Word: lear
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With Family, Sanford and Maude going for them, Yorkin and Lear have emerged in a big way from the twilight of anonymity behind the scenes in TV. Johnny Carson was barely exaggerating when he introduced this year's Emmy Award ceremonies as "an evening with Norman Lear." After Lear had collected one of the seven Emmys won by Family, Carson quipped: "I understand Norman has just sold his acceptance speech as a new series...
...course it isn't just the recognition; it's the money. Yorkin and Lear's profits from their three shows this year could reach $5,000,000, not counting the take from books, records and other byproduct merchandising. With offers of further projects pouring in, their Tandem headquarters is the hottest TV production office in Hollywood. So busy are the partners nowadays that they rarely get a chance to be in the office. They run the business by remote control, communicating with each other by memo. Occasionally they rendezvous for a quick huddle in the parking...
...Lear thought of Carroll O'Connor for Archie because he recalled O'Connor's "outrageous but likable" general in the 1966 movie What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? O'Connor's participation in the development of Archie's character has become so passionate that it frequently causes tension on the Family staff. At times he flatly refuses to perform a script that does not conform to his conception of the role. An example was last season's episode about Archie's being trapped in a stalled elevator with a middle...
...When we see a helicopter land on the roof of the CBS building and a man in a dark suit from New York get out," jokes one of Lear's writers, "we know we're in censorship trouble." Network censors are rarely as melodramatic as that. Usually they are a task force of some two dozen men and women, each of whom oversees a portion of a network's total programming (including commercials); they review scripts and sit in on tapings and screenings, questioning anything that seems to conflict with federal broadcasting law or their network...
...helicopter is more writer's fancy than fact, the censorship troubles of Yorkin and Lear are all too real. Family, particularly, has at least one big crisis a season. Two winters ago, it was over the episode about homosexuality that President Nixon so disliked; last winter, a show on which Son-in-Law Mike's exam jitters made him sexually impotent. Smaller crises abound, as when CBS succeeded in knocking out the word "Mafia" from one script, the term "smartass" from another...