EnemiesList.info

Nixon Enemies List entry for
Norman Lear:

List and position:Second, #325
Name as originally listed:Norman Lear
Vitals:7/27/1922 - 12/5/2023
1972 location:Beverly Hills, CA
Possible reason for listing:Norman Milton Lear
Gleanings:

- known for creating "All in the Family" and many other TV shows and movies.

- died in December 2023 just before the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Second Enemies List. He was listed alphabetically under "McGovern Staff members and campaign contributors" near Burt Lancaster and Joseph E. Levine.

-In the Watergate testimony, he is mentioned only once (Book 8, p.259), as:

Norman Lear

132 S. Rodeo Drive

Beverly Hills, Calif.

- He was not really noted for activism until 1981 when he founded People for the American Way. (Many on the Second List from 1972 earned the spot simply with a large donation to McGovern.)

- The pfaw.org website lists his recognitions as "​the ​National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, five Emmy Awards, and two prestigious Peabody Awards. He was an inaugural inductee into the Television Academy Hall of Fame."

- served in WWII as an Army Air Corps radioman on 52 missions in Europe.

- After the war, he never finished college at Emerson in Boston. Instead he soon started out in show biz as a "jokesmith and screenwriter" (Washington Post).

- He made it on to the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans until an expensive divorce.

- Neither the NY Times nor the Washington Post mentioned his spot on the Enemies List. It's only the second list, after all. The Smithsonian mentions it.

- In a 2016 interview by DemocracyNow.org, he is asked how he got on the list, replying "I got lucky. I think I just got lucky." He goes on to say that Oval Office tapes with Haldeman catch him complaining about "that show that makes fun of a good man" (referring to Archie Bunker). Still, it was probably a donation that got him on the Second List.

- He hosted Saturday Night Live once.

- In 2013, he was also on the NRA Opponents List

- Not to be confused with Norman Mailer (1923-2007), also an edgy filmmaker and antiwar activist and the same age as Norman Lear.

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