Asner, Ed

ASNER, ED (1929-2022). A top television star of the 1970s and 1980s, best known for his iconic role as crusty but kindhearted newsman Lou Grant, Asner was also the militant president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) as well as a sometime board member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In a Reagan-era recrudescence of McCarthyism, Asner’s outspoken radical politics led to the cancellation of his popular primetime TV show. Despite this setback, Asner remained a longtime force both on the Left and in the entertainment industry, with hundreds of screen credits and winning no fewer than seven Emmy awards.

Born Yitzhak Edward Asner to orthodox Jewish immigrant parents in Kansas City, he attended the University of Chicago in the late 1940s, where he dabbled in theater. Initially, Asner wished to become a reporter. Advised by a professor that he had little hope of a successful career in journalism, Asner quit school and worked for a time at various blue-collar jobs, including driving a taxi and working at a steel mill and auto plant. Drafted in 1951, he was assigned to the Signal Corps and served in Europe. After his tour of duty, Asner returned to Chicago, where he was mentored by theatrical legend Paul Sills, who together with his mother, Viola Spolin, fostered a group-focused, improvisational approach to performance.

Asner earned his union card by playing a wide variety of leading roles in the Sills’s (and David Shepherd’s) Playwrights Theatre Club. He was a cast member in some of the first productions of Brecht’s work in the United States including The Threepenny Opera (1928). From Chicago, Asner went first to New York and then Los Angeles, where he made his small-screen debut in 1957. He had supporting parts in a number of TV series before the launch of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. There, he portrayed Lou Grant, Mary Richards’s gruff, wry but caring boss at a Minneapolis television station. Between 1977 and 1982, Asner starred in the spinoff series Lou Grant, playing a more politicized version of the same character, although this time working as a post-Watergate, West Coast newspaper editor. The critically-lauded series featured Grant exposing misbehavior at home and abroad, including the “dirty wars” in Latin America. Arguably, no previous or subsequent broadcast program so clearly aligned with a Left perspective.

Attacked in Congress and the conservative press, Asner saw his show pulled from the network lineup by CBS, despite its solid ratings. He had meanwhile been elected president of the SAG (1981-1985), succeeding the deeply conservative Charlton Heston. The most combative and openly socialist official in the history of the organization, Asner brought SAG back to its 1940s Popular Front traditions, when leftwing activists occupied top executive spots. As a member of the Executive Board of the AFL-CIO, Asner led opposition to the hawkish policies of Lane Kirkland and Albert Shanker.

Asner joined the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee during the 1970s, and his status in the newly formed DSA carried significant weight. If his actual role remained largely nominal, his presence demonstrated that socialist ideas and organizations had re-emerged from the disarray following the collapse of the 1960s New Left. Asner would remain at the Left’s forefront in the showbiz world, willingly taking heat for his pointed critique of US foreign policies.

Asner went on to a notable post-Lou Grant career, not only in television but also on stage and as the voice of animated characters. Talk show host Jay Leno introduced a recurring feature on his show titled “Does This Impress Ed Asner?,” testifying to the actor’s enduring appeal to viewers. His commitment to the Left, labor and peace never wavered. Asner was involved in a variety of hard-hitting documentary films, including Tiger by the Tail (1985), about the campaign led Eric Mann to keep open the GM plant in Van Nuys, California, as well as The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror (2004). He lent his famous face to myriad progressive causes, including opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

During his final decades, as the political spectrum shifted rightward, he emerged as a guardian of the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the progress made during the New Deal. In 2001, he received the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award, following his earlier induction into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. With his deep humanist, socialist and anti-imperialist convictions, Ed Asner managed to craft a life that was as meaningful as his showbiz career was successful.

Asner, Ed, with S.W. Joseph and Matthew Seymour. Son of a Junkman. New York: Bowker, 2020.

Documentary film: My Friend Ed (2014), directed by Sharon Baker.

Documentary film: Ed Asner, On Staff and Off (2020), directed by Warren Leming, with Hugh Iglarsh.