For most of my long-vanished youth, I watched very little television. But in my late twenties, when I was a teacher and a resident preceptor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, I began to watch more TV in my tiny apartment in College V at UCSC.
I noticed something interesting. On TV adventure shows and on sitcoms, there was a pattern. The villain or the bad guy in some way was almost always the richest person on the scene.
If there was a murder or a rape, the culprit was never an escaped convict or a long-sought killer; the killer or rapist (or both) was a highly paid executive or owner of a utility. The killer was a well-dressed charmer, although always with a bit of a sneer.
When I got back to D.C to be a speechwriter for Richard M. Nixon, I noticed something similar in comedies. The man who did something wicked, although not a felony, was a man in a three-button suit in a Cadillac.
At the time, I was writing freelance for the Wall Street Journal. My columns attracted attention, both because of what I said and because of what my day job was.
I was invited to a colloquium of TV critics in Aspen, Colorado. One of the main attendees besides me was a producer of TV comedies. His name was Al Burton. He showed us all a genuinely hilarious situation comedy that satirized soap operas. His name was Al Burton, and his show was called Mary Hartman.
I fell madly in love with Mary Hartman and with Al Burton, the smartest man I ever met. I wrote a column about the show for what had become my main employer, the Wall Street Journal editorial page. As it happened, the show was a product of Norman Lear, who was already a stunningly successful maker of TV sitcoms. He had started with a genius show called All in the Family. It supposedly made cruel fun of the blue-collar star of the show, a fan of Richard Nixon and definitely no idol of Norman Lear, a confirmed super articulate “progressive.”
I pointed out in my columns in the Journal that while the powers that be in Hollywood loathed blue-collar Nixon fans, the tens of millions who actually watched TV were blue collar and often Nixon fans.
Norman Lear was fascinated by my musings. He called me at the Journal and told me that he had been unable to sell Mary Hartman to the networks but my article about it got it sold to enough independent stations to make it a money machine.
Norman invited me to meet him in New York as soon as possible. I did, and he offered me a job as a “consultant” on a new show he was working up called All’s Fair. Norman told me I was the only political conservative he had ever met who could make him laugh. Those were the days of sweltering hot subway cars and homeless people in every carriage.
I came out to Hollywood and worked for $600 a week. I felt as if I were a Rockefeller.
I worked on a bench in Norman’s HQ at a place called Metromedia Square. Norman often called me into his lush office to hear him lecture his writers on what was funny and what was not.
Norman knew I was a conservative. It did not stop him from being my friend and we remained such for the next 50 years. He worked at being friendly and he did it beautifully. Al Burton, who had become my best friend, explained that Norman considered it his job to be charming. He did it magnificently. He was as kind a person I ever knew. I loved him. Time moved on and he moved to a home very close to my wife’s and my home. I saw him occasionally. Recently he had me over to his beautiful home. He was as friendly as he had been when he hired me on at $600 per week 50 years earlier.
I left his house with tears in my eyes. I have tears in my eyes right now. Norman belonged to a different era, when writers could disagree and still hug. I will never find a gentleman like Norman again and neither will you.