Speaker 1: On Tuesday, December fifth, Norman Lear died at the great
Speaker 1: old age of one hundred and one. All the superlatives
Speaker 1: you've been reading about his contributions to television are justified.
Speaker 1: He fused comedy with social commentary in a way no
Speaker 1: one had before on TV. And here's the wonder of
Speaker 1: it all, he kept it funny. There was nothing eat
Speaker 1: your spinach about his shows. If you heard our season
Speaker 1: two episode on television's Rural Purge of the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: you know how insulated from the real world television was
Speaker 1: until then. No one changed that more than Norman Lear
Speaker 1: by bringing in stories and characters that audiences hadn't seen
Speaker 1: on TV or oftentimes in their own lives. His shows
Speaker 1: weren't so much progressive as they were humane, and did
Speaker 1: I mention they were funny. Personal note. I became friends
Speaker 1: with Norman through his son in law, CBS News chief
Speaker 1: medical correspondent and my friend doctor John Lapouch. I'll always
Speaker 1: be grateful to have known Norman, to be able to
Speaker 1: witness how much his family adored him, and to have
Speaker 1: stood around a piano with him on New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, singing I'll be seeing you, what a conscience,
Speaker 1: what a heart. Here's an abbreviated version of an interview
Speaker 1: I did with Norman in twenty fifteen at the Austin
Speaker 1: Film Festival, where he was being honored, not long after
Speaker 1: his memoir was released. I can't think of any scripted
Speaker 1: comedies that generate the kind of discussion that your shows
Speaker 1: did back in the seventies and eighties. Is television doing
Speaker 1: something wrong?
Speaker 2: No, I think the kind of discussion you referred to
Speaker 2: that we generated it may not be generated now. There's
Speaker 2: more to do with the fact that we were new
Speaker 2: at the time and there were only three networks. So
Speaker 2: you were either going to watch the Roaster's ruined and
Speaker 2: the Boss is coming to dinner over here, or you're
Speaker 2: going to see Auncie need to really struggle with a
Speaker 2: with a with a problem American families are struggling with
Speaker 2: or mod or good Times or the Jeffersons.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that's a modest explanation.
Speaker 2: That's real. I mean, I don't know about minus. It's
Speaker 2: it's what I think.
Speaker 1: Was occurring during that time.
Speaker 2: Were you thinking, you know.
Speaker 1: What's another social issue that hasn't been spoken about that
Speaker 1: we can address what's what's another taboo we can explore?
Speaker 1: Or were you just thinking, you know what, I just
Speaker 1: want to tell good stories.
Speaker 2: Well, both we wanted to tell good stories. But I
Speaker 2: advised writers to read the LA Times and also to
Speaker 2: get the New York Times, and if you had the
Speaker 2: time for read the Wall Street Journal to get a
Speaker 2: broadering of attitudes and so forth, and come in with
Speaker 2: those things that would a story make.
Speaker 1: Good times, samfer and Son, the Jeffersons. Why were you
Speaker 1: drawn to black characters and topics?
Speaker 2: I think because on Maud, for example, esther role was
Speaker 2: doing so well as Florida, it was so clear that
Speaker 2: she could anchor a show. And if the network didn't
Speaker 2: think she could anchor a show, on an episode of Maud,
Speaker 2: we introduced her husband when he came to pick her
Speaker 2: up one night. It was John Amos. And now you
Speaker 2: saw a really solid couple. And now the network saw
Speaker 2: that too, and in quick order they said, you know,
Speaker 2: they may be a show with those people. Well, of
Speaker 2: course that's what we were thinking. So it happened very naturally,
Speaker 2: and there the understanding of realization that oh, this would
Speaker 2: be the first black family. That was exciting. But it
Speaker 2: was like an afterthought, and we realized, how could we
Speaker 2: not realize? But it started with the talent of the performance.
Speaker 1: So it happened more organically. You weren't thinking, there, I'm
Speaker 1: going to break ground.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it happened quite organically as a result
Speaker 2: of the talents we were working with.
Speaker 1: But in your book you talk about taking the train
Speaker 1: into New York City when you were a kid to
Speaker 1: see theater and what would happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the trains of New York now Haven and
Speaker 2: Hartford Railroad, slipping into one hundred and twenty fifth Street, Harlem.
Speaker 2: In Harlem, Yes, the tenements were like they felt like
Speaker 2: they were eight feet away. They were probably thirty fee
Speaker 2: They were very close. And the windows leading into the
Speaker 2: apartment were, you know, for six minutes or so, very visible,
Speaker 2: and life inside those windows and sometimes when the fire
Speaker 2: escape outside those windows. And I used to wonder about.
Speaker 1: Them, you know, who were these families?
Speaker 2: Were these families, what were they thinking? What were their problems?
Speaker 2: That woman, what was her favorite item of clothing? Who
Speaker 2: was her favorite child? What was it? That child? What
Speaker 2: did she he want to be when they grew up?
Speaker 2: I guess that's a writer's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, telling stories imagining scenarios relationships.
Speaker 2: Well, I also had something in common with them. You know,
Speaker 2: I knew by then, when I'm sixteen seventeen years old,
Speaker 2: I knew by then that as a Jewish kid, there
Speaker 2: were people who hated me simply for that reason. And
Speaker 2: I learned that from Father Conglin, a radio priest who
Speaker 2: was a vicious anti vid wing, rapidly right wing and
Speaker 2: anti Semitic, and and I understood by certainly by then
Speaker 2: that black people had it worse than I had it.
Speaker 2: But I had that in common. It was an affinity
Speaker 2: that was important to me.
Speaker 1: Later this year at the Apollo on the fortieth anniversary
Speaker 1: of the premiere of The Jefferson's You're going to be
Speaker 1: honored for your contribution to African American culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love. I'm proud of that.
Speaker 1: I love that people talk to you about you know,
Speaker 1: what your shows meant? Does that? Has that happened a lot?
Speaker 1: In particular with African American adult is It.
Speaker 2: Has happened a lot. I grew up with your show.
Speaker 2: My father and I we used to laugh, you know,
Speaker 2: I never saw my father laugh like that. I hear
Speaker 2: that a lot. It's so touching. And we watched it
Speaker 2: as a family. We don't watch anything as a family. Now.
Speaker 2: We watched Your All in a family as a family,
Speaker 2: and we talked about Archie, and we talked about the
Speaker 2: subject matter. And that's the thing. The one thing that
Speaker 2: I think the show accomplished that I can count on
Speaker 2: because I've heard it through all the years, was that
Speaker 2: there are big words to me. We talked, We looked
Speaker 2: at the show, and we talked. And if entertainment is
Speaker 2: about anything, it's about causing people to walk out of
Speaker 2: a theater and hum the tunes or talk the subject
Speaker 2: or you know, the message or the content.
Speaker 1: Not surprisingly, much of Norman's comedy was shaped by his childhood.
Speaker 1: When he was nine years old, his father went to
Speaker 1: prison for selling fake bonds. When you found out as
Speaker 1: a nine year old that your father was going to prison,
Speaker 1: how did that change your outlook on life?
Speaker 2: I was my father was going to prison. I was bereft.
Speaker 2: I adored him. I loved his zest for life. He
Speaker 2: was gone. He was seen being manacled to a detective
Speaker 2: walking down the steps of the courthouse. There were a
Speaker 2: crowd of people in the house. My mother was selling
Speaker 2: the furniture she couldn't live in shame and Chelsea, and
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people, so I knew a
Speaker 2: lot I didn't, And I was in that, in that condition,
Speaker 2: when a neighbor or an adult sun grown guy puts
Speaker 2: his hand on my shoulder and says, well, you're the
Speaker 2: man in the house now, Norman, and they're there, A
Speaker 2: man doesn't cry. Nine years old, I'm hearing that, And
Speaker 2: sometime later I imagine that, you know, thinking about that,
Speaker 2: as I thought about it often, I thought, well, teaches
Speaker 2: me a lot about the foolishness of the human condition.
Speaker 2: So I think that fool taught me how foolish we are,
Speaker 2: you know how. And also that in the most solemn
Speaker 2: or tragic of moments, there is humor, because saying to
Speaker 2: a nine year old in that condition, you're the man
Speaker 2: that has to be as funny as anything. I know how.
Speaker 1: How much like Archie Bunker was your father?
Speaker 2: Not at all like Archie Bunker, except in certain attitudes.
Speaker 2: I mean, Carol transcended anything I might have imagined my
Speaker 2: father could be.
Speaker 1: What was what is the first adjective that you'd use
Speaker 1: to describe Archie Bunker?
Speaker 2: H fearful, fearful of progress, fearful of tomorrow, fearful of God,
Speaker 2: have got never able to admit it that he isn't
Speaker 2: good enough for what's coming.
Speaker 1: He's also lovable, oh yes.
Speaker 2: Lovable in his love for family, for his family.
Speaker 1: You don't like when people fixate on Archie Bunker being bigoted, saying,
Speaker 1: oh he was, he was a bigot.
Speaker 2: Well, it doesn't cover the world, it doesn't cover him.
Speaker 1: You know, you wrote, created, developed a lot of these
Speaker 1: roles and then cast them. The actors so often ended
Speaker 1: up affecting the role itself and changing the direction.
Speaker 2: Of the role. Sure, yeah, sure, I mean what kind
Speaker 2: of a head would I have had if writing all
Speaker 2: in the family I had Carol O'Connor in mine. You know,
Speaker 2: Carol O'Connor gave me something he had that he didn't
Speaker 2: know he had. I remember him telling me there was
Speaker 2: a cab driver that he was thinking of when he
Speaker 2: read the script, and he was using that cab driver.
Speaker 2: You know that his image of that cab driver is
Speaker 2: he delivered his version of Archie Bunker. But his version
Speaker 2: of Archie Bunker is nothing I could have had in mind.
Speaker 2: So you know, I wrote some words and he inhabited them.
Speaker 1: And what about be Arthur and Maud. How much did
Speaker 1: she affect the development of the role.
Speaker 2: Well, she affected enormously, and she is quite different from
Speaker 2: Carol O'Connor. I knew her well. I had seen her
Speaker 2: on Broadway, I'd seen her off Broadway. We had become friends.
Speaker 2: So Maud was specifically written with her in mind.
Speaker 1: And you have a very special relationship to that role.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that role was in a sense me in
Speaker 2: the sense of her the way she was political. She
Speaker 2: felt she was for me, a bleeding heart conservative in
Speaker 2: the sense that you could not if you were dealing
Speaker 2: with fairness and justice. She was one thousand percent progressive.
Speaker 2: She would be called by anybody a liberal, But I
Speaker 2: view one's protection of a First Amendment and the Bill
Speaker 2: of Rights and those guarantees that we will be I
Speaker 2: don't like the word tolerant. That the United States the
Speaker 2: law protects our ability to be equal under the law,
Speaker 2: and that's a conservative for me. That's the ultimate conservative position,
Speaker 2: something you will not give up on. Conservative and it's
Speaker 2: and it's considered our culture.
Speaker 1: The bleeding heart, it's just a mod a is a
Speaker 1: bleeding our conservative. I love the theme song for Maud.
Speaker 2: Oh thank the Alan.
Speaker 1: Wrote, But I can never remember the last lyrics.
Speaker 2: And then there's mud, and then there's that that enterprising
Speaker 2: arising right, ond.
Speaker 1: Right, it's enterprising, never compromising.
Speaker 2: Never compromising some other arising right.
Speaker 1: Right, ond bomb.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite of the theme songs of the shows?
Speaker 2: I love them? Are? I think by now moving on
Speaker 2: up has become such an anthem.
Speaker 1: Well, it's got that amazing bridge. Fish, don't fry in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, beans, don't burn on the griill. Took a
Speaker 1: whole lot of climb in just to get up that hill.
Speaker 2: Right one dayre I really into them? Is extent, all right.
Speaker 1: And let me just also say that I've noticed that
Speaker 1: you handle and this is going to sound like a
Speaker 1: silly compliment, but you handle adulation well. I've seen during
Speaker 1: our time here people come up saying your show means
Speaker 1: this to me, meant so much, and my goodness, your
Speaker 1: Norman lear and you handle it very well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what it comes to mind. You see
Speaker 2: a wonderful we all see a wonderful plant, and we
Speaker 2: admire the plant, and it's representative of all the plants
Speaker 2: we've ever seen and all of the other joyful things
Speaker 2: in nature that make us feel so great. And it's
Speaker 2: an expression of love of nature, our relationship to that
Speaker 2: plant as we're looking at it. And and I think
Speaker 2: that adulation that that that comes to me as an
Speaker 2: expression of our own humanity. For humanity, it isn't me,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's well, he's a good guy, and it
Speaker 2: makes me feel good, and I'm happy to tell him.
Speaker 2: But I'm telling the world about them. I mean, and
Speaker 2: it has to be right, you know. I think that's incontrovertible.
Speaker 1: Is there one question throughout your life that you've been
Speaker 1: trying to answer?
Speaker 2: I guess the question of question is what follows this now?
Speaker 2: I haven't been trying to answer it because I know,
Speaker 2: you know, there's too much evidence that I'm not going
Speaker 2: to be able to find the answer. But there's something
Speaker 2: exciting about that about not knowing.
Speaker 1: It would be great if you went to a hereafter,
Speaker 1: because so many of the great stores in your shows
Speaker 1: have passed on, and if you could be reunited with them.
Speaker 2: I would love that. If I could introduce, you know,
Speaker 2: Carol Ocanna the Bernon Shaw. Hey, Bernie, meet Carol, I'd
Speaker 2: like that. That would be that would be a dream