Norman Lear's legacy in TV will be felt throughout our lifetime
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- Legendary TV producer Norman Lear died on Tuesday.
- He created iconic shows like "All in the Family" and "Sanford and Son."
- His influence on TV will be felt forever.
Television producer Norman Lear, who died at the age of 101 on Tuesday, revolutionized TV in the 1970s, completely changing the medium.
Lear created "All in the Family," "Sanford and Son," "Good Times," and "The Jeffersons," and brought the complicated world around us onto our TV screens every night.
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Lear's success began with "All in the Family," which was based on a popular British show called "Till Death Us Do Part." He updated and revamped it for American audiences and created a mold-breaking hit show in the process.
"Family" followed the life of Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O'Connor), an unsympathetic, bigoted blue-collar man, and took on taboo-at-the-time topics never before discussed on TV: infidelity, sexuality, religion, and the Vietnam War. Lear wove these difficult conversations into much of the television he produced, helping millions of Americans start dialogues in their own homes.
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He doubled down with "Sanford and Son," starring Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford, a cantankerous widower who tries to get by doing quick schemes with his son. It would pave the way for sitcoms featuring Black actors in the lead roles like "Good Times, "The Jeffersons," and "Diff'rent Strokes," which Lear also had a hand in.
What followed was a life of acclaim in Hollywood. Over his career, Lear earned six Emmys and two Peabody Awards. But his work transcended television.
Many of the most trailblazing shows in TV history — from "Roseanne" to The Sopranos" to "The Wire" — have elements that can be traced back to Lear.
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"I have never, ever remembered thinking,' Oh, we're doing something outlandish, riotously different,'" he told The Atlantic. "I wasn't on any mission. And I don't think I knew I was breaking such ground. I didn't watch 'Petticoat Junction,' for Chrissake. I didn't watch 'Beverly Hillbillies.' I didn't know what I was doing,"
He may not have known what he was doing, but he intrinsically understood what American audiences needed.
"If you could get them caring, the more they cared, the harder they laughed," he said in a 2005 interview. "So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care. Then, of course, we had a point of view on them. So that's where a 'message' might have come from. But making them laugh was the charge."