GELFAND’S WORLD-Norman Lear (photo) looks and sounds a lot younger than his 92 years. For one thing, he was spitting tacks the other night talking about the 47 Republican Senators who wrote that ill-advised letter to Iran. The politics was just the sidelight though. The event, at Writers Bloc, was an exploration of how modern American television came to be, centering on a discussion of Lear's revolutionary, All in the Family. Lear was assisted in his reminiscences by Phil Rosenthal, the creator, writer, and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond.
Why is this topic important? I would say that events like this discussion provide the background information to the history of our modern culture. Just like programs at the Academy and those put on by Cinecon, we get a chance to hear the details of how our modern culture came to be. All of these discussions create additions to the oral history of American civilization, and ought to be preserved and saved.
We should make note of the local connection. The Los Angeles contribution to modern cultural history is obvious to those of us who have lived in other parts of the country. It is going to be a rare evening in rural Iowa when you get to hear stories told by the people who made the tv shows and films. New York City yes, Crawfordsville no. Back in the days that Ian Birnie ran the film program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, we got to hear inside stories such as that told by the actress Eva Marie Saint, who talked about being directed by Hitchcock, and we heard the reminiscences of a director who worked with Audrey Hepburn. This material will be of interest to literary historians of the 21st and 22nd Centuries, provided we can preserve it and catalog it.
As Lear explained, the idea for All in the Family came from an English program, Till death us do part. Many of us knew this, and we also knew that the English program was a lot more gritty, with the patriarch portrayed as more nasty than the ultimately lovable Archie Bunker. Lear's genius was to get All in the Family on the air, and then to introduce previously taboo topics to American television. As Lear pointed out, prior to All in the Family, the common idea of a sitcom was pastoral and agricultural, such as Petticoat Junction. He went on to point out that in the earlier world of sitcoms, a plot might be that the boss is coming to dinner and the roast is burned.
Introducing topics such as racism, abortion, and menopause took American television to a whole different level.
And of course it's not good enough just to be daring. You also have to put out a product. All in the Family rubbed some people the wrong way, but it carried its weight at the ratings level, finishing in first place for five straight years.
To this listener, the most interesting part of the discussion was the fact that Lear was a pioneer in the development of television as an artform. He got his start writing tv skits in the early 1950s. Lear wrote and directed variety shows for a number of years in the early days of black and white television. All in the Family came along in 1971 and continued in one form or another (Archie Bunker's Place) well into the next decade.
One interesting tidbit. When the program was first cast, the Archie and Edith characters were already set with Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton. The original pilot included daughter Gloria and son-in-law Mike, but the kids were played by different actors than Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers. It was only after the original program was rejected by its network, and Lear got to shoot a second pilot, that he brought in Reiner and Struthers. As Lear points out, he had known Rob Reiner since the kid was six years old, and it took a while to recognize that he would be an excellent Mike Stivic for All in the Family.
Lear has an autobiographical book out called Even This I get to experience.
One passage seems to jump out at readers. It was read out loud by Phil Rosenthal at the discussion the other night, and is featured on the Amazon.com page linked to above:
"In my ninety-plus years I’ve lived a multitude of lives. In the course of all these lives, I had a front-row seat at the birth of television; wrote, produced, created, or developed more than a hundred shows; had nine on the air at the same time; founded the 300,000-member liberal advocacy group People For the American Way; was labeled the “no. 1 enemy of the American family” by Jerry Falwell; made it onto Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List”; was presented with the National Medal of the Arts by President Clinton; purchased an original copy of the Declaration of Independence and toured it for ten years in all fifty states; blew a fortune in a series of bad investments in failing businesses; and reached a point where I was informed we might even have to sell our home. Having heard that we’d fallen into such dire straits, my son-in-law phoned me and asked how I was feeling. My answer was, “Terrible, of course,” but then I added, “but I must be crazy, because despite all that’s happened, I keep hearing this inner voice saying, ‘Even this I get to experience.’ ”
That's quite a list. By the way, the audience applauded loudly at the parts where Lear was attacked by jerry Falwell and made it onto Richard Nixon's enemies list.
From the standpoint of the amateur cultural historian, one difference between the early days of television and the later eras stands out. As Lear explained, a television show of the early 1950s typically had one sponsor, and the sponsor was in total control. For example, Lear was a director on the Martha Raye show at this time. The sponsor wasn't particularly happy with the show's style, but he kept it going for a while because the ratings were good. One morning, the cast and crew got a message that the sponsor was cancelling the show, and it wouldn't continue into the next season.
This kind of power, exercised arbitrarily and sometimes capriciously, was a part of the system. Our modern era in which networks exercise this power, is different in the sense that sponsorship is sold off piecemeal, in the form of commercial time. It works to protect shows that can present eyeballs to the advertisers, but doesn't really work to protect a quality show that is presented by a sponsor who is hoping to gain prestige. Taking an editorial line, let's admit that allowing such power to individual sponsors wasn't a great idea even then, and is probably a total irrelevancy today.
This little essay wouldn't be adequate without saying something about Phil Rosenthal. He is obviously much younger than Lear, and seems full of energy, wit, and comedic timing. He was also appropriately humble in the presence of his senior. Rosenthal offered tributes to Lear as someone that today's generation has learned from. As the two got to talking, it was revealed that they have known each other for quite a while, and share a mutual respect. At least that's the way professionals present things to an audience, and they did so extremely well.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 23
Pub: Mar 17, 2017
