Lou Grant (TV series)
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This article is about the television series. For other uses see Lou Grant.
| Lou Grant | |
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 Lou Grant opening |
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| Genre | Drama |
| Camera setup | Single camera |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Creator(s) | Allan Burns, James L. Brooks, Gene Reynolds |
| Starring | Edward Asner Robert Walden Linda Kelsey Mason Adams Jack Bannon Daryl Anderson Nancy Marchand Rebecca Balding |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Original channel | CBS |
| Original run | September 20, 1977–September 13, 1982 |
| No. of episodes | 114 |
| IMDb profile | |
| TV.com summary | |
Lou Grant was a popular and critically acclaimed television drama series starring Ed Asner as a newspaper editor. The series won 13 Emmy Awards, including "Outstanding Drama Series". Asner won the Emmy Award for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series" in 1978 and 1980. The series also won two Golden Globe awards, a Peabody award, an Eddie award, three awards from the Directors Guild of America, and two Humanitas prizes.
Lou Grant was a spinoff from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and premiered on CBS in September 1977. Unlike The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was a 30-minute situation comedy, Lou Grant was a one-hour drama. In the last episode of the MTM Show, Lou Grant (and most of the rest of the cast) were fired from their jobs at WJM-TV. The show ran from 1977-1982 and consisted of 114 episodes.
Lou Grant was the city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune, a job he took after his firing from WJM. (Though Mary Tyler Moore show viewers were introduced to the character as a television news producer, the character noted many times that he'd begun his career as a print journalilst.) The rest of the main cast were Robert Walden and Linda Kelsey, who played general-assignment reporters Joe Rossi and Billie Newman, respectively (Kelsey joined the show in the fourth episode, replacing Rebecca Balding, who'd played reporter Carla Mardigian during the show's first three episodes); Mason Adams, who played managing editor Charles Hume; Jack Bannon, who played assistant city editor Art Donovan; Daryl Anderson, who played photographer Dennis Price, usually referred to as "Animal"; and Nancy Marchand, who played the patrician publisher Margaret Pynchon. Marchand won Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" four of the five years the series ran; Walden, Kelsey, and Adams were all nominated for supporting Emmys multiple times.
The format of the episodes generally consisted of Lou assigning Rossi and Billie to cover news stories, and the episodes revealed the problems of the people covered in the stories as well as the frustrations and challenges the reporters went through to get the stories. The series frequently delved into serious societal issues, such as nuclear proliferation, mental illness, prostitution, and chemical waste, in addition to demonstrating coverage of breaking news stories, such as fires, earthquakes, and accidents of all kind. The series also took serious examination of ethical questions in journalism, including plagiarism, checkbook journalism, entrapment of sources, staging news photos, and conflicts of interest that journalists encounter in their work. There were also glimpses into the personal lives of the Tribune staff.
Gene Reynolds, James L. Brooks, and Allan Burns were executive producers, and Gary David Goldberg, better known for creating Family Ties and Spin City, was a producer.
The cancellation of Lou Grant in 1982 was the subject of much controversy and resulted from much controversy. Reportedly the series had significant enough ratings in its last season to be renewed, but the network declined to renew it because of controversies created by Asner in using both the series and his presidency of the Screen Actors Guild as political soapboxes. Asner's outspokenness in opposing U.S. intervention in El Salvador created a problem for the series and the network with advertisers and the public at large. Asner also gave one press conference not long before the show was cancelled in which he came across as soft on communism. Some critics drew parallels between Asner's activism and storylines on the series. After Lou Grant was cancelled, Asner accused the Reagan White House of pressuring CBS to cancel the series.
Asner has spoken occasionally of reviving Lou Grant in the form of two-hour made-for-TV movies, but as of 2005, no serious effort has been made in this direction, and two of the original cast - Nancy Marchand and Mason Adams - have died.
[edit] External links
- Lou Grant episode guide
- The Unofficial Lou Grant Internet Resource and Archive
- Yahoo! discussion group about Lou Grant
[edit] Bibliography
- Douglass K. Daniel, Lou Grant: The Making of TV's Top Newspaper Drama, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
