Excerpt
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): “In my 90-plus years, I have lived a multitude of lives,” so writes Norman Lear about a life that’s including bombing emissions over Europe in World War II, the founding of a leading political advocacy organization, and the consideration of some of the most seminal programs in television history, most famously “All in the Family.”
CARROLL O’CONNOR (actor): What are you kicking about? Ain’t you your wife always telling me that coloreds and whites ought to work together?
(LAUGHTER)
ROB REINER (actor): Not to stop Puerto Ricans from moving next door!
(LAUGHTER)
JEFFREY BROWN: It’s all captured in a new memoir, “Even This I Get to Experience.”
Norman Lear joins me now.
Welcome to you.
NORMAN LEAR, Author, “Even This I Get to Experience”: Thank you. I love being here.
JEFFREY BROWN: You had been writing television from the ’50s on. Were you dissatisfied with what television was doing? Did you want to blow it up in some sense?
(LAUGHTER)
NORMAN LEAR: No, actually, I was writing for live television. And I said to myself, someday, soon as I can, I have got to do a situation comedy.
JEFFREY BROWN: And when did you decide though that it had to be a different kind of situation comedy, something that was tackling something really not seen before?
NORMAN LEAR: I don’t ever recall making such a decision.
I read about a British show called “Till Death Us Do Part” about a father and son not unlike Archie and Mike. And I said, my God, that’s me and my dad. I have got to write about this.
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