which he also directed. In 1959, Lear and Bud Yorkin founded
Tandem Productions, which produced and packaged TV spe-
cials with such stars as Fred Astaire, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye,
Carol Channing, and Henry Fonda. Tandem produced a num-
ber of theatrical feature films, too, including Come Blow Your
Horn, The Night They Raided Minsky’s, Start the Revolution With-
out Me, and Cold Turkey. Lear’s original screenplay Divorce:
American Style earned an Academy Award nomination in 1967.
By any definition, Lear was a success, but in 1971, he and Tan-
dem took a giant step upward with the premiere of the land-
mark TV series “All in the Family.” That series, featuring the
unforgettable Archie Bunker, and the various series that fol-
lowed—“Sanford and Son,” “Maude,” “The Jeffersons,” “One
Day at a Time,” and “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”—revo-
lutionized television and gave America a funny but acute look
at itself.
The brilliant writer Paddy Chayefsky said, “Norman Lear
took television away from the dopey wives and dumb fathers,
from the pimps, hookers, hustlers, private eyes, junkies, cow-
boys and rustlers that constituted television chaos, and in their
place he put the American people... he took the audience and
put them on the set.”
More than anyone else, Lear caused TV to grow up. Not
only were his shows hits, they were not afraid to be controver-
sial, focusing on such then taboo issues as abortion and preju-
dice. But no one wanted “All in the Family” in the beginning. It
was turned down by ABC, reluctantly aired by CBS, and hardly
watched at all for a while. Fortunately, CBS stuck with it. And
Lear not only mastered the context, he revolutionized it.
In each of eleven consecutive seasons, 1971–1982, at least one
Lear situation comedy placed in the top ten of all prime-time
Mastering the Context