No doubt being Lou Grant would have pleased Asner’s mother. Asner appeared in all kinds of dramatic TV shows in the ‘60s—The Defenders, The Naked City, The Untouchables, Run For Your Life and Gunsmoke are part of a long list. He was in the John Wayne movie El Dorado. This prompted the following report in the Kansas City Times of January 17, 1966: “Edward’s mother, Mrs Morris Asner of 1840 Oakland avenue, Kansas City, Kansas, who is 84 years old, can’t understand why her son always gets killed.”
All that changed in 1970 when he began a seven-year run as the TV news director version of Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Only Chuckles the Clown got killed on that show. Lou, however, got killed off by CBS after five years as the title character of a TV drama; Asner always insisted it was because of his very public activism surrounding the Reagan administration’s policies about El Salvador and other issues.
Asner was a 1947 graduate of Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas. He signed up for the Korean War in 1951 but two years later was performing for the Playwrights Theatre Club in Chicago (including Shakespeare). He decided to try his luck in New York in 1955, made his TV debut on April 29, 1956 on WCBS-TV’s Camera Three, and continued his stage work Off-Broadway for several years before taking a chance at Hollywood.
Print reporters must have loved Lou Grant. Surely many of them must have worked for a grumpy editor with a bottle in a desk drawer. Not many months after The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted, there was a flurry of newspaper articles about Asner. Several used the word “gruff” to describe his character but hastened to say Asner was no Lou Grant (Vernon Scott of United Press International went into lengths about what his wife Nancy cooked for him). This article is from December 5, 1970.
A Gruff Fellow He Isn't
By TOM GREEN
Gannett News Service
BEVERLY HILLS — What a gruff-looking fellow this Edward Asner is! And what a gruff fellow he isn’t.
Asner, who plays Mary Tyler Moore's boss on CBS’ comedy winner, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” is thoroughly irascible on the series.
But get him away from that part he plays, like into the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel for brunch, and it’s a whole new ballgame. Asner is a pleasant, articulate man who seems to be just beginning to sort out what it means to be a major part of a successful new television outing.
For one thing, Asner is doing something that he hasn’t done much of in an acting career that takes him back to his college days at the University of Chicago. That’s playing comedy.
Asner has been known for heavy roles. Not tough guys, but heavy dramatic things in plays by people like Shakespeare, Shaw and Yeats and in vehicles like “Murder in the Cathedral,” “Oedipus Rex,” “Purgatory,” and “Antigone.”
“I had done comedy on the stage, but I was more interested in casting myself in the heroic image. As the No. 2 man, a heroic character man.”
But some people talked him into this try at full-time comedy and we may have an ex-dramatic actor on our hands.
“Five years from now, people will say, ‘I didn’t know he could play dramatic parts.’”
Asner is delighted with the show.
“I think we’ve got staying power. We have a most fascinating collection of nuts to build a show on. It has been such a shot in the arm for me. The catalyst for all is Mary. She’s our sparkplug.
Things have not always been so rosy for Ed Asner.
“They needed to prod me out of the encrustations of the past 10 years.”
After his University of Chicago acting experience, including a performance in a play which was Mike Nichols’ first attempt at directing, Asner quit school and tried to figure out how to become an actor while waiting for the army to grab him up. He worked as a hooker-helper at Open Hearth No. 1 in a steel mill in Gary, Ind., then went to an auto plant in Chicago, each time getting bored with the job.
“All of which fortified my desire to be an actor even more.”
The Army came and he went to France for two years and wound up managing a basketball team. Back in Chicago, he spent a couple of years with the Playwright’s Theatre Club and then decided to see what he could do in New York.
There were some bad experiences, but in 1956 things started happening and before he left New York a few years later, he had appeared with Jack Lemmon on Broadway in “Face of a Hero,” in many off Broadway works, including “Three Penny Opera,” in Shakespeare festivals and in stock.
“I always figured I’d become a star on Broadway and be flown to California in a private jet.”
It didn’t exactly work out that way. He had done a “Naked City” episode in New York and they wanted to repeat the role in another segment. He had to come to California to do the part the second time.
He had intended to go back to New York when he was done. But people encouraged him to look for work in Hollywood. He did. Since 1961 he has been in movies and a number of dramatic television series.
“And here we are in the Polo Lounge.”
He lives in Bel Air now with his wife, their seven-year-old twins, and a three-year-old daughter. He desciibes the character he plays as an “irrascible curmudgeon,” which is what somebody called him one time.
“He’s brusque and he has a lot of drive. It’s part of the heart of gold bit. He loves people, but he tries not to let them see it. He loves his work. I love my work now and that makes a big difference.”
Fame and popularity emboldened Asner to speak out on political issues that concerned him. He was part of a group that toppled the leadership of Screen Actors Guild under Bill Schallert, best known as the dad on The Patty Duke Show (in an odd twist, Duke replaced him).
The Boston Globe ran a feature piece on Asner after he visited Harvard in 1983. Print reporters found Asner a willing interview subject on a variety of issues—including the cancellation of his TV show. Asner had successfully turned his comedic character into a dramatic one with new supporting characters in an hour-long format; one that I believe avoided any mention of Mary’s gang at WJM-TV. A paragraph has been inserted that ran in syndication but not in the original Globe story of October 24, 1983.
Ed Asner remains bitter about show cancellation
By ED SIEGEL
Boston Globe
Independent Press Service
BOSTON — The first thing to remember about Ed Asner is that he is not Lou Grant. The second thing to remember about Ed Asner is that he remains extremely bitter about not being Lou Grant.
But first things first. In the hours if not days before meeting Asner at Harvard recently, the interviewer was constantly prodding himself, "Whatever you do, don't say, 'Hi, Lou.' "
Asner spent six days at Harvard as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics. At a dinner before Asner's speech on "Television as Public Policy," the interviewer was gratified to find that many of the 30 or 40 other guests were equally on guard. Unfortunately, one Harvard Business School professor had done less than sufficient homework. He shook Asner's hand and said, "Glad to meet you, Ed . . . er, excuse me, Lou."
Actually, the difference between Ed Asner and Lou Grant is rather profound. At 54, the actor seems about 10 years older, 20 pounds heavier and 50 IQ points brighter than the actee. If the city editor of the Tribune said whatever came to his mind as fast as it came to his mind, the president of the Screen Actors Guild paused after every question, formulated his answer and carefully articulated each word of each response.
At times, Asner seemed almost professorial. Perhaps it was the Harvardian atmosphere, perhaps it was the controversial quotations or as he says, misquotations of the past.
But no, Ed Asner is not Lou Grant. Nevertheless, he continues to charge CBS with canceling the program in September 1982 for political reasons, rather than for ratings' slippage, which was the network's stated rationale for ending home delivery of the Los Angeles Tribune.
"I condemn the network for giving in to the pressure of the far-right boycott before it went into effect. . . . The vice president of CBS went to great lengths to explain to me why the program was canceled. Whatever the reason, by canceling it when they did, they gave the victory to the boycotters."
Why was it so important for Lou Grant to continue after five years?
"There were two losses. A show about journalism had been created that had great reality to it. Within that framework, issues were raised that dealt with our lives, and deaths, that no other show could deal with," he said.
"Second, it tended to keep other performers from exercising their First Amendment rights on speaking out about the president's Latin American policies.
Both Ed Asner and Lou Grant are (or in the latter case, were) professionals who are (were) willing to bear some of the world's heavier burdens on their shoulders. While the city editor veered away from the ideological, the union president does not. In case you hadn't guessed, Asner's ideology tends to be of the liberal persuasion.
Even when the suggestion is made that after 12 years of playing Lou Grant (seven years on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, five on Lou Grant) it might be something of a blessing, that he can take his career in other directions now, Asner will have none of it. He speaks not only with pride of the other parts he's played (he won Emmys for Rich Man, Poor Man and Roots), but also with longing for Lou (he won Emmys for the part on both shows).
Although Asner was elated that CBS had decided to give the show that took the place of Lou Grant another shot, he admits that "I never saw Cagney and Lacey. I caught pieces of two shows. There was certainly not any bitterness toward the show, but yeah, there was plenty of bitterness about the time slot.
"One of the cable companies offered us a final show of two hours, but the producers said 'No,' and I certainly agree with that judgment." Still, if a cable service had engineered a continuing series for "Lou Grant" as Showtime had for "Paper Chase" or Cinemax for "SCTV," Asner says "I would have examined and considered. Certainly. . . . "Paper Chase" was not an expensive show so they could get it onto cable and create their world anew far more cheaply than Lou Grant.' "
Perhaps though, it's not the inability to create Lou Grant anew as the inability for Asner to create himself anew that seemed to eat at his soul whenever the subject was brought up at the dinner, the speech or the later interview.
For while Ed Asner is more politicized, articulate and intelligent than Lou Grant, he gives the overriding impression that there is an Ed Asner who would rather loosen his tie and roll up his sleeves than dress up for an appearance at Harvard, who would rather "speak first and regret later" than carefully formulate his answers and who would rather indulge in earthy conversation at a neighborhood bar than submit to yet another interview in yet another academic conference room.
Lou Grant, the TV show, and, Lou Grant, the character, gave him those outlets, at least vicariously, and if Asner has reason to be bitter about CBS' cowardice (be it economic or political), the Moral Majority and the program's sponsors, he may also have reason to be bitter that CBS may have taken a little of the Lou Grant swagger out of the life of Ed Asner.
Asner picked up regular roles in a few forgotten series—does anyone remember Off the Rack or MTM’s The Trials of Rosie O’Neill or Hearts Afire?— and a number of animated cartoon shows and, in fact, worked steadily into his 80s. But I suspect most TV viewers will remember him as the news director who hated spu— well, I told myself I wouldn’t use the word in this post. You’ll see it everywhere else.
Loved the story Ed told about the initial reading/audition for Lou Grant in " The Mary Tyler Moore Show ". He said a number of reads were miserable. He didn't know how to attack the part. They politely thanked him, basically said " Next ", and he walked out. Then he turned around, walked back in, asked for just one more read, they granted it. He took the hard boiled curmudgeon approach, and the rest is history. Good thing he had that feeling to give it one more try.
ReplyDeleteI got to do a brief radio interview with him in the late 80s when he was promoting his book. Nice guy. He was very gracious, even after sitting through a dozen interviews with local media outlets.
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