Ed Asner, actor who twice had the role of a lifetime as newsman Lou Grant, dies at 91
By. Emily Langer
Ed Asner, an actor and liberal activist who twice had the role of a lifetime in the character of Lou Grant, the irascible newsman he played first on the hit 1970s sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and then on an acclaimed spinoff series, died Aug. 29 at his home in Tarzana, Calif. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his publicist, Charles Sherman. Additional details were not available.
The son of an immigrant junk dealer, Mr. Asner had a fireplug build, jowly countenance and workingman’s appearance that are not traditionally considered the raw materials of stardom. Those attributes were perfect, however, for the gruff, middle-aged news director of WJM-TV, the fictional Minneapolis television station at the center of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Widely regarded as one of the finest sitcoms in TV history, the program aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977 and starred Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards, an earnest assistant producer who became a generational ideal of the single working woman. Mr. Asner, then in his 40s, played Mary’s crusty boss and was catapulted to fame in the midst of a decades-long acting career that would include hundreds of TV and movie credits.
Besides Mr. Asner and Moore, the cast included a host of first-rate character actors: Gavin MacLeod as Murray Slaughter, the long-suffering news writer; Ted Knight as Ted Baxter, the pompous anchor; Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens, hostess of the TV station’s “Happy Homemaker” program; and Valerie Harper as Mary’s self-deprecating neighbor and friend Rhoda Morgenstern.
With a single exchange in the first episode, “Mr. Grant,” as Mary always called him, was installed in the annals of TV comedy.
“You know what?” he asks Mary, his new hire, her perfectly coiffed hair in laughable contrast to his loosened tie. “You’ve got spunk.”
“Well, yes … ” she replies, blushingly modest, to which Mr. Asner barks his memorable punch line:
“I hate spunk.”
Between its original broadcast and reruns, the show endeared itself to millions and ended with a plotline in which new management fires the newsroom crew, with the ludicrous exception of Ted. After a tearful speech by Lou — “I treasure you people” — the staff shuffles in a group-hug to a box of Kleenex and then files out, with Mary left to turn off the lights.
When “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ended in 1977, Mr. Asner’s character was reimagined as a hard-charging Los Angeles newspaper editor in“Lou Grant,” a CBS drama that addressed issues such as overseas dictatorship, nuclear power and the mental health of Vietnam War veterans. Nancy Marchand played a fictional publisher modeled in part on Katharine Graham of The Washington Post.
