Word: lear
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Part," the model for "Family." The fathers of Sanford and son are Steptoe and son, on the BBC series of the same name, a pair of cockney rag and bone men who batter themselves and each other relentlessly against a dead end of life. Both Yorkin and Lear adaptations follow the same recipe: take one BBC show, add the milk of human kindness and stir for 30 minutes. "One of our major concerns was not to make Sanford look too grim," says Yorkin. "The Steptoe set in England was dark and gloomy; we took pains to make ours poor...
...Yorkin and Lear grew up in such a milieu ? poor but not depressing ? and both reach back to early days for authentic touches to bring their shows home to viewers. Lear's salesman father, though a second-generation Russian Jew, was almost as much of a source for Archie as Alf Garnett was. He used to call Norman "the laziest white kid I ever saw" and order his wife to "stifle" ? both expressions that were to become Archie's. The family shifted restlessly from New Haven, Conn., where Norman was born, to nearby Hartford, then to Boston and New York...
...After a year at Boston's Emerson College and another three with the Fifteenth Air Force near Foggia, Italy (since enshrined as Archie's old unit), Lear was laid off his first job with a Manhattan publicity firm. Then he went bankrupt with his own novelty ashtray business. He took his wife and infant daughter to Los Angeles, where half of his luck improved. He at least survived as a door-to-door salesman of furniture and baby pictures...
...Lear and a fellow hawker named Ed Simmons decided that the street they really wanted to work was comedy writing. It was 1949; the infant medium of television was ravenous for material; the new team needed just one break in order to kiss baby pictures goodbye ? and Lear typically made it for them. Posing as a New York Times reporter, he got Danny Thomas' phone number from an agent. He called Thomas and offered him a piece of material for a benefit engagement that night at Ciro's in Hollywood. "How long wilt asked Thomas. "How long do you need...
...time Yorkin and Lear crossed paths on the Martin and Lewis show two years later, the Lear-Simmons partnership was doing so well that it had to farm out some of its work to the younger team of Neil Simon, the future Broadway playwright, and his brother Danny. "To me Norman was big-time," recalls Yorkin, who was then a lowly assistant director. "He lived at the Waldorf and moved in a different world from...