Celebrating Norman Lear’s Midas touch: his immeasurable impact on pop culture
Lear died Tuesday at home, surrounded by his family. But this much is clear: He worked right up to the very end, even though he burnished his legend as the personification of classic TV comedy over 50 years ago, with shows he either created or produced: “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” “Maude,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons,” “One Day at a Time.” And that was only the tip of his creative iceberg.Lear seemed to accelerate his television output even with advancing age (or maybe in spite of it), including the Netflix reboot of “One Day at a Time,” an upcoming re-imagining of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” — his satirical late-night soap — and live stagings of his classic sitcoms via ABC, in which he proudly showcased those works with all-star casts alongside host Jimmy Kimmel.