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Lou Grant (TV series)

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Lou Grant
LouGrantLogo.jpg
Created by
Based onLou Grant
by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns
Developed byLeon Tokatyan
Starring
Composers
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons5
No. of episodes114 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers
  • Allan Burns
  • James L. Brooks
  • Gene Reynolds
Running time46–48 minutes
Production companyMTM Productions
DistributorViacom Enterprises (1977–1981)[1]
Victory Television (1981–1982)
Release
Original networkCBS
Audio formatMonaural
Original releaseSeptember 20, 1977 (1977-09-20) –
September 13, 1982 (1982-09-13)
Chronology
Preceded byThe Mary Tyler Moore Show
Followed byMary and Rhoda

Lou Grant is an American drama television series starring Ed Asner in the title role as a newspaper editor that aired on CBS from September 20, 1977, to September 13, 1982. The third spin-off (after Rhoda and Phyllis) of the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant was created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds.

Lou Grant won 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series twice. Asner received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1978 and 1980. In doing so, he became the first person to win an Emmy Award for both Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for portraying the same character. Lou Grant also won two Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody Award, an Eddie Award, three awards from the Directors Guild of America, and two Humanitas Prizes.

Discover more about Lou Grant (TV series) related topics

Drama (film and television)

Drama (film and television)

In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-genre, macro-genre, or micro-genre, such as soap opera, police crime drama, political drama, legal drama, historical drama, domestic drama, teen drama, and comedy-drama (dramedy). These terms tend to indicate a particular setting or subject-matter, or else they qualify the otherwise serious tone of a drama with elements that encourage a broader range of moods. To these ends, a primary element in a drama is the occurrence of conflict—emotional, social, or otherwise—and its resolution in the course of the storyline.

Ed Asner

Ed Asner

Eddie Asner was an American actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is best remembered for portraying Lou Grant during the 1970s and early 1980s, on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series Lou Grant, making him one of the few television actors to portray the same character in both a comedy and a drama. Asner is the most honored male performer in the history of the Primetime Emmy Awards, having won seven – five for portraying Lou Grant. His other Emmys were for performances in two television miniseries: Rich Man, Poor Man (1976), for which he won the Outstanding Lead Actor for a Single Performance in a television series award, and Roots (1977), for which he won the Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actor in a television series award.

Lou Grant

Lou Grant

Lou Grant is a fictional character played by Ed Asner in two television series produced by MTM Enterprises for CBS. The first was The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), a half-hour light-hearted situation comedy in which the character was the news director at fictional television station WJM-TV in Minneapolis. A spinoff series, entitled Lou Grant (1977–1982), was an hour-long serious dramatic series that frequently engaged in social commentary, featuring the same character as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune. Although spin-offs are common on American television, Lou Grant remains one of a very few characters played by the same actor to have a leading role on both a popular comedy and a popular dramatic series.

CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainment Group division of Paramount Global.

Phyllis (TV series)

Phyllis (TV series)

Phyllis is an American sitcom television series that aired on CBS from September 8, 1975, to March 13, 1977. Created mainly by Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniels, it was the second spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Mary Tyler Moore Show producer James L. Brooks was also involved with the show as a creative consultant. The show starred Cloris Leachman as Phyllis Lindstrom, who was previously Mary Richards' friend, neighbor, and landlady on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

James L. Brooks

James L. Brooks

James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer, screenwriter and co-founder of Gracie Films. His television and film work includes The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, The Simpsons, Broadcast News, As Good as It Gets, and Terms of Endearment.

Allan Burns

Allan Burns

Allan Pennington Burns was an American screenwriter and television producer. He was best known for co-creating and writing for the television sitcoms The Munsters and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Gene Reynolds

Gene Reynolds

Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal was an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. He was one of the developers and producers of the TV series M*A*S*H.

Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series

Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series

This is a list of winners and nominees of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series since its institution in 1951. The award goes to the producers of the series. The award is often cited as one of the "main awards" at the Emmys ceremonies.

American Cinema Editors

American Cinema Editors

Founded in 1950, American Cinema Editors (ACE) is an honorary society of film editors that are voted in based on the qualities of professional achievements, their education of others, and their dedication to editing. Members use the post-nominal letters "ACE". The organization's "Eddie Awards" are routinely covered in trade magazines such as The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. The society is not an industry union, such as the I.A.T.S.E., to which an editor might also belong. The current President of ACE is Kevin Tent, who was elected in 2020.

Directors Guild of America

Directors Guild of America

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) is an entertainment guild that represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry and abroad. Founded as the Screen Directors Guild in 1936, the group merged with the Radio and Television Directors Guild in 1960 to become the modern Directors Guild of America.

Humanitas Prize

Humanitas Prize

The Humanitas Prize is an award for film and television writing, and is given to writers whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced and meaningful way. It began in 1974 with Father Ellwood "Bud" Kieser—also the founder of Paulist Productions—but is generally not seen as specifically directed toward religious cinema or TV. The prize is distinguished from similar honors for screenwriters in that a large cash award, between $10,000, accompanies each prize. Journalist Barbara Walters once said, "What the Nobel Prize is to literature and the Pulitzer Prize is to journalism, the Humanitas Prize has become for American television."

Summary and setting

Lou Grant works as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune daily newspaper, a job he takes after being fired from WJM-TV in Minneapolis at the end of the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (Grant mentions several times on Mary Tyler Moore that he had begun his career as a print journalist.)

Given the shift from comedy to drama in this show, Lou becomes a less eccentric character: more diplomatic, sober, and professional. The only other character from the earlier series is a single appearance by Flo Meredith, a veteran journalist (played in three episodes by Eileen Heckart) with whom Lou had a fling.

The rest of the main cast includes: general-assignment reporters Joe Rossi (Robert Walden) and Billie Newman (Linda Kelsey); managing editor Charles Hume (Mason Adams), an old friend of Lou's who has convinced him to move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles; assistant city editor Art Donovan (Jack Bannon); photographer Dennis Price (Daryl Anderson), usually referred to as "Animal"; and widowed, patrician publisher Margaret Jones Pynchon (Nancy Marchand), a character loosely based on a composite of real-life newspaper executives Dorothy Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and Katharine Graham of The Washington Post. Recurring actors who play editors of various departments included Gordon Jump and Emilio Delgado; Peggy McCay has a recurring role as Charlie Hume's wife Marion.

The episodes often have Grant assigning Rossi and Billie to cover news stories, with the plots revealing problems experienced by the people being covered as well as the frustrations and challenges faced by the reporters as they worked to get the story. The younger reporters are frequently seen turning to Lou for guidance and mentorship over some of the hard questions and moral dilemmas they experience as they work on their stories. The series frequently delves into serious social issues, such as nuclear proliferation, mental illness, prostitution, gay rights, domestic violence, capital punishment, child abuse, rape, and chemical pollution, in addition to demonstrating coverage of breaking news stories of all kinds.

The series also undertakes serious examination of ethical questions in journalism, including plagiarism, checkbook journalism, entrapment of sources, staging news photos, and conflicts of interest that journalists encounter in their work. There are also glimpses into the personal lives of the Tribune staff.

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Ed Asner

Ed Asner

Eddie Asner was an American actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is best remembered for portraying Lou Grant during the 1970s and early 1980s, on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series Lou Grant, making him one of the few television actors to portray the same character in both a comedy and a drama. Asner is the most honored male performer in the history of the Primetime Emmy Awards, having won seven – five for portraying Lou Grant. His other Emmys were for performances in two television miniseries: Rich Man, Poor Man (1976), for which he won the Outstanding Lead Actor for a Single Performance in a television series award, and Roots (1977), for which he won the Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actor in a television series award.

Nancy Marchand

Nancy Marchand

Nancy Lou Marchand was an American actress. She began her career in theatre in 1951. She was most famous for her television portrayals of Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant and Livia Soprano on The Sopranos.

Mason Adams

Mason Adams

Mason Adams was an American character actor and voiceover artist. From the late 1940s until the early 1970s, he was heard in numerous radio programs and voiceovers for countless television commercials, the latter of which he resumed in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early '70s, he moved into acting and from 1977 to 1983 held perhaps his best-known role, that of Managing Editor Charlie Hume on Lou Grant. He also acted in numerous other television and movie roles, most prominently Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981) and F/X (1986).

Lou Grant

Lou Grant

Lou Grant is a fictional character played by Ed Asner in two television series produced by MTM Enterprises for CBS. The first was The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), a half-hour light-hearted situation comedy in which the character was the news director at fictional television station WJM-TV in Minneapolis. A spinoff series, entitled Lou Grant (1977–1982), was an hour-long serious dramatic series that frequently engaged in social commentary, featuring the same character as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune. Although spin-offs are common on American television, Lou Grant remains one of a very few characters played by the same actor to have a leading role on both a popular comedy and a popular dramatic series.

Eileen Heckart

Eileen Heckart

Anna Eileen Heckart was an American stage and screen actress whose career spanned nearly 60 years.

Robert Walden

Robert Walden

Robert Walden is an American television and motion picture actor. He is best known for his role as Joe Rossi on Lou Grant, which earned him three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series nominations; for his role as Joe Waters on Brothers; and as Glenn Newman on Happily Divorced. Walden is also well known for his roles in the films Blue Sunshine, The Hospital, All the President's Men, Audrey Rose, and Capricorn One.

Linda Kelsey

Linda Kelsey

Linda Jean Kelsey is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Billie Newman on the CBS drama television series Lou Grant (1977–1982), which earned her three Golden Globe Award nominations and five Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Jack Bannon

Jack Bannon

John James Bannon was an American actor. He was best known for his role as Art Donovan on Lou Grant, a role he played for the duration of the series, from 1977 to 1982.

Daryl Anderson

Daryl Anderson

Daryl Anderson is an American television actor.

Composite character

Composite character

In a work of media adapted from a real or fictional narrative, a composite character is a character based on more than one individual from the story.

Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times, abbreviated as LA Times, is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the Los Angeles suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper's coverage has evolved more recently away from U.S. and international headlines and toward emphasizing California and especially Southern California stories.

Katharine Graham

Katharine Graham

Katharine Meyer Graham was an American newspaper publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991. Graham presided over the paper as it reported on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. She was the first 20th century female publisher of a major American newspaper and the first woman elected to the board of the Associated Press.

Production

When The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its run, that series' co-creators and producers, James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, had a commitment to create a new show starring Ed Asner. They decided that it was easier to retain the popular Lou Grant character and make it a spinoff series. Mary Tyler Moore had already established that the character had a previous newspaper career. Brooks and Burns' decision to make the spinoff series a one-hour realistic drama instead of another 30-minute sitcom was influenced by the 1976 film All the President's Men, and how that movie depicted the operation of a major newspaper.[2]

Gene Reynolds, who was producing the TV show M*A*S*H at the same time, was also brought on as a co-creator and executive producer. Reynolds, Brooks and Burns had previously worked on the series Room 222, and Lou Grant made occasional reference to Walt Whitman High School, the setting of Room 222. Gary David Goldberg was a producer for the series. The theme music Lou Grant was composed by Patrick Williams.

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The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American sitcom television series created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns and starring actress Mary Tyler Moore. The show originally aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977. Moore portrayed Mary Richards, an unmarried, independent woman focused on her career as associate producer of a news show at the fictional local station WJM in Minneapolis. Ed Asner co-starred as Mary's boss Lou Grant, alongside Gavin MacLeod, Ted Knight, Georgia Engel, and Betty White, with Valerie Harper as friend and neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern, and Cloris Leachman as friend and landlady Phyllis Lindstrom.

James L. Brooks

James L. Brooks

James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer, screenwriter and co-founder of Gracie Films. His television and film work includes The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, The Simpsons, Broadcast News, As Good as It Gets, and Terms of Endearment.

Allan Burns

Allan Burns

Allan Pennington Burns was an American screenwriter and television producer. He was best known for co-creating and writing for the television sitcoms The Munsters and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Lou Grant

Lou Grant

Lou Grant is a fictional character played by Ed Asner in two television series produced by MTM Enterprises for CBS. The first was The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), a half-hour light-hearted situation comedy in which the character was the news director at fictional television station WJM-TV in Minneapolis. A spinoff series, entitled Lou Grant (1977–1982), was an hour-long serious dramatic series that frequently engaged in social commentary, featuring the same character as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune. Although spin-offs are common on American television, Lou Grant remains one of a very few characters played by the same actor to have a leading role on both a popular comedy and a popular dramatic series.

Sitcom

Sitcom

A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use new characters in each sketch, and stand-up comedy, where a comedian tells jokes and stories to an audience. Sitcoms originated in radio, but today are found mostly on television as one of its dominant narrative forms.

All the President's Men (film)

All the President's Men (film)

All the President's Men is a 1976 American biographical political drama thriller film about the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Directed by Alan J. Pakula with a screenplay by William Goldman, it is based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post.

Gene Reynolds

Gene Reynolds

Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal was an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. He was one of the developers and producers of the TV series M*A*S*H.

M*A*S*H (TV series)

M*A*S*H (TV series)

M*A*S*H is an American war comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from September 17, 1972 to February 28, 1983. It was developed by Larry Gelbart as the first original spin-off series adapted from the 1970 feature film M*A*S*H, which, in turn, was based on Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. The series, which was produced with 20th Century Fox Television for CBS, follows a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the "4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War (1950–53).

Room 222

Room 222

Room 222 is an American comedy-drama television series produced by 20th Century Fox Television that aired on ABC for 112 episodes, from September 17, 1969 until January 11, 1974. The show was broadcast on Wednesday evenings at 8:30 (EST) for its first two seasons, before settling into Friday evenings at 9:00, following The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, and preceding The Odd Couple and Love, American Style.

Gary David Goldberg

Gary David Goldberg

Gary David Goldberg was an American writer and producer for television and film. Goldberg was best known for his work on Family Ties (1982–89), Spin City (1996–2002), and his semi-autobiographical series Brooklyn Bridge (1991–93).

Patrick Williams (composer)

Patrick Williams (composer)

Patrick Moody Williams was an American composer, arranger, and conductor who worked in many genres of music, and in film and television.

Broadcast history

Lou Grant aired on CBS from September 1977 to September 1982. A total of 114 episodes were produced. In the second half of the 1990s, in syndication, the show was carried on cable TV's A&E Network.

Episodes

SeasonEpisodesOriginally airedRank
First airedLast aired
122September 20, 1977 (1977-09-20)March 20, 1978 (1978-03-20)36
224September 25, 1978 (1978-09-25)May 7, 1979 (1979-05-07)30
324September 17, 1979 (1979-09-17)March 24, 1980 (1980-03-24)
420September 22, 1980 (1980-09-22)May 4, 1981 (1981-05-04)27
524November 2, 1981 (1981-11-02)September 13, 1982 (1982-09-13)38

Awards

Lou Grant won several critical honors during its run, including 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody Award, and two Humanitas Prizes.

Asner won two Emmys for his portrayal of Grant; Marchand won an Emmy for "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" four of the five years the series ran; Walden, Kelsey, and Adams all received multiple nominations for supporting Emmys.

Cancellation

The cancellation of Lou Grant in 1982 was controversial. Asner served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, during which he voiced opposition to U.S. government policy in Central America and worked closely with Medical Aid for El Salvador. Up until his death in 2021, Asner consistently stated his position that his political views, as well as the publicity they attracted, were the root causes of the cancellation of the show.[3] CBS denied that the cancellation had anything to do with Asner's politics, citing a fall in ratings for the last two seasons.[4] The show's ratings had fallen from an average 19.6 rating over the previous three seasons to 16.6 in its final year, finishing the season 43rd among primetime network series.[5]

Home media

Shout! Factory has released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

Home media releases of Lou Grant
DVD Name Ep # Release Date
The Complete First Season 22 May 24, 2016
The Complete Second Season 24 August 16, 2016
The Complete Third Season 24 November 22, 2016
The Complete Fourth Season 20 February 21, 2017
The Complete Fifth and Final Season 24 March 13, 2018

Source: "Lou Grant (TV series)", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, February 3rd), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Grant_(TV_series).

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References
Bibliography
  • Daniel, Douglass K. (1996). Lou Grant: The Making of TV's Top Newspaper Drama. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815626756.
Notes
External links

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