Ed Asner
Actor, TV Personality
Politics aside, he’s an actor through and through. Best known as ‘Lou Grant’, Mary’s grouchy boss on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Asner is more complicated a man than Grant was. After the end of Mary Tyler Moore, he soon had his own series aptly titled ‘Lou Grant’. He recently completed a stint on short-lived TV show, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and continues to appear in movies.
Along the way he managed to accumulate a slew of Emmys, and even found the time to serve as the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, a position once held by none other than his political foe, Ronald Reagan.
Everyone who knows Asner will tell you he is known as the sort of person who stands up for his principles even if it costs him potential employment. Even those who disagree with his politics have to give him credit for being a stand-up guy.
Q. What was your earliest ambition?
A. As a kid, I fantasized about archaeology and deep sea diving. I still have those interests. But I always loved being on stage, whether it was acting in plays at Sunday school or singing at Friday night services. I think my parents hoped I’d be a doctor or a lawyer. But I went off to the University of Chicago, mainly to get away from home and Kansas City, and that’s when I became totally absorbed in acting. A few times, my middle brother tried to talk me into coming back and taking over my dad’s junk business. If I’d gone into any business, it would have been that one. But, business just wasn’t for me.
Q. Did you really believe you could carve out an acting career?
A. Frankly, no. In the beginning, I thought I was too ugly, or at least too unappealing, to be successful. And as many Jews as there were in Hollywood, I didn’t really think this Jew was what they were looking for.
While in Chicago, though, I appeared in my first play, “Murder in the Cathedral,” and it entrapped me. I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do with my life. I finally had to drop out of school, though, when my family found out I was having an affair with a shiksa and cut off my allowance.
Q. What did you do next?
A. I did what I could. I sold encyclopedias; worked in a Gary, Indiana, steel mill; sold stuff over the telephone; drove a cab; and got a job at the Ford plant, as a metal finisher. And, whenever I could, I acted. In those days, it was always for free.
It was after I served two years in the signal corps and came back to Chicago that I started doing pretty well as an actor. I decided to move to New York then, to see how well this little fish could do in the big pond.
Q. And how well was that?
A. I dragged along, mostly off-Broadway, waiting for my big break. When I reached Broadway, it was in “Face of a Hero,” which turned out to be a terrible flop. That took a lot of the magic out of New York Theater for me.
Q. How did you get to Hollywood?
A. I had started to do some TV work out of New York, mainly on “Naked City” and “Route 66,” in the early 60′s. Finally I got hired to do a “Naked City” they were shooting in L.A. I stuck around an extra week, meeting people and getting an agent. I still remember calling my wife and telling her that I’d decided to try my luck in Hollywood, and she said, “Oh, shit.”
But I earned more money in the last four months of 1961 than I’d made in any previous year. And we wound up liking it because of the nature all around us, and we got to do a lot of bird-watching.
Q. How did you get the role of Lou Grant on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show”?
A. I went in and did a reading. It was okay, but it was too stiff. They asked me to come back the following week and try it again, but to make it wilder, wiggier. I told them that I didn’t want to come back, but that I’d try it again on the spot. That second reading got me the part. I guess they admired my chutzpah. Also they saw that I was quite willing to make an ass of myself, which is always a plus in an actor.
Q. Did you sense the series would be a huge hit?
A. No. I just knew that it was the best script I’d read and the best character I’d played since coming to Hollywood, eight or nine years earlier.
Q. Looking back, how do you feel about that show?
A. Basically, it was seven years on the Yellow Brick Road. It doesn’t get a lot better than that. Of course there were minor annoyances. In the early years, the guys on the show all felt we weren’t getting as much to do as the ladies. But it all balanced out in the long run.
Q. After seven years as a second banana, you got your own series, “Lou Grant.” Was it a dream come true?
A. No, it was more like a nightmare come true. For one thing, we wanted to have Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, who’d produced “Mary,” produce “Lou.” Then they brought in Gene Reynolds from “M*A*S*H” to be co-executive producer. The problem was that none of them had ever produced an hour show before, and there’s a big difference between producing a three-camera comedy and one-camera drama. There was a hell of a lot of learning by trial and error for the first two years.
In addition, because I was still playing Lou Grant, our old fans would tune in expecting a comedy – and they’d be disappointed to find we were doing a dramatic series loaded with controversial issues. As a result, our ratings the first year were horrible. The only reason they didn’t yank us off the air was because CBS was caught with its pants down and didn’t have anything to replace us with. It was like being in a tunnel with no light at the end.
Q. Were you hoping the network would pull the plug?
A. No. I felt my prestige was on the line, and cancellation would have been a terrible blow to my ego.
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