7 time Emmy Award winner and Beloved Actor Ed Asner dies at 91
From the NY Times;In response to:
Ed Asner, Emmy-Winning Star of ‘Lou Grant’ and ‘Up,’ Dies at 91
Best known as the gruff newsman he first played on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” he was also a busy character actor and a political activist.
By Anita Gates
Aug. 29, 2021Updated 3:04 p.m. ET
Ed Asner, the burly character actor who won seven Emmy Awards — five of them for playing the same character, the gruff but lovable newsman Lou Grant, introduced on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” — and later starred in film hits like “Up” and “Elf” — died on Sunday at his home in Tarzana, Calif. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his family via Twitter. No cause was specified.
Mr. Asner also served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1981 to 1985 and was active in political causes both within and beyond the entertainment industry. The issues he supported over the years included unionism (in particular the air traffic controllers’ strike of 1981) and animal rights; those he protested against included the American military presence in El Salvador.
Mr. Asner was 40 when he was approached for the role of Lou Grant, the irascible but idealistic head of the fictional WJM television newsroom in Minneapolis and the boss of Ms. Moore’s Mary Richards. His place in television comedy history was secured when, during the first episode, he told Ms. Moore, an eager young job seeker, “You’ve got spunk,” then paused and added, “I hate spunk.”
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ran on CBS from 1970 to 1977, and Mr. Asner was nominated for the Emmy for best supporting actor in a comedy series every year. He won in 1971, 1972 and 1975. He went on to win twice for best lead actor, in 1978 and 1980, for the spinoff “Lou Grant,” making him the first performer to have received Emmys for playing the same character in both a comedy and a drama series.
“Lou Grant” (1977-82) itself was an unusual case, a drama series developed around a sitcom character. In the show, Mr. Grant returned to his first love, editing a big-city newspaper, and the scripts tackled serious issues that included, in the first season alone, domestic abuse, gang rivalries, neo-Nazi groups, nursing-home scandals and cults.
In between playing Lou Grant, Mr. Asner also won Emmys for his appearances in the 1976 mini-series “Rich Man, Poor Man,” as Nick Nolte’s bitter immigrant father, and the groundbreaking, lavishly lauded 1977 mini-series “Roots,” in which he played a slave-ship captain with scruples. He also won five Golden Globes, one for “Rich Man, Poor Man” and two each for the two series in which he played Lou Grant.
In more recent years he had been seen in guest roles on television series like “The Good Wife,” “The Middle,” “Grace and Frankie,” “Hot in Cleveland” and “Cobra Kai,” and as recurring characters on “The Practice” and “ER.” In television movies, he played the
billionaire Warren Buffett (in “Too Big to Fail,” 2011) and Pope John XXIII (in a 2002 movie by that name).
Edward David Asner was born on Nov. 15, 1929, in Kansas City, Mo., and grew up in Kansas City, Kan. He was the youngest of five children of Orthodox Jewish immigrants, Morris David Asner, a junkyard owner from Poland, and Lizzie (Seliger) Asner, from Russia.
As a boy, Mr. Asner became interested in dramatics and worked on a school radio program. After high school he was accepted at the University of Chicago, but dropped out after a year and a half to work at odd jobs — taxi driver, encyclopedia salesman, metal finisher at an auto plant — while he tried to build an acting career.
In 1951 he was drafted into the Army and sent to France. Mustered out in 1953, he returned to Chicago to work with the Playwrights Theater Club and the Compass Players, a precursor of the Second City comedy troupe.....
Ed Asner, Emmy-Winning Star of ‘Lou Grant’ and ‘Up,’ Dies at 91
Best known as the gruff newsman he first played on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” he was also a busy character actor and a political activist.
By Anita Gates
Aug. 29, 2021Updated 3:04 p.m. ET
Ed Asner, the burly character actor who won seven Emmy Awards — five of them for playing the same character, the gruff but lovable newsman Lou Grant, introduced on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” — and later starred in film hits like “Up” and “Elf” — died on Sunday at his home in Tarzana, Calif. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his family via Twitter. No cause was specified.
Mr. Asner also served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1981 to 1985 and was active in political causes both within and beyond the entertainment industry. The issues he supported over the years included unionism (in particular the air traffic controllers’ strike of 1981) and animal rights; those he protested against included the American military presence in El Salvador.
Mr. Asner was 40 when he was approached for the role of Lou Grant, the irascible but idealistic head of the fictional WJM television newsroom in Minneapolis and the boss of Ms. Moore’s Mary Richards. His place in television comedy history was secured when, during the first episode, he told Ms. Moore, an eager young job seeker, “You’ve got spunk,” then paused and added, “I hate spunk.”
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ran on CBS from 1970 to 1977, and Mr. Asner was nominated for the Emmy for best supporting actor in a comedy series every year. He won in 1971, 1972 and 1975. He went on to win twice for best lead actor, in 1978 and 1980, for the spinoff “Lou Grant,” making him the first performer to have received Emmys for playing the same character in both a comedy and a drama series.
“Lou Grant” (1977-82) itself was an unusual case, a drama series developed around a sitcom character. In the show, Mr. Grant returned to his first love, editing a big-city newspaper, and the scripts tackled serious issues that included, in the first season alone, domestic abuse, gang rivalries, neo-Nazi groups, nursing-home scandals and cults.
In between playing Lou Grant, Mr. Asner also won Emmys for his appearances in the 1976 mini-series “Rich Man, Poor Man,” as Nick Nolte’s bitter immigrant father, and the groundbreaking, lavishly lauded 1977 mini-series “Roots,” in which he played a slave-ship captain with scruples. He also won five Golden Globes, one for “Rich Man, Poor Man” and two each for the two series in which he played Lou Grant.
In more recent years he had been seen in guest roles on television series like “The Good Wife,” “The Middle,” “Grace and Frankie,” “Hot in Cleveland” and “Cobra Kai,” and as recurring characters on “The Practice” and “ER.” In television movies, he played the
billionaire Warren Buffett (in “Too Big to Fail,” 2011) and Pope John XXIII (in a 2002 movie by that name).
Edward David Asner was born on Nov. 15, 1929, in Kansas City, Mo., and grew up in Kansas City, Kan. He was the youngest of five children of Orthodox Jewish immigrants, Morris David Asner, a junkyard owner from Poland, and Lizzie (Seliger) Asner, from Russia.
As a boy, Mr. Asner became interested in dramatics and worked on a school radio program. After high school he was accepted at the University of Chicago, but dropped out after a year and a half to work at odd jobs — taxi driver, encyclopedia salesman, metal finisher at an auto plant — while he tried to build an acting career.
In 1951 he was drafted into the Army and sent to France. Mustered out in 1953, he returned to Chicago to work with the Playwrights Theater Club and the Compass Players, a precursor of the Second City comedy troupe.....
(continued in my next comment below)
Comments (5)
I'd thought he died Years Ago.
Also, from that link;
Ed Asner is a television legend, the winner of seven acting Emmy Awards (which puts him tied with Mary Tyler Moore, both of whom rank second to their "The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) Show" co-star, Cloris Leachman who has nine). In all, he has been nominated 20 times for an Emmy Award, with 17 nods for a Primetime Emmy and three for a Daytime award. (All of his wins were for Primetime.)
As well as being one of the most outstanding and most respected actors of his generation, equally adept at comedy as he is at drama, Asner also made a name for himself as a trade unionist and a political activist. He served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1981-1985, during which he criticized former SAG President Ronald Reagan, then the president of a greater concern, for his Central American policy.
From actors to advocates, Americans are flocking to Nicaragua
November 23, 1984
By Marshall Ingwerson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Santa Monica, Calif.
Two years ago at a conference in Mexico City, Rosario Murillo, the wife of Nicaraguan junta leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra, asked a well-connected American, Blase Bonpane, to organize delegations of prominent American celebrities to Nicaragua to observe the fledgling Marxist society firsthand.
Mr. Bonpane, a former Maryknoll priest and a professor of Latin American history at the University of California at Los Angeles, is a liberation theologian sympathetic to the Sandinistas. He understood then the impact Hollywood stars could have on American public opinion.
By now American liberals have created a virtual industry of delegations to Nicaragua - a country where, not incidentally, the government is under attack by guerrillas supported by the United States. Last year, more than 2,500 Americans took part in such missions to see Nicaragua.
Delegations of church activists, college professors, architects and planners, artists and photographers, nurses and health-care workers, journalists and media professionals, Vietnam veterans, and average citizens - some activist, some just interested - have headed south.
Upon returning, many hold press conferences, frequently denouncing US support for the ''contras'' seeking to oust the Sandinista regime.
Many of the most visible critics of US policy come from Hollywood - celebrities like Ed Asner, Mike Douglas, and Susan Anspach.
Much of the Hollywood interest in Nicaragua can be traced back to Blase Bonpane, who helped organize a nine-city US tour last month with singer Jackson Browne, actors Mike Farrell and Diane Ladd, former Georgia state Sen. Julian Bond, and others. The tour was aimed at rallying opposition to US intervention in Nicaragua.
''Most of the people who have gone have not been celebrities,'' Bonpane says. But ''we do know that the United States is a media event. We have a celebrity President, and celebrities get media attention. We're aware of this now.''
Bonpane says he dislikes the notion that the Sandinista cause has become ''radical chic'' with Hollywood liberals. Those who venture to the Nicaraguan front, he says, not only are taking physical risks by entering a combat zone, but also are risking their careers by taking a public stand on a politically controversial matter.
The point of all this, Bonpane says, is not to win sympathy for the Sandinistas - although he is highly sympathetic to their cause. Rather it is to convince as many Americans as possible that there is ''no rationale whatsoever for a military solution to the problem.''
Typically, a trip organized by Bonpane and his wife, Theresa, will last a little over a week. The group will meet with government officials, labor leaders , farmworkers, and clergy, as well as visit the border region, where the contras are active. ''The purpose is to show people as much of Nicaraguan life as possible,'' Mrs. Bonpane says.
''Anybody who has a sense of claustrophobia, who feels they're being led around,'' says Mr. Bonpane, ''we don't hesitate to turn loose.'' Travelers often go to the opposition newspaper, La Prensa, or talk to cab drivers, who he says form a core of dissent.
The Bonpanes estimate they have taken 400 Americans to Nicaragua in the past two years, and they plan to launch their next delegation on Dec. 10.
Another group, the Nicaragua Exchange, based in New York City, takes a somewhat different approach. This organization sends ''brigades'' of Americans down for two- or three-week stints of harvest work on Nicaraguan plantations.