RIP Ed Asner

[outofplace]

Check out his IMDB page. It was amazing how much he was still working right up to the end.

 

[Scout]

Best. Santa. Ever.

RIP

 

[Songbird]

I'll also remember Asner as the gruff but good natured (and also quite shockingly bilingual) cop in "Change of Habit" along with Elvis and a young teevee actress named Mary Tyler Moore playing America's hippest nun.

Because I had to look ...

 

[HanSenSE]

It probably would have wrecked the show, but I was always surprised nobody from the Twin Cities ever showed up in LA. Was his time there even referenced after the first episode?

The closest reference was in on episode when Rossi and Lou were stuck in the mountains by a mudslide. Rossi asked about his TV days. It was an episode centering around survivalists.

All five seasons are on YouTube.

 

[Starman]

It probably would have wrecked the show, but I was always surprised nobody from the Twin Cities ever showed up in LA. Was his time there even referenced after the first episode?

I think there were a couple episodes that mentioned Jan./Feb. temperatures in the 80s and Lou made some comments about how it didn't get above zero for three straight months "where I used to work."

I know there were intermittent suggestions that some MTM cast member might appear, but the conclusion was, 1) they wouldn't do it just for a gimmick, and 2) if they really wanted to develop an episode around an MTM character they would have to fill in a lot of the blanks on how the series connected without distracting from the setting of TLGS.
Plus the only characters for which a guest spot would have made any sense would have been Murray or Mary, and neither Gavin MacLeod or MTM were really into guest cameos.

 

[Driftwood]

Asner was well-known to support social justice, but he wasn't out of touch with conspiracy theories.
RIP

 

[mpcincal]

I think there were a couple episodes that mentioned Jan./Feb. temperatures in the 80s and Lou made some comments about how it didn't get above zero for three straight months "where I used to work."

I know there were intermittent suggestions that some MTM cast member might appear, but the conclusion was, 1) they wouldn't do it just for a gimmick, and 2) if they really wanted to develop an episode around an MTM character they would have to fill in a lot of the blanks on how the series connected without distracting from the setting of TLGS.
Plus the only characters for which a guest spot would have made any sense would have been Murray or Mary, and neither Gavin MacLeod or MTM were really into guest cameos.

What's more, MacLeod had a hit show on a rival network at the time. I don't think ABC would have been too cool with Captain Stubing showing up on CBS.

 

[tapintoamerica]

Whenever I hear Ed Asner's name, I think of one of the great Letterman Top 10 Lists.
Bigfoot's Top 10 Pet Peeves:
5. Lead role in "The Ed Asner Story" never materialized.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

 

[Starman]

What's more, MacLeod had a hit show on a rival network at the time. I don't think ABC would have been too cool with Captain Stubing showing up on CBS.

Exactly.
Murray would probably have been the only MTM character in real life who'd be likely to run into Lou in any professional capacity that would make sense in the storyline. And as you note I don't think ABC would have been too eager for him to do cameos on CBS.

Mary Richards -- well, let's see. She might apply for a job as a local news producer, but since Lou Grant had been fired from a similar position himself after a decade of middling ratings, I don't know if his recommendation would have been much of a plus.

Maybe Mary might decide to go into print journalism, too? Maybe, but she'd have had absolutely zero experience in the field, she'd have to start out as a reporter, not an editor. Mary was 40ish at the end of MTM; that's awful old to start as a bottom rung reporter.
It just wouldn't have made much sense either way.

 

[matt_garth]

Obervations:

• that theme song was solid
• Rebecca Balding lasted three episodes
• we had an Animal-like photographer on staff
• Robert Walden introduced Geraldine Ferraro during a campaign appearance at the alma mater in ’84

 

[Slacker]

Axel Jordache in the "Rich Man, Poor Man" miniseries.

Axel made an early exit, but Asner's dramatic, hard-bitten performance was riveting.

 

[Starman]

Obervations:

• we had an Animal-like photographer on staff

I think everybody had at least one.

I worked at a place once where we had three photo stringers who all exhibited quite extreme "Animal" tendencies, including one who continually loudly bitched that he couldn't get a full time staff job "because he wouldn't play their games."

Four or five years ago I got a little curious about what some of my youthful co-workers of 20 years earlier were up to, so I did some Googling. One of my former shaggy dog photographers had won a Pulitzer.

 

[ChrisLong]

Our "shaggy dog" spent his lunch time at the nude beach in Malibu. He parlayed those photos into nabbing a credential for the Miss Nude American Pageant in Riverside. He passed the photos on to me and I put them in a folder called "Women in Sports" and kept them in a locked file cabinet. He won L.A. Photographer of the Year three years in a row, but the Times wouldn't hire him. He did get hired by the Herald-Examiner. Then he landed a job teaching photography at Pepperdine, which had a top-notch Journalism program.

 

[HanSenSE]

Only one thing that bothers me about "Lou Grant," and maybe I'm seeing it through 21st Century eyes, but it seems like whenever they had a show that was dedicated to an issue in, say, the Black community, a Black reporter was written into the script, not not seen again. Same with the Hispanic community, boom, a Hispanic reporter. And the sexism ... bad then, today, fodder for several HR manuals.

And, just because we're sportsjournalists.com, the way sports writers were potrayed in a first-season episode dealing with a school being investigated by the NCAA? Wow, talk about cliches.

 

[Starman]

Yeah, not having a Black or Latino reporter on staff was kinda egregious for a major metro newspaper in 1980.
In one of the episodes I watched rhe other day, Billie sounds off to Lou about always being assigned the "women's stories," but then when Lou offers to give it to someone else, she says she wants it anyway.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

I have a soft spot for the Lou Grant episode called "Nightside," where he fills in for the night editor for the first time. The episode also features a couple great character actors, Richard Erdman and David Paymer.

One of John Wayne's "Rio" films was on TV last night -- "Rio Bravo" or "Rio Lobo," can't recall which (same movie, different cast). Asner played a ruthless land-grabber who hired gunman Christopher George. In the end a cute young cowgirl shoots Ed just as he's about to plug the Duke.

Young Ed Asner also showed up in several "Untouchables" episodes.

 

[DanOregon]

There were so many brilliant eps. Remember the one where a plane of journos crashes and Billie (who gave up her seat) ends up writing obits on them all and doesn't really like what she finds. Or the one where Rossi became the ombudsman and his co-workers started signing him up for every club/organization they could think of because he made a big deal about "conflicts of interest." I KNOW real newspaper people gave the writers story ideas, because there were some episodes/scenes that were just too on the nose and would have been noticed by anyone else.
"All I have is my driver's license and my library card..."

 

[Jake from State Farm]

If anyone noticed the credits while playing the theme music, among the supporting cast was Gordon Jump, Mr. Carlson on WKRP, and Jason Wingreen, who played Harry, Kelsey’s bartender, on All in the Family

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

Rossi became the ombudsman and his co-workers started signing him up for every club/organization they could think of because he made a big deal about "conflicts of interest." I KNOW real newspaper people gave the writers story ideas, because there were some episodes/scenes that were just too on the nose and would have been noticed by anyone else.
"All I have is my driver's license and my library card..."

Someone pulled that enrollment prank in one of my old newsrooms. The perp lost his job, although IIRC he had other misdeeds on his permanent record.