so i assume that norman
doesn't need much of an introduction but
ted's audience is global it's diverse
so i've been tasked with starting with
his bio which could easily take up the
entire 18 minutes so
instead we're going to do 93 years in 93
seconds or less
you were born in new hampshire new haven
connecticut
there goes seven seconds nailed it
you were born in new haven connecticut
your father was a con man i got that
right
he was taken away to prison when you
were nine years old you flew 52 missions
as a fighter pilot in world war ii you
came back to
radio operator you came to la to break
into hollywood
first in publicity then in tv you had no
training as a writer formally
but you hustled your way in your
breakthrough your debut was a little
show called all in the family
you follow that up with a string of hits
that to this day is unmatched in
hollywood
sanford and son mod good times to
jefferson one day at a time mary hartman
barry hartman
to name literally a fraction of them not
only are they all commercially
not only are they all commercially uh
successful but many of them push our
culture forward by
giving the underrepresented members of
society their first primetime voice
you have seven shows in the top ten at
one time
at one point you aggregate an audience
of 120 million people
per week watching your content that's
more than the audience for super bowl 50
which happens once a year
holy
and we're not even to the holy part
you land yourself on richard nixon's
enemies list
he had one you're in that's an applause
line too
you uh you're inducted into the tv hall
of fame on the first day that it exists
then came the movies fried green
tomatoes
the princess bride stand by me this is
spinal tap
again just to name a fraction
then you wipe the slate clean start a
third act as a political activist
focusing on protecting the first
amendment
and the separation of church and state
you start people for the american way
you buy the declaration of independence
and give it back to the people
you stay active in both entertainment
and politics until the ripe old age of
93
when you write a book and make a
documentary about your life story
and after all that they finally think
you're ready
for a ted talk
i love being here and i love you for
agreeing thank you for asking that's my
honor so
here's my first question was your mother
proud of you
my mother what a place to start
uh when i came back let me put it this
way when i came back from the war
she showed me the letters that i had
written to her over from overseas
and they were absolute love letters
uh they
this really sums up my mother they were
love letters i
as if i had written them to they were
love letters
uh a year later i asked my mother
if i could have them because they i'd
like to keep them all the years of my
life
she had thrown them away
that's my mother no
the best way i can sum it up in more
recent times
is uh this is also
more recent times a number of years ago
when they started the hall of fame to
which you referred
uh it was a sunday morning when i got a
call from the fellow who ran
the tv academy of arts and sciences he
was calling me to tell me they had met
all day yesterday and he was
confidentially telling me they had
they were going to start a hall of fame
and these were the
inductees
richard nixon because i don't think he
was on their list
the uh william paley who started cbs
david sarnoff who started
nbc uh edward r murrow the greatest of
the
uh foreign correspondents patty shamsky
i think the best writer that ever came
out of television
milton borough lucille ball and me
i called my mother immediately in
hartford connecticut mom this is what's
happened
they're starting a hall of fame i tell
her the list of names and me
and she says listen if that's what they
want to do who am i to say
that's my mind i think i think there is
that kind of laugh because everybody has
a piece of that mother and yeah
and the sitcom jewish mother is born
right there
so your father also played a
large role in your life mostly by his
absence yeah
tell us what happened when you were nine
years old
he was uh he was flying to oklahoma
uh with three guys that my mother said
don't
i don't want you to have anything to do
i don't trust those men
that's when i heard maybe not for the
first time
stifle yourself jeanette i'm going
and uh he went it turns out he was
selling picking up some fake bonds
which uh he was flying across the
country to sell and
but the fact that he was going to
oklahoma in a plane
and it was going to bring me back a 10
gallon hat
just like ken maynard my favorite uh
cowboy war
you know this was a few years after
lindbergh crossed the atlantic
plains were i mean it was exotic that my
father was going there
but when he came back they arrested them
as they got off the plane
that night newspapers were all over the
house my father was with his hat in
front of his face
manacled to a detective and uh
and my mother was selling the furniture
because we were leaving she couldn't
didn't want to stay in that state of
shame in chelsea massachusetts then
and uh and selling the furnace the house
was
loaded with people and in the middle of
all of that
some strange horse's ass put his hand on
my shoulder
and said well you're the man of the
house now
i'm crying and this
says you're the man of the house now and
i think that was the moment i
began to understand the foolishness of
the human condition
so yes it took a lot of years to look
back at it and feel it was
uh it was a benefit
but well it's interesting that you
called it benefited listening to you the
benefit in that it gave me that
springboard i mean that i could think
uh how foolish it was to
say to this crying nine-year-old boy
you're the man of the house now
and oh and then then i was crying and
then he said
and men of the house don't cry ah
and i so
i i i i'm i look back and i think that's
when i learned the foolishness of the
human condition
and it's been that gift i've used
so you have a father who's absent you
have a mother
for whom apparently nothing is good
enough do you think that starting out as
a kid
who maybe never felt heard started you
down a journey
that ended with you being an adult with
a weekly audience of 120 million people
i loved it i loved the way you put that
question
because i guess i spent my life
if anything wanting to be heard
i think
it's a simple answer yes that was what
sparked
uh well there are other things when my
father was away
uh i was fooling with a crystal radio
set
that we had made together and i caught a
signal
uh that turned out to be father coughlin
on on uh yes somebody laughed
but not funny this was uh a horse
another heart for that
who was very vocal about hating the new
deal and roosevelt
and jews the first time i ran into
an understanding that there were people
in this world that hated me because i
was born to jewish parents
and that had an enormous effect on my
life
so you had a childhood with little in
the way of of strong
male role models except for your
grandfather
tell us about oh my grandfather
well here's the way i always talked
about that
grandfather uh there were praise
lots of parades when i was a kid there
were praise on veterans day on pr there
wasn't a president's day
there was an abraham lincoln's birthday
about george washington's birthday
and uh the flag days
and lots of little parades my
grandfather used to take me he would
stand on the street corner he drove my
hand
and i'd look up and i'd see a tear
running down his eye
and he meant a great deal to me and he
used to write
presidents uh of the united states every
president every letter started nigeria
starling mr president
and you tell him something wonderful
about
what he did but when he disagreed with
the president he also wrote my dearest
arnie mr president didn't i
tell you last week
and uh and i would run down the stairs
every now and then and pick up the mail
we were
three flights up 74 york street new
hampshire connecticut
and uh i took up a little white envelope
reading
you know shy of sea called this address
uh and
that's the story i have told about my
grandfather
they wrote them back in the envelope
they wrote back
uh but i i i have film of myself
going way back to uh phil donahue and
and others before him dozens literally
of interviews in which i told that story
this will be the second time i have said
the whole story was a lie
the truth was my father my grandfather
took me to parades
we had lots of those the truth is a tear
came down his
eye the truth is he would write
an occasional letter and i did pick up
those little envelopes
but my dearest owning mr president all
the rest of it
is is a story i borrowed
from a good friend whose grandfather was
that grandfather
who wrote those letters
and i i mean i stole
arthur marshall's grandfather and made
him my own
always i when i started to write my
memoir
even even this how about that even this
i get to experience
uh when i started to write the memoir
and i started to think about it
and then i i
i did a reasonable amount of crying
and i realized how much i needed the
father
so much so that i appropriated arthur
marshall's grandfather
so much so the word father i have six
kids by the way
my favorite role in life uh
it and husband my wife lynn
uh but i
i i stole the man's identity because i
needed the father
now i've gone through a whole lot of
and come out on the other side and i
forgive my
the best thing i the worst thing i
the word i i'd like to use about him and
think about him
he was a rascal the fact that he lied
and stole
and cheated and uh and went to prison
i submerged that in the word rascal
well there's a saying that uh amateurs
borrow and professional steel
i'm a pro that you're a pro
and uh that quote is widely attributed
to john lennon but it turns out he stole
it from t.s
eliot so you're in good company
um you
i want to talk about your work obviously
the impact of your work has been written
about and i'm sure you've heard about it
all your life what it meant to people
what it meant to
our culture you heard the applause when
i just named the names of the shows
you raised half the people in the room
through your work but have there ever
been any stories about the impact of
your work that surprised you
oh god surprised me and delighted me and
from head to toe uh
there was an evening with norman lear
within the last year
that a group of hip-hop uh impresarios
and performers
and the the academy put together
uh the subtext of an evening win was
uh what uh what do a 92 year old jew
then 92 and the world of hip-hop have in
common
russell simmons was among seven on the
stage
and when he talked about uh the shows
he he wasn't talking about the hollywood
uh george jefferson or
in in the jefferson for the show that
was a number five
show or that he was talking about
a simple thing that made a big
impact on him yeah no i got an impact on
him i
was hesitating over the world change i
it's hard for me to imagine
you know changing somebody's life but
that's what he the way he put it
he saw george jefferson write a check
on the jeffersons and
he never knew that a black man could
write a check
and it he says just impacted his life so
it changed his life and
when i hear things like that little
things
because i know that there isn't anybody
in this audience that wasn't likely
responsible today
for some little thing they did for
somebody
whether as little as a smile or an
unexpected hello
that's how little listening was
you know it could have been the dresser
of the set who put the checkbook on the
thing and george
had nothing to do while he was speaking
really i don't know
but so in addition to the long list i
shared at the beginning i should have
also mentioned that you invented hip-hop
i want to talk about well then do it
right
you've led a life of accomplishment but
you've also built a life of meaning
and all of us strive to do both of those
things not all of us
manage to but even those of us who do
manage to accomplish both of those very
rarely do we figure out how to do them
together
you managed to push culture forward
through your art while also achieving
world-beating commercial success how did
you do both
when i hear that uh here's where my mind
goes when you hear that recitation of
all i accomplished this
is uh this planet is one of a billion
they tell us in a uh
uh in the universe of which there are
billions
billions of universes billions of
planets
which we're trying to save and we
require saving
but anything i may have accomplished
is you know my sister once asked me
uh what she does about something was
going on in uh
in newington connecticut and i said
write your own or your mayor or
something she said well i'm not
norman lear i'm clearly and
this that was the first time i said what
i'm
saying isaac claire with everything you
think about what i may have done and
everything you've done she never left
newington
can you get your fingers close enough
when you consider
the size of the planet and then and so
forth to measure anything i may have
done to anything you may have done
so i am convinced
we're all responsible for doing as much
as i may have accomplished uh
it's i understand what you're saying
it's an articulate deflection
but you have to think about the you have
to really buy into the size and scope of
the creators
enterprise here but here on this planet
you have really really mattered i'm a
center background
so i have one more question for you
how old do you feel
i am the i am the peer of whoever i'm
talking to
well i feel 93.
we're outta here well i feel 93 years
old but i hope to one day feel as young
as the person i'm sitting across from
ladies and gentlemen the incomparable
norman learned thank you