As a kid he dreamed of becoming a journalist but instead went on to have a successful career as an actor. However, Ed Asner, who has died aged 91, did end up fulfilling his childhood dream, if only on the silver screen. His portrayal of Lou Grant, a gruff newspaper editor who epitomises all that is good about journalism, made him a star. It also gained him five Emmy awards, making Asner the first actor to receive Emmys for playing the same character in both a comedy (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 1971, ‘72 and ‘75) and a drama series (Lou Grant, 1978 and 1980).
The Lou Grant character made his debut in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a popular sitcom, in 1970 as a TV newsroom head and the boss of the main character Mary Richards. After the series came to an end seven years later, Lou Grant had made such a mark that instead of being retired he was given an upgrade — and his own show, the eponymous Lou Grant.
It wasn’t just the show’s name that had changed; in the new drama Lou Grant was now a newspaper journalist, the city editor of the Los Angeles Tribune, and as such explored heavy-weight issues such as domestic abuse, neo-Nazi groups and gang rivalries.
Audiences used to Lou Grant as a comedy character were baffled and didn’t immediately take to the show’s new direction. As a result ratings for the new programme were initially abysmal.
Asner himself found the switch from Lou Grant the funny-man to Lou Grant the editor on a mission difficult and at first continued to play it for laughs. But somehow it didn’t feel right. It was only when his therapist whom Asner had asked for his opinion on the show —wondered why he was grimacing so much that Asner realised he was still playing Lou Grant as a comedy-character.
The realisation set him free to create a new incarnation of Lou Grant: still the hard-drinking, bad-tempered but soft-centered man that viewers loved but also an intense, committed journalist who tackled serious, difficult issues head-on.
Edward David Asner was born in Kansas City, the youngest child of Jewish Orthodox immigrants. His father Morris David Asner was a junkyard owner from Poland; his mother, Lizzie Seliger, was from Russia.
Although as a teenager he had been interested in becoming a journalist and was features editor of his high-school newspaper, soon it became clear to him that his great passion was drama. He did some acting during the two years he spent at the University of Chicago but dropped out to dedicate himself to developing an acting career. When that took time to materialise he worked at a number of odd jobs; selling encyclopaedias, driving taxis and even working on an auto-assembly line.
When the army came calling in 1951 it provided Asner if not with the excitement he was craving for, at least with a two-year break from the drudgery of dead-end jobs and he was posted to France. Back in the US, he joined the Playwrights Theater Club in Chicago and appeared in 26 plays with them before he finally took the plunge and moved to New York to pursue his dreams on Broadway.
In 1956 he landed a small part in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and had roles in a smattering of off-Broadway and local TV shows.
But it was after his move to LA in 1961 that things started shifting for him: slowly but surely Asner built a reputation as a solid character actor on some of the top TV shows of the time, like Ironside, Medical Center and Police Story.
It was one of these roles, specifically that of an ill-tempered but funny police chief in the TV movie, They Call It Murder, that led to his big break when he was asked to audition for The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But that break almost didn’t happen because the show was a comedy and, as Asner himself would explain, he had been avoiding comedies as he believed you were more likely to be discovered “doing the drama shows as a guest star”.
But as soon as he read the script he immediately recognised that the Lou Grant character — a hard-nosed journalist with a soft centre and great integrity — was a winner; .“the best character I’d ever been asked to do,” he would say later.
Viewers loved Lou Grant, the grumpy TV executive, and they stuck with him even when he took on his new role of crusading newspaperman in his new eponymous show. As for Asner, he totally related to the new-look Lou Grant: the gritty, hard-hitting issues the character dealt with were exactly the sort of things Asner himself was passionate about.
However, when the show was cancelled after just five seasons in spite of its popular success and critical recognition, many felt that the star’s left-leaning sympathies may have been one of the reasons for it.
Asner, however, continued to be busy — and garner more awards in the process: in 1976 he added one more Emmy to his collection, for playing a German immigrant in the mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man. Another Emmy followed in 1977 for his role in the ground-breaking mini-series Roots where Asner played the captain of the slave ship that took the protagonist, Kunta Kinte, to America.
Broadway also kept him occupied with roles in several plays; he appeared in a number of sitcoms and films and was a saccharine-free Santa Claus in the 2003 Elf, a Christmas movie that refused to take itself seriously.
However, it was Up, winner of an Oscar for best animated movie in 2009, that brought him to the attention of younger cinemagoers. Asner was the voice of the lead character Carl, an elderly widower who fulfils his dream of flying to South America by tying thousands of colourful balloons to his house. Carl is gruff and grumpy but with a soft centre — a role that Asner had honed to perfection.
Politically active throughout his career, Asner served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1981 to 1985 during which time he often sparred with his predecessor, the conservative Charlton Heston.
Asner married Nancy Sykes in 1959. They divorced in 1988. His 1998 marriage to Cindy Gilmore also ended in divorce in 2015.
He is survived by his two daughters, Liza and Katie , two sons, Charles and Matthew, and ten grandchildren.
Ed Asner: born November 15, 1929. Died August 29, 2021
