Book Review: Norman Lear - His Life and Times

Beginning in the 1970s, writer and producer Norman Lear forever altered the television landscape with such groundbreaking situation comedies as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and One Day at a Time. For over half a century his body of work boldly tackled race, class, sexuality, politics, and religion—topics previously considered too taboo to be the subject of comedy on the small screen.

Norma Lear: His Life and Times is the unforgettable story of an extraordinary seven-decade career. Veteran author and entertainment journalist Tripp Whetsell offers an intimate portrait of Lear that is the product of years of research and numerous interviews. Whetsell shows how Lear created the gold standard for television comedies, producing shows that were the first to give underrepresented members of society an authentic prime-time voice, while encouraging audiences to confront their own humanity and shortcomings. In the process, he explores one of television’s most transformative periods, detailing Lear’s legacy as one of its chief architects and catalysts.

This biography will be published November 12, 2024. Applause Books/Rowman and Littlefield provided an early galley for review

I grew up on Lear's shows, often watching them on first-run over at my grandmother's house along with my mother, my aunt and my cousin. These were thought-provoking, heartfelt comedies that could make you laugh and cry, sometimes in the same half hour.

Broken into twenty-eight chapters across four sections, the reader is taken through his early life, his start in the business, the successes and the later years. No surprise that the bulk of the book is devoted to those glory years of the 1970s when his shows were at the top of viewing numbers week after week. At a time when there were only three networks to choose from, it was very likely you would have someone to discuss the shows with the day after they aired. As a big fan, I was very eager to hear all the stories (some I knew, many I did not) about the making of these classic shows.

Whetsell is a scholar when it comes to television, and he shows his depth of knowlege even when going off on contextual tangents that show the relationships to things Lear did in his own career. I appreciated the stories about the early days of television when Lear was honing his writing chops.