Now it’s Lyn’s turn to generate provocative content. Norman is the youngest guy in every room he enters." "It's not your age, it's the age of your ideas. “It’s taken every second of my life to finish this sentence. “That’s what we’re doing, living in the moment,” he says. Today, the once hard-charging Norman exudes the wizened air of a happy yogi. In the first season of All in the Family, CBS threatened to pull an episode that dealt with impotence. Throughout his career Norman was known as a fighter-of network censors, of intransigent actors, and of the Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell, whose political ascendancy spurred Lear to found People for the American Way, a liberal watchdog group. “Maybe being around young people makes your body think you’re younger.” Senator Ed Markey adds, “It’s not your age, it’s the age of your ideas, and that means that Norman Lear is the youngest guy in every room he enters.” “I wonder if having three sets of younger wives and children didn’t help with that,” says Cindy Horn, who, along with husband Alan, Disney’s chief creative officer, is among the couple’s closest friends. The generational range of his progeny fuels one theory about his longevity. Kate, 64, and Maggie, 63, are the products of Norman’s 28-year marriage to magazine publisher Frances, who died of breast cancer in 1996. (The place formerly belonged to Robert Frost Norman once dubbed it a “Yiddish Hyannis Port.”) Lear family photos are disorienting, as his kids range in age from 27 (twins Madeline and Brianna, who, along with Ben, 33, he had with Lyn) to 74 (Ellen, the only child from his first marriage, to high school sweetheart Charlotte). The couple recently celebrated his 99th birthday with his six kids and four grandchildren, at the Gulley, their farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont. “One morning Lyn said, ‘Let me try something,’ and we fell in love with it,” he says. He’s smiling and wearing his signature white boating hat having forgone haircuts during the pandemic, he has grown the first ponytail of his life. Lyn, a youthful 74-year-old blonde, sneaks morsels of cheese from a platter to a maltipoo tucked beside her.Ī maid silently refills water glasses. They recently sold their 15,000-square-foot Brentwood estate, a spread befitting the creator of All in the Family, a man who at one point in the 1970s was producing six of the top 10 series on TV. One afternoon in Beverly Hills, the couple are seated on a terrace of their newly leased house. “Ninety-nine,” he muses, shaking his head. “We would say to each other, ‘Oh, we can only have 15 good years together.’ ” Norman chimes in, “But why not get married for 15 good years?” Thanks to Norman’s remarkable health it has been 34 years he seems mystified by his longevity. “We were so in love at the time,” says Lyn. The pair fell in love when the thrice-divorced Norman was 64 and Lyn was “39 and a half,” as Norman would tell friends, a winking effort to nudge her closer to the less scandalous age of 40. When Norman and Lyn Lear were first considering marriage, actuarial tables weren’t far from their minds.
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