy becomes as liberal as you are, putting Black folk on television, understanding the complexity, celebrating their humanity. You're from Connecticut, you ain't from Alabama.
Lear: (Laughs) Well, I had a grandfather - my father went to prison when I was nine years old. He was gone for three years.
Tavis: Your grandfather.
Lear: My father.
Tavis: Your father.
Lear: I lived with an uncle, I lived with another uncle, and then I lived with my grandfather. My grandfather was an immigrant, as most grandfathers were then, and he loved this country fiercely. And we had lots of parades when I was a kid. We had parades on Memorial Day, on the Fourth of July. There wasn't a President's Day; there was Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday, and always parades.
And I would stand on a street corner with this old man, and he'd hold my hand. I could feel it tightening when the flag went by and the marshal of music, and I'd look up and there'd inevitably be a tear coming down his cheek. And he wrote the president and every letter started, "My dearest darling Mr. President." And he'd get answers, and I'd see little envelopes from the White House. Not necessarily - I don't remember actually from the president, but from the White House.
Tavis: That was his opening greeting, though? "My dearest darling Mr. President?"
Lear: Yeah.
Tavis: Wow.
Lear: And even if he disagreed with him, it was "My dearest darling Mr. President, didn't I tell you last week that -" (Laughter) And I was an audience of one; I had to listen. But I would run downstairs, three flights, 74 York Street, New Haven, Connecticut, and pick out from the little brass mailbox, and every once in a while, the White House on it.
So I started very young with that. I do not know how I found on radio when I was a boy Father Charles Coglin, who was a vicious racist and anti-Semite and had a big radio audience. I don't remember a friend that listened to it; somehow I found it and listened to it. In high school, there was - my father was a victim of the Depression, as were his brothers; we were all belly-up. They couldn't afford to send me to college, and there was an American Legion Oratorical contest. I mention that because the topic was the Constitution.
Everybody had to write something and perform an oration about the Constitution. So as a Jewish kid, a member of a minority who was in love with the Constitution, the Declaration, the Bill of Rights, and had been listening to Coglin and so forth, I was - and my grandfather - I was just in love with the guarantees, the rights and liberties, as an American kid. And that continued all the way through my life.
Tavis: For everybody.
Lear: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Tavis: Two things you said I want to go - I'm going to jump around here; forgive me. You've given me so much rich material to excavate here.
Lear: Go. (Laughs)
Tavis: Number one, you mentioned your father went to jail for three years. You went right past that right fast. Back up and tell me as a nine-year-old how that impacts you, how that affects you, when your father disappears for three years, and what was it like when he came out?
Lear: Well, would you believe at my age, I'm learning all the time how much it affected me. I'm not a guy who lives with regret; I don't have a single regret. I'm thinking about whether that is true as I said it, and I believe that I don't have any regrets. This is the moment. Everything is now.
But to the extent that I might have been a - I was a bright kid, I had a point of view, I had to tamp down who I was as a boy in order to exist in other people's homes. I had, I remember, a summer with a cousin, and I was at their home. And his (laughs) father used to come home of an evening in the summer and we'd be out someplace, and we'd hear this whistle.
And we'd rush to the - his father had come home, he was whistling for his son. And I ached to have my father whistling for me. But the reason it makes me smile and laugh is that when we were in our late twenties or something Harold and I were together and I told him about this. And he said, "Oh, really?" He said, "I felt like a dog. I hated that." (Laughter)
Tavis: When your father got out, what was that reunion like, what was that relationship like?
Lear: I'll never forget it. We're standing at the railroad station, the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad. He came in from Massachusetts. He was standing at the end of a train. My mother, my sister and our bags and I were going to get on the train; as it turned out, we were going to New York to live for a little while until he found a job and a place to live with another family in two rooms, three rooms.
He was standing there wearing the suit I remember that he wore when he went away, but it was now a size and a half too big. And we got on the train. He was sitting with my mom, then we changed and he was sitting with me, and he said to me, "Norman," he said two things that I'll never forget.
He said, "I'm going to take you to Times Square one night, and at midnight you'll be able to walk the street and read a newspaper." And then the second thing he said was, "You're going to be bar mitzvahed in a year. For your bar mitzvah I'm going to take you and your sister and your mother for a trip around the world; we'll be gone a year."
And my father telling me that, of course we're going to be gone a year. It took me a long time to learn he had a dream that he never really reached. He was always going to have a million dollars in 10 days to two weeks; he was going to take me for a trip around the world after just getting out of this situation. I didn't expect to sit here and get into this. (Laughter)
Tavis: No, it's fascinating because - you referenced this earlier and I want to go back and get this - you made a point earlier that at your age you're still learning about yourself, which doesn't surprise me. If you're open to that, that's what's supposed to happen as you grow older.
As you look back now on your life, though, and particularly the decisions - not the decisions; the way you've gone about making your decisions, the process that you have encountered, being able to keep your word when you give people commitments, I'm trying to get a sense of how your father having these dreams and yet disappointing you with those dreams has impacted the way you've lived your life and made your own decisions and established your own processes?
Lear: Oh, I think - I'm sure that I grew up thinking I don't want to do that. I love the expression "count on me." Love the expression "count on me," and the men and some women that I consider my great friends are people I know I can count on, and I want to be that person for them.
So he wasn't somebody - I loved him dearly, but he wasn't somebody I could count on.
Tavis: But I'm sure that's where that came from, though.
Lear: Yeah, absolutely.
Tavis: Your commitment to that.
Lear: Absolutely, absolutely. And out of all of the rest of it, the Coglin and a fellow I can't remember from New Jersey who was on the air, also racist and - I picked up an awful lot of that in my relationship to that Bill of Rights and the Declaration through my grandfather and all of that, so getting to your question about the African Americans on television, the Black family situations, I loved doing that. I loved doing that.
Tavis: Another great part of your story is - and I think I have this right; I'm almost certain I do, because I have seen it in person, I've actually seen it up close - you're a kid that grows up valuing, appreciating the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and you end up as an owner of what?
Lear: The Declaration of Independence. (Laughter) Not the Declaration.
Tavis: Yeah, but tell that story, though. That's a great story. You grow up and you are moved by these documents and you're at the parade with your grandfather and you look up every time and your grandfather's got this tear coming down - how do you end up owning this?
Lear: Well, I'd read some years ago that a copy of the Declaration of Independence was being auctioned off by Sotheby's on television, and my daughters - I have 14-year-old twin daughters, and one of them is going to school with a little girl whose dad was the fellow who ran Sotheby's in Southern California.
I had just met him and this was on my mind and then I read about the Declaration and Sotheby's, and I called him. And he said, "It's in my showroom. Why don't you come here?" And my associate, Laura (unintelligible) is with me here today, and she and I, at lunch break, walked down Wilshire Boulevard to the Sotheby's and walked in, and there it was, sitting on an easel.
And I looked carefully to see that she didn't see I was going to cry, and I saw a tear in her eye. Could not believe it. This was - there might have been 200 printed the night of July 4th, 1776, but there are only 25 left in the world. They were the copies that were sent by horseback around the 13 colonies, read aloud in the town square. They were the announcement of revolution.
And they were - the country's birth certificate was that night. So there are 25 of them around in the world, and this was one of them. And it might have been - I think it was the one that had been - everybody remembers the story of a fellow buying a picture frame in a flea market because he liked the frame, didn't care for the picture.
Tavis: Didn't know what was in it.
Lear: And didn't know that behind that picture -
Tavis: Behind it - I remember this story, yeah.
Lear: - yeah, was this document.
Tavis: That's the one you have.
Lear: That's the one I have, yeah. And it travels. It's been traveling around the country from the day we bought it.
Tavis: Two questions - why is that important to you, to travel it, number one, and number two, how do you describe, if you can, what it means, given the story you shared earlier, to own this copy?
Lear: This could sound treacly as hell - I didn't buy it to own it. I bought it for it to travel, to get to people, because it's everybody's. I believe it is the birth certificate of the country and it belongs to all of us.
Tavis: I'll take that. I'll take that.
Lear: So I don't collect such things. I wouldn't think of hanging it on a wall anyplace so that 11 people can see it every month. It belongs to all of us, so I felt when I walked out of there that if I can get it, I will find the money from corporate America, from someplace, and we'll travel it.
And I don't know, four or five months after that purchase was the Summer Olympics in Salt Lake City, and there it was, David Rockwell, the architect, had designed this fabulous, huge exhibit, and I had already gone to Philadelphia with Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas, Renee Zellweger - 11 major people who did a reading of the Declaration of Independence in Independence Hall that Conrad Hall, the great cinematographer, photographed.
So we had a lot of bells and whistles there, and it was - and it's been traveling ever since. And I've had the pleasure of seeing people line up for an hour and a half - an hour and a half, just to get to the document for a moment. And in some cases they've gone to a table where we supply some paper so they could write what they felt, and it's extraordinary.
Tavis: Wow. In the five minutes I have left here, I want you to respond any way you want to respond, but it would be tragic for me to let you out of here without throwing some of these names of these shows at you, and you tell me whatever you want to tell me about the show. But I'll go in the order they're listed on the box set. "All in the Family."
Lear: Well, my father was a touch of Archie. He came from - the antecedent was a British show, "'Til Death Us Do Part," but the minute I read about it, I said, "Oh, my God, how did I not think of this?" Because my father used to call me the laziest White kid he ever met. (Laughter) And I would say, "You're putting down a race of people to call me lazy?" He said, "That's not what I'm doing; you're the dumbest White kid I ever met." So I grew up with him.
Tavis: I hear Archie Bunker - I hear it. (Laughs) "Good Times."
Lear: "Good Times." Esther was on "Maude," and oh, God, there are moments with Esther and Bea Arthur on "Maude" that just - it has to add time to my life just to think about it. And we knew that she should be on a show of her own. We brought John Amos in on an episode of "Maude."
I always thought of that as you had some players who were in the bush leagues until you brought them into the majors. And they were kind of in the bush leagues and they earned their right to the majors, and we spun that off.
Tavis: And the rest, as they say, is history.
Lear: Yeah.
Tavis: "The Jeffersons."
Lear: "The Jeffersons." The second year of "Good Times," some of the Black press started to write why are all of these people - and there was only one show on the air - but why does he have to hold three jobs? Why isn't there something, somebody, a show that's upwardly mobile?
And we said we'll do - that's where "The Jeffersons" came from. We're moving on up.
Tavis: Yeah, I love that song. (Laughs) You know it's a birthright for Black people. If you can't sing "The Jeffersons" theme song, you ain't Black. (Laughter) You do not get your Black card unless you know every word to "The Jeffersons" theme song. "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman."
Lear: "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." I wanted to do a show that showed the effect of media on a simple person; in this case, a mid-country housewife. So she came from Fernwood, Ohio, her husband was in the motor industry, worked as a blue-collar worker, and the effect of the media, in the last episode of "Mary Hartman," she was sitting on "The David Suskind Show -" you remember "The David Suskind Show -" with three media personalities, and in the best 20 minutes I've ever seen on television she went crazy at the hands of the media.
Tavis: I'm jumping around here; my time is just about up. "Sanford and Son."
Lear: "Sanford and Son," Bud Yorkin and I fell in love with Redd Foxx in Las Vegas, working his filthy (laughs) - and then there was a show, another British show called "Steptoe and Son," and we said that's got to be Redd Foxx.
Tavis: You had to clean him up for TV, but he worked.
Lear: Yeah.
Tavis: I want to close with this, because everybody's been talking so much about it lately, how much we miss Bea Arthur - "Maude."
Lear: There was never - there's nobody ever made me laugh like she made me laugh. There are places in my body I didn't know existed that she got to somehow.
Tavis: I've been sitting here for 30 minutes trying to think of another word beyond "iconic," because iconic doesn't even describe with Norman Lear's life and legacy and contribution to arts and to television has been, but we all get a chance to celebrate it now. Whatever word you want to use, we get a chance to celebrate it with his new "Norman Lear Collection." It's a 19-disk DVD box set, over six hours of new bonus features. PBS watchers have been seeing - everybody loves this "Playing for Change."
Lear: Isn't that amazing?
Tavis: Everybody loves this. Jerry, my audio guy, was like man, this thing is the most amazing thing he's seen in a long time, so thanks for "Playing for Change" as well. Nice to have you on.
Lear: I love being here. Thank you so much.
Tavis: I love having you here. Your life is so full, you've got to come back and -
Lear: I'll do that next week.
Tavis: Yeah, exactly. (Laughter) Neil, make room for Norman Lear next week.
Back to June 2, 2009