(Washington) Pioneer of American television and king of the sitcom, the prolific and committed screenwriter, director and producer Norman Lear has died at the age of 101, his family announced Wednesday.
The man whose comedies revolutionized the small screen in the 1970s and 1980s has continued throughout his career to tell “the real lives of Americans, not a magazine ideal,” those close to him have emphasized.
Known in the United States for his successful comedies such as The Jeffersons and All in the Family, Norman Lear was a pioneer in tackling sensitive subjects on television through laughter.
His series thus evoked racism, sexuality, inequalities and even political divisions, offering millions of American households a more realistic vision of family life.
“At the beginning, his ideas were met with closed doors and incomprehension. But he clung to his belief that the “craziness of the human condition” would make good television, and he ended up being listened to,” his family recalled in a statement.
Norman Lear was also the first producer to regularly introduce on American television an African-American family, the Evanses, main characters in the series Good Times which was broadcast from 1974 on the American channel CBS.
He was rewarded during his career with six Emmy Awards.
The history of “television can be divided into two parts, BN and AN: Before Norman and After Norman,” American screenwriter and producer Phil Rosenthal said in 2016.
