Note: this article contains detailed discussions of sexual assault.
Norman Lear's seminal sitcom "All in the Family" was known for bringing laughs and thought-provoking discussions, but a 1977 episode entitled "Edith's 50th Birthday" was an outlier. Instead of a comedy, the two-parter felt like a horror show, one with a gravely serious topic: rape. In it, family matriarch Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) survives a harrowing, extended assault attempt by a stranger and is forced to muddle through the aftermath of intense trauma. It's a dark point for the series, but it's one that show creator Lear said elicited the strongest live-action response of any moment in the show's nine-season run.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Lear (who died at the age of 101 in 2023) was asked to recall the biggest audience uproar in the show's history. "I never heard a bigger sound on television than when Edith got...
Norman Lear's seminal sitcom "All in the Family" was known for bringing laughs and thought-provoking discussions, but a 1977 episode entitled "Edith's 50th Birthday" was an outlier. Instead of a comedy, the two-parter felt like a horror show, one with a gravely serious topic: rape. In it, family matriarch Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) survives a harrowing, extended assault attempt by a stranger and is forced to muddle through the aftermath of intense trauma. It's a dark point for the series, but it's one that show creator Lear said elicited the strongest live-action response of any moment in the show's nine-season run.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Lear (who died at the age of 101 in 2023) was asked to recall the biggest audience uproar in the show's history. "I never heard a bigger sound on television than when Edith got...
- 3/31/2024
- by Valerie Ettenhofer
- Slash Film
Norman Steinberg, the Emmy-winning screenwriter who teamed with Mel Brooks on Blazing Saddles and My Favorite Year and wrote for the Michael Keaton-starring Mr. Mom and Johnny Dangerously, has died. He was 83.
Steinberg died March 15 at his Hudson Valley home in upstate New York, his family announced.
Steinberg also wrote Yes, Giorgio (1982), starring Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti in his feature acting debut, and co-wrote Funny About Love (1990), directed by Leonard Nimoy and starring Gene Wilder and Christine Lahti.
The Brooklyn native and former lawyer won his Emmy very early in his career, for his work on a Flip Wilson variety show.
His TV résumé also included developing Marlo Thomas’ 1974 landmark kids special, Free to Be … You & Me (he brought Brooks in on that); serving as a writer and executive producer on the first two seasons of CBS’ Cosby; and creating the short-lived CBS sitcoms Doctor, Doctor and Teech.
Steinberg died March 15 at his Hudson Valley home in upstate New York, his family announced.
Steinberg also wrote Yes, Giorgio (1982), starring Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti in his feature acting debut, and co-wrote Funny About Love (1990), directed by Leonard Nimoy and starring Gene Wilder and Christine Lahti.
The Brooklyn native and former lawyer won his Emmy very early in his career, for his work on a Flip Wilson variety show.
His TV résumé also included developing Marlo Thomas’ 1974 landmark kids special, Free to Be … You & Me (he brought Brooks in on that); serving as a writer and executive producer on the first two seasons of CBS’ Cosby; and creating the short-lived CBS sitcoms Doctor, Doctor and Teech.
- 3/22/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Charlie Hauck, a writer-producer who penned scripts for some of TV’s most iconic sitcoms – Maude, Frasier, Home Improvement, One Day At A Time and, under a pseudonym as a favor to Larry Gelbert, one episode of M*A*S*H – died at his Los Angeles home on Saturday, Nov. 14, of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 79.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Flannery Cogan Hauck.
“Nobody made me laugh harder, or more often, than Charlie Hauck,” said Maude creator Norman Lear. “He defined ‘funny’ and was a glorious man and friend.”
Hauck, whose career spanned more than 35 years, created the 1986 Valerie Harper comedy Valerie and co-created The Associates, the 1979 ABC sitcom that introduced a young Canadian actor named Martin Short to U.S. audiences.
Hauck’s knack for recognizing young comic talent also contributed heavily to another longstanding Hollywood career: Remembering a friend from his pre-Los Angeles days at Pittsburgh’s Wqed-tv,...
His death was confirmed by his daughter Flannery Cogan Hauck.
“Nobody made me laugh harder, or more often, than Charlie Hauck,” said Maude creator Norman Lear. “He defined ‘funny’ and was a glorious man and friend.”
Hauck, whose career spanned more than 35 years, created the 1986 Valerie Harper comedy Valerie and co-created The Associates, the 1979 ABC sitcom that introduced a young Canadian actor named Martin Short to U.S. audiences.
Hauck’s knack for recognizing young comic talent also contributed heavily to another longstanding Hollywood career: Remembering a friend from his pre-Los Angeles days at Pittsburgh’s Wqed-tv,...
- 11/20/2020
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
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