A veteran of World War II who flew missions over Italy.
Acted as a consultant for Trey Parker and Matt Shone's South Park. He assisted on Cancelled and I'm A Little Bit Country.
First cousin of David Susskind.
Godfather to actress Katey Sagal.
He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts in 1999 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington D.C.
In 1959 Lear produced a pilot for a situation comedy called "Band of Gold" in which James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette played a different couple each week. The program was considered too "experimental" and was never broadcast.
In 1980, he founded a public interest group "People For The American Way" which is a liberal group.
Is a brother of the Phi Alpha Tau fraternity based out of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.
Long a renowned supporter of liberal political causes, he changed his party registration to Republican in 1980 and endorsed John Anderson for President, after calling the administration of Jimmy Carter a "complete disaster."
Supposedly based Archie Bunker, at least in part, on his own father. The elder Lear was a salesman and, by all accounts, a vulgar, reactionary bigot who was constantly railing against women and minorities. He consistantly referred to Afro-Americans as "schwartzes," a Yiddish-American term with racially perjoritive connotations, and once called young Norman "the laziest white kid I ever knew."