Norman Lear, who developed and produced some of the most popular sitcoms of all-time including All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and One Day at a Time, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 101 years old.
Lear’s influence on TV can’t be overstated. As the New York Times wrote in his obituary: “The Jeffersons looked at the struggles faced by an upwardly mobile Black family; the very different Black family on Good Times dealt with poverty and discrimination. The protagonist of Maude was an outspoken feminist; the heroine of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was plagued by all manner of modern-day problems, not least her own neurosis.”
These weren’t the types of stories people were used to seeing on TV in the 1960s and 1970s. Even in recent decades, when he was in his 90s, Lear was still using his immense power in the industry for good: Netflix’s One Day at a Time was hailed for its authentic depiction of a Latinx family.
When Lear turned 100, he spoke to NPR about living in the present instead of fixating on the past. “You know, two little words we don’t pay enough attention to – over and next. When something is over, it is over and we are on to next. And I like to think about the hammock in the middle of those two words. That’s living in the moment,” he said. “That’s the moment I believe I’m living as I complete this sentence, and it couldn’t be more important to me.”
(Via the New York Times)
