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By CINDY SHER<\/p>\n
CHICAGO (JUF News\u00a0via JTA) \u2014 Norman Lear describes a lot of encounters in life as the \u201cfoolishness of the human condition\u201d \u2014 and he\u2019s examined that foolishness for nine decades and counting on television and off.<\/p>\n
Real life \u2014 even the pain and sadness \u2014 has the foolish baked right in, according to Lear.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is humor everywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cStanding with a group of people watching a casket go into the ground and [you see] the chief mourner scratching his [tuchas]. There is humor there. Where there is humanity, there is comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as in life, so too in his sitcoms, Lear drew out the humor from the challenges of his TV characters.<\/p>\n
Lear, who is Jewish, recently stopped by the Art Institute of Chicago for an interview with Chicago\u2019s JUF News, followed by a conversation with the Art Institute\u2019s Fawn Ring, about his latest book, \u201cEven This I Get to Experience\u201d (Penguin Books), a candid, witty and sage memoir about his extraordinary 93 years of life to date.<\/p>\n
One of the early pioneers in television and among the most influential American cultural forces of the last century, Lear created some of the most groundbreaking sitcoms of our times: 1970s hits like \u201cAll in the Family,\u201d \u201cSanford and Son,\u201d \u201cOne Day at a Time,\u201d \u201cThe Jeffersons,\u201d \u201cGood Times,\u201d \u201cMaude\u201d and \u201cMary Hartman, Mary Hartman,\u201d all filmed in front of a live studio audience.<\/p>\n
In total, Lear \u2014 who has won four Emmys, a Peabody and the National Medal of Arts \u2014 wrote, produced, created or developed more than 100 shows, with nine airing simultaneously at one point.<\/p>\n
Some 120 million people were tuning in to his sitcoms each week, an audience that would be impossible nowadays since television is so fragmented. Viewers could see themselves and their families reflected in Lear\u2019s characters \u2014 Archie and Edith, Weezie and George, J.J., Maude, and Sanford, too. The unifying thread running through all his shows, he said, was love.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the arguing and craziness was all about love,\u201d Lear said. \u201cLove of country, love of fairness, love of what could go right in the world, and love of one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
The name of his book originated during a rough financial patch for the writer, when he told his son-in-law that \u201ceven this,\u201d referring to a low point in his life amid so many highs, \u201cI get to experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lear transformed the landscape of the situation comedy. Before his tenure on TV, the plotlines of sitcoms were unrealistic and downright trivial at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest problem on shows was the pot roast is ruined and the boss is coming for dinner,\u201d he said. \u201cThese shows sent the message that there are no race problems in America, there is no anti-Semitism, there is no bad economy, and there are no health problems.\u201d But when Lear started writing for television, he pushed the envelope, tackling some of the biggest social issues of the day \u2014 like racism, poverty, cancer and abortion, taboo subjects at the time and even sometimes today.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll in the Family,\u201d for instance, portrayed working-class bigot Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O\u2019Connor, and his family. During the run of the show, Lear would often battle CBS at \u201cprogram practices\u201d \u2014 what he calls \u201ca euphemism for censorship.\u201d \u201cThat won\u2019t fly in Des Moines,\u201d he would often hear from the network, meaning the executives weren\u2019t sure that controversy would be palatable to Middle America.<\/p>\n
Still, Lear pushed the limits of what they could explore on his shows.<\/p>\n
On \u201cMaude,\u201d the title character, played by Bea Arthur, had an abortion on an episode in 1972, unheard of on television back then.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood Times,\u201d which was set in what was supposed to be Chicago\u2019s now-defunct Cabrini Green neighborhood, portrayed the first African-American family on television. Lear said the actors on the show shouldered the enormous responsibility that came with representing millions of black families through one fictional family.<\/p>\n
And \u201cThe Jeffersons\u201d followed a nouveau riche African-American couple. In real life, black business magnate Russell Simmons once sat on a panel with Lear and told the comedy writer that he had never seen a black man write a check until he saw the character George Jefferson, played by Sherman Hemsley, write one on the show.<\/p>\n
Life for Lear started a long way from Hollywood in New Haven, Connecticut. He grew up in a culturally Jewish home, first with his parents in Connecticut and then with relatives in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, born in Ukraine, and his father, a traveling salesman from Connecticut, were both, in part, inspirations for Archie and Edith Bunker.<\/p>\n
Lear\u2019s childhood was full of as many tears as it was laughs. His early years were colored by the uncertainty of the Great Depression era and a troubled home life. When Lear was 9, his father, a charismatic but unreliable man, was sent to prison for three years for selling fake bonds as part of a get-rich-quick scheme.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018You\u2019re the man of the house now,\u201d a friend of the family told the young Lear as his father was hauled off to jail. \u201cAnd the man of the house doesn\u2019t cry.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThat,\u201d Lear remarked to the audience at the Art Institute, shaking his head, \u201cis the foolishness of the human condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the absence of Lear\u2019s dad, Lear\u2019s mother, who the writer called \u201can unabashed narcissist,\u201d sent her son to live with relatives he barely knew in Brooklyn. His comedic talents came in handy at a turbulent time personally and for the world enmeshed in World War II.<\/p>\n
Lear attended Emerson College in Boston for a stint, but dropped out to join the U.S. Air Force, where he flew 52 bombing missions over Europe and, when grounded, would entertain his fellow airmen with comedy.<\/p>\n
His military service was a reflection of his love of country. The seeds of his patriotism were planted early for Lear. As a boy, he would tune in to Father Coughlin, a rabid anti-Semite, on the radio. Coughlin\u2019s diatribe scared Lear as a young Jewish boy. But Lear said he knew from his civics lessons that as abhorrent as Coughlin was, he still had a right to free speech \u2014 and, in turn, he and others had a right to denounce the priest\u2019s vicious rhetoric.<\/p>\n
Later in life Lear, who was married three times, and has six children and four grandchildren, took a break from television to pursue his passion for political and social activism. He advocates passionately for First Amendment rights and other American values, and founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way, which supports First Amendment and other progressive rights. In fact, he and his wife, Lyn, bought one of the few surviving copies of the Declaration of Independence and toured with it in all 50 states, where the couple also helped 4 million young people register to vote.<\/p>\n
His dual identities as an American and as a Jew are core to Lear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m as culturally Jewish as I could be and proud to be Jewish, but I\u2019m not a religionist of any kind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked by an audience member at the Art Institute if he ever considered writing a show about a Jewish family, he quipped, \u201cThey\u2019re all Jewish,\u201d eliciting the biggest laugh of the night.<\/p>\n
In the end, what Lear loves about his work is that he affects people \u2014 sometimes without even knowing it. Through his TV shows, sometimes even small moments portrayed on screen, viewers have told Lear that he\u2019s helped them navigate their lives.<\/p>\n
As people, he said, \u201cwe\u2019re all responsible for gifts we don\u2019t even know are happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Cindy Sher is the executive editor of Chicago\u2019s JUF News, where this piece originally appeared.)<\/em><\/p>\n