An entertainment icon on living a life of meaning

Eric Hirshberg: So I assume that Norman
doesn't need much of an introduction,

but TED's audience is global --

it's diverse --

so I've been tasked
with starting with his bio,

which could easily take up
the entire 18 minutes,

so instead we're going to do
93 years in 93 seconds or less.

You were born in New Hampshire.

Norman Lear: New Haven, Connecticut.

EH: New Haven, Connecticut.

(Laughter)

NL: There goes [70] seconds.

EH: Nailed it.

(Laughter)

You were born in New Haven, Connecticut.

Your father was a con man,

I got that right.

He was taken away to prison
when you were nine years old.

You flew 52 missions
as a fighter pilot in World War II.

You came back to --

NL: Radio operator.

EH: You came to LA
to break into Hollywood,

first in publicity, then in TV.

You had no training as a writer, formally,

but you hustled your way in.

Your breakthrough --

your debut --

was a little show
called All in the Family.

You follow that up with a string of hits

that to this day is unmatched
in Hollywood:

Sanford and Son,

Maude,

Good Times,

The Jeffersons,

One Day at a Time,

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,

to name literally a fraction of them.

Not only are they all commercially --

(Applause)

Not only are they all
commercially successful,

but many of them push our culture forward

by giving the underrepresented
members of society

their first prime-time voice.

You have seven shows
in the top 10 at one time.

At one point,

you aggregate an audience of 120
million people per week,

watching your content.

That's more than the audience
for Super Bowl 50

which happens once a year.

NL: Holy shit.

(Laughter)

EH: And we're not even
to the holy shit part.

(Laughter)

You land yourself
on Richard Nixon's enemies list --

he had one.

You're --

That's an applause line, too.

(Applause)

You're inducted into the TV Hall of Fame
on the first day that it exists,

then came the movies.

Fried Green Tomatoes,

The Princess Bride,

Stand By Me,

This is Spinal Tap.

(Applause)

Again, just to name a fraction.

Then you wipe the slate clean --

start a third act as a political activist
focusing on protecting the first amendment

and the separation of church and state.

You start People For The American Way;

you buy the Declaration of Independence

and give it back to the people;

you stay active in both entertainment
and politics until the ripe of age of 93,

when you write a book

and make a documentary
about your life story.

And after all that,

they finally think you're
ready for a TED Talk.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

NL: I love being here.

And I love you for agreeing to do this.

EH: Thank you for asking.

It's my honor.

So here's my first question.

Was your mother proud of you?

(Laughter)

NL: My mother ...

what a place to start.

Let me put it this way,

when I came back from the war,

she showed me the letters
that I had written her from overseas,

and they were absolute love letters.

This really sums up my mother.

They were love letters,

as if I had written them to --

they were love letters.

A year later I asked my mother
if I could have them

because I'd like to keep them
all the years of my life ...

she had thrown them away.

(Laughter)

That's my mother.

(Laughter)

The best way I can sum it up
in more recent time is --

this is also more recent times --

a number of years ago,

when they started the Hall of Fame
to which you referred,

it was a Sunday morning

when I got a call from the fellow who ran
the TV Academy of Arts and Sciences,

he was calling me to tell me
they had met all day yesterday

and he was confidentially telling me
they were going to start a hall of fame

and these were the inductees.

I started to say Richard Nixon

because Richard Nixon --

EH: I don't think he was on their list.

NL: William Paley who started CBS,

David Sarnoff who started NBC,

Edward R. Morrow,

the greatest of the foreign
correspondents,

Patty Chayefsky --

I think the best writer
that ever came out of television --

Milton Berle,

Lucille Ball

and me.

EH: Not bad.

NL: I call my mother immediately
in Hartford, Connecticut.

"Mom, this is what's happened,

they're starting a hall of fame,"

I tell her the list of names and me,

and she says,

"Listen, if that's what they
want to do, who am I to say?"

(Laughter)

(Applause)

NL: So that's ...

that's my Ma --

I think it earns that kind of a laugh

because everybody
has a piece of that mother.

(Laughter)

EH: And the sitcom Jewish mother
is born right there.

So your father also played
a large role in your life,

mostly by his absence.

Tell us what happened when
you were nine years old.

NL: He was ...

he was flying to Oklahoma

with three guys that my mother said,

"Don't --

I don't want you to have anything
to do with them,

I don't trust those men."

That's when I heard,

maybe not for the first time,

"Stifle yourself, Jeanette, I'm going."

And he went.

It turns out he was selling --

picking up some fake bonds,

which he was flying
across the country to sell.

But the fact that he was
going to Oklahoma in a plane,

and he was going to bring me
back a 10-gallon hat,

just like Ken Maynard,
my favorite cowboy wore.

You know this was a few years after
Lindburgh crossed the atlantic--

I mean it was exotic
that my father was going there.

But when he came back,

they arrested him as he got off the plane.

That night newspapers
were all over the house,

my father was with his hat
in front of his face,

[manicled] to a detector.

and my mother was selling the furniture
because we were leaving --

she couldn't afford --

she didn't want to stay
in that state of shame,

in Chelsea, Massachussetts.

And selling the furniture,

the house was loaded with people,

and in the middle of all of that,

some strange horse's ass
put his hand on my shoulder and said,

"Well, you're the man of the house now."

I'm crying and this asshole says
"You're the man of the house now,"

and I think that was the moment

I began to understand the foolishness
of the human condition.

So ...

it took a lot of years to look back at it
and feel it was a benefit,

but --

EH: Well it's interesting
you call it a benefit.

Listening to you --

NL: Benefit in that it gave
me that springboard.

I mean that I could think

how foolish it was to say
to this crying nine year old boy,

"you're the man of the house now."

And then I was crying and then he said,

"And men of the house don't cry."

And I ...

(Laughter)

So ...

I look back and I think

that's when I learned
the foolishness of the human condition,

and it's been that gift that I've used.

EH: So you have father who's absent,

you have a mother for whom
apparently nothing is good enough.

Do you think that starting out as a kid
who maybe never felt heard

started you down a journey

that ended with you being an adult

with a weekly audience
of 120 million people?

NL: I love the way you put that question.

Because I guess I spent my life wanting --

if anything, wanting to be heard.

I think ...

it's a simple answer,

yes,

that was what sparked --

there's are other things, too.

When my father was away,

I was fooling with a crystal radio set
that we had made together,

and I caught a signal that turned
out to be Father Coughlin on --

yes, somebody laughed.

(Laughter)

But not funny,

this was a horse's--

not a horse's ass --

he was very vocal
about hating the New Deal

and Roosevelt and Jews.

First time I ran into an understanding

that there were people
in this world that hated me

because I was born to Jewish parents.

And that had an enormous
effect on my life.

EH: So you had a childhood

with little in the way of strong
male role models,

except for your grandfather.

Tell us about him.

NL: Oh, my grandfather.

Well he was the way I always talked about,

that grandfather.

There were parades,

lots of parades when I was a kid.

There were parades on Veteran's Day,

on President's --

there wasn't a President's Day.

There was for Abraham Lincoln's birthday,

George Washington's birthday

and Flag Day,

and lots of little parades.

My grandfather used to take me,

we'd stand on the street corner,

he'd hold my hand

and I look up and I'd see a tear
running down his eye.

And he meant a great deal to me.

And he used to write Presidents
of the United States,

every President --

every letter started,

"My dearest, darling Mr. President,"

and he'd tell him something
wonderful about what he did.

But when he disagreed
with the President he also wrote,

"My dearest, darling Mr. President,

didn't I tell you last week...?"

(Laughter)

And I would run down the stairs
every now and then

and pick up the mail --

we were three flights up,

74 York Street, New Haven, Connecticut --

and I'd pick up a little white envelope
reading, "Shia C. called at this address,"

and that's the story I have told
about my grandfather --

EH: They wrote him back
on the envelopes --

NL: They wrote back.

But I have shown them myself,

going way back to Phil Donahue
and others before him,

dozens --

literally --

of interviews in which I told that story.

This will be the second time I have said
the whole story was a lie.

The truth was my grandfather
took me to parades,

we had lots of those.

The truth is a tear came down his eye.

The truth is he would write
and occasional letter

and I did pick up those little envelopes.

But, "My dearest darling Mr. President",

all the rest of it,

is a story I borrowed from a good friend
whose grandfather was that grandfather,

who wrote those letters.

And I mean, I stole Arthur
Marshall's grandfather

and made him my own.

Always.

When I started to write my memoir --

even this, how about that?

Even this I get to experience.

When I started to write the memoir

and I started to think about it,

and then I ...

I did a reasonable amount of crying

and I realized how much
I needed the father,

so much so that I appropriated
Arthur Marshall's grandfather.

So much so,

the word "father" --

I have six kids by the way,

my favorite role in life,

and husband to my wife Lynn --

but I stole the man's identity
because I needed the father.

Now I've gone through a whole lot of shit

and come out on the other side,

and I actually --

the best thing --

the worst thing --

word I'd like to use about him
and think about him is rascal.

The fact that he lied
and stole and cheated,

and went to prison ...

I submerge that in the word "rascal".

EH: Well there's a saying that amatuers
borrow and professionals steal.

NL: I'm a pro.

(Laughter)

EH: And that quote is widely
attributed to John Lennon,

but it turns out he
stole it from T.S. Eliot.

So you're in good company.

(Laughter)

EH: I want to talk about your work.

Obviously the impact of your work
has been written about

and I'm sure you've
heard about it all your life:

what it meant to people,

what it meant to your culture,

you heard the applause when I just
named the names of the shows,

you raised half the people
in the room through your work.

But have there ever been any stories
about the impact of your work

that surprised you?

NL: Oh, god --

surprised me and delighted me
from head to toe.

There was an evening wtih Norman Lear
within the last year

that a group of Hip-Hop
impressarios and performers,

and the Academy

put together.

The subtext of "An Evening With ..."

was "what do a 92-year-old Jew" --

then 92 --

"and the world of Hip-Hop
have in common?"

Russel Simmons was among seven on stage.

And when he talked about the shows,

he wasn't talking about the Hollywood
George Jeffereson in the Jeffersons

or the show that was
the "Number Five" show

or the --

he was talking about a simple thing
that made a big --

EH: Impact on him?

NL: An impact on him --

I was hesitating over the word, "change."

It's hard for me to imagine,

you know, changing somebody's life,

but that's how he put it.

He saw George Jefferson
write a check on The Jeffersons,

and he never knew that a Black man
could write a check.

And he says it just
impacted his life so --

it changed his life.

And when I hear things like that --

little things --

because I know that there isn't
anybody in this audience

that wasn't likely responsible today for
some little thing they did for somebody,

as little as a smile
or an unexpected "hello,"

that's how little this thing was.

It could have been the dresser of the set

who put the checkbook on the thing

and George had nothing to do while
he was speaking so he wrote it,

I don't know.

But --

EH: So in addition to the long list
I shared in the beginning,

I should have also mentioned
that you invented Hip-Hop.

(Laughter)

NL: Well --

EH: I want to talk about --

NL: Well, then do it.

(Laughter)