Norman Lear, Legendary Television Producer, Dead at Age 101

Television legend Norman Lear passed away at age 101.

The All in The Family creator's loved ones released a statement on Wednesday, December 6, announcing Lear died peacefully of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, Calif.

"Thank you for the moving outpouring of love and support in honor of our wonderful husband, father, and grandfather. Norman lived a life of curiosity, tenacity, and empathy. He deeply loved our country and spent a lifetime helping to preserve its founding ideals of justice and equality for all," The Jeffersons creator's family wrote on his website of his Tuesday, December 5, death.

"He began his career in the earliest days of live television and discovered a passion for writing about the real lives of Americans, not a glossy ideal. At first, his ideas were met with closed doors and misunderstanding. However, he stuck to his conviction that the ‘foolishness of the human condition’ made great television, and eventually he was heard," the note continued.

The Hollywood icon was known for mixing comedy and social topics like racism, feminism and social inequalities in his productions.

"Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs. It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared – we were working before, on average, 240 live people – if you could get them caring, the more they cared, the harder they laughed," Lear said in a 2005 interview.

The One Day at a Time creator celebrated his 101 birthday in July by imparting words of wisdom in a video shared on Instagram. "Good morning and good afternoon, good evening, depending on where you are, who you are," he began in the sweet clip about his major milestone.

"It's Norman Lear here, dribbling a bit because he's entering his second childhood," he continued. "I've just turned 101, and that is, they tell me, my second childhood."

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"It feels like that because of the kind of care I’m getting. I get the kind of care at this age that I see children getting, toddlers getting. And so I am now a 101-year-old toddler," Lear joked.

The television giant also marked his birthday in an op-ed to fight for better protection of voting rights in the United States. "To legislators getting between people and the ballot box, and to senators who are standing in the dishonorable tradition of those who filibustered civil rights legislation, I say this: You may pass some unjust laws. You may win elections by preventing or discouraging people from voting," he wrote.

"But you will not, in the end, defeat the democratic spirit, the spirit that animated the Tuskegee airmen to whom I owe my life, the spirit that powers millions of Americans who give of themselves to defend voting rights, protect our environment, preserve peaceful pluralism, defeat discrimination, and expand educational and economic opportunity," he penned in part.

Onion A.V. Club conducted the 2005 interview with Lear.

The Washington Post published Lear's op-ed about voting rights.