Ed Asner: The Life of an Actor, Curmudgeon and Idealist
ED ASNER, the actor, was born in 1929 and raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Kansas City, Kansas. His father, Morris Asner, a strong-willed man from a shtetl near Belarus, had “landsmen” in the Kansas City area, so he went there, bought a horse and started collecting junk. The Asners lived in a railroad flat over the junkyard, close to the steel mills and meatpacking plants of the city.
Asner’s mother, Elizabeth, was from a shtetl near Odessa. Her family landed in Galveston, Texas, then moved to Kansas City for its larger Jewish community. Ed was a surprise baby, much the youngest of their four children, born to his mother when she was 47 years old. She saw early on that her baby was bright and clever and she adored him, indulged him, and protected him from his father’s anger. At first, Ed relished his mother’s protective love. He read a lot of adventure books and had a more richly imagined life than his three siblings were allowed.
Morris Asner was a hard man to please, a curmudgeon in good times and frightening when he was angry. He whipped his children for misbehaving. And after a while, Ed decided he wanted to be punished right alongside his three older brothers and sisters. He was already separated from his siblings by a large gap of years; he didn’t want to be further separated by being immune from the old man’s punishments. Ed hated the idea that he might be a coward.
He got very nervous at his bar mitzvah, his voice went into a high pitch, and he started reading too fast. At one point, he put his hands behind him while davening and “my father, who was circling the bima like a shark, slapped my hands away and said in Yiddish that my hands were too close to my butt.” Judged as a performance, the bar mitzvah was a disaster, though Ed did feel it strengthened his Jewish identity.
He went to Jewish school four days a week after school, which kept him off the school sports teams and made him feel isolated. After the disastrous bar mitzvah, Ed stopped going to Hebrew school. At Wyandotte High, he earned a spot as starting tackle on the football team. Playing football was important; it helped him prove that he wasn’t a coward. The hardest person to convince was himself.
The football team’s game against Leavenworth fell on the day of the Kol Nidre prayer, on the eve of Yom Kippur. Morris Asner expected Ed to miss the football game so he could be in temple; but Ed wanted to play. His mother reluctantly allowed it and his siblings snuck him out of the house when his father was away. Morris was furious when he learned that Ed had missed the Kol Nidre prayer to play in a football game.
Once when Ed and two of his friends were cutting up in class, the teacher punished them by telling them, ‘Tomorrow, you’ll have to recite a 22-page poem in front of the class.’ Ed’s friends took their lumps by awkwardly reading the poem aloud. Ed memorized the whole 22 pages and gave a compelling recital. Both he and his classmates were shocked by how well he did that, and applause rained down and stayed with him.
He plunged into many activities at Wyandotte High, and worked for the school newspaper. He found it rewarding to work in a tight little group, and loved the idea of freedom of the press, and the fact that American laws protected journalists who spoke truth to power. The hard part of school was being one of the only Jews around. Everyone would file out of school for Christian instruction class, and he’d be there alone. One date with a young lady was abruptly cancelled at the last minute, and Ed was sure it was because her parents had learned he was Jewish.
After high school, Ed was looking for adventure and talked with friends about traveling to Alaska or South America. But in 1947 he ended up going instead to college, at the University of Chicago. Almost on a lark, he tried out for a student production of “Murder in the Cathedral” and was cast in a leading role.
Looking back, Ed thought the isolation of being Jewish in a largely Christian environment had somehow made it easier for him to be an actor — that and the obvious drama of Jewish history. He was fascinated that you could throw away your own identity and be a totally different person on stage — a beggar, a clown, a King.
When Morris heard that his youngest son hoped to make a living as an actor, he was incredulous. He kept saying, ‘This is the kid who couldn’t even perform at his own bar mitzvah!’ And Ed’s grades suffered with all the acting in plays, and he started dating an actress who wasn’t Jewish, and after two years of this, Morris refused to pay for any more college.
Ed’s mother also told him it was a big mistake, to “throw away your education” to chase the dream of making a living as an actor. Years later, after Morris had died, Elizabeth Asner reflected on their resistance to their son becoming an actor and said: “We were wrong and I’m glad.”
Ed returned to Kansas City and worked as a truck driver, an auto worker, a cabbie. He worked in a union auto job and a non-union job and was powerfully struck by the difference between them. As a union worker, polishing cars, the job was challenging but doable, and he felt dignity. The non-union job felt impossible to do with dignity.
He kept in touch with actor friends and in 1953 joined The Playwright’s Theater. But the troupe was doing more and more improvisation and comedy work, and Asner didn’t like that. He liked the great dramas, works with grand ideas and elevated language. Comedy seemed a lesser art form, especially in the Joseph McCarthy years where left-wing views were often “dangerous” and free speech was in jeopardy.
Finally, he took the plunge, admitted to himself that he wanted to be a full-time professional actor, and moved to New York City. He muted his left-wing political views, intent on getting ahead. He landed a starring role in an Off Broadway production of the Three Penny Opera, met a lovely young woman named Nancy Sykes, and around 1960 they married.
In 1961, they moved out to Hollywood and for five or six years Ed made a pretty good living acting in forgettable films and TV shows, never in a major part. He loved California’s climate and natural landscapes from the first. He didn’t look like a leading man, and he accepted that, but he tried to play crooks, policemen and deputy sheriffs with all the humanity he could. He earned a reputation in Hollywood as a reliable actor who learned his lines and didn’t need rehearsal time.
The late ‘60’s were a tough time for Asner. TV work was drying up, the film work he did was only very occasional, and always small parts. He and Nancy now had three kids and had moved to a more expensive house. He was worried. One of his sons has an enduring memory from those years of waking up at midnight, walking out into the living room and seeing his dad studying the Help Wanted ads.
In 1970, Ed’s life totally changed. Mary Tyler Moore was going to star in her own TV show about a single woman working for a TV station. The producers of the show knew that one of the keys to the show would be the relationship between sweet, smart, insecure Mary and her grouchy, good-hearted boss, Lou Grant. But they couldn’t find the right Lou Grant.
All kinds of character actors read for the part. Some seemed too handsome and superficial; others were full of odd, off-putting quirks. Mary’s husband, Grant Tinker had seen Ed Asner in a forgettable TV show, and suggested him to the casting people. They brought Asner in and had him read.
When Asner came in, the show’s producer, Allan Burns thought ‘My God, he’s perfect.’ The stocky body, the grouchy look, the rather homely but expressive face — it was just how he’d pictured Lou Grant. But Asner’s first read was awful; all his reservations about comedy came out. He didn’t like comedy or think he was any good at it, and he auditioned for this sit-com by reading the script as if it wasn’t funny. When the reading was over, Asner knew he’d flopped and asked for a second chance. Allan Burns shrugged and agreed.
The second reading was so good that Allan Burns asked Asner to come back and read with Mary Tyler Moore. As Asner walked out, Burns was thrilled with the chemistry, convinced they had their Lou Grant. Mary Tyler Moore looked sad and said, “Well, I guess we keep looking…”
No Burns insisted, that was great, ‘The two of you are perfect together,’ and Mary Tyler Moore let herself be convinced. Later, there was no bigger fan of Ed Asner than Mary Tyler Moore.
When Asner was officially cast as Lou Grant, and saw some of the first scripts, he was ecstatic. Others in the cast were worrying ‘Will we get picked up by the network and become a regular show?’ Asner told himself ‘No matter what happens, I can say I starred for 13 weeks in a well-written sit-com on network TV. That’s something to celebrate.’
One of the first episodes showed Mary getting to know her boss, and he says to her “You got spunk!” and she looks pleased with herself until Lou Grant says, “I hate spunk!” When Asner heard the studio audience roar with laughter, he knew he’d turned a corner. He’d finally convinced himself that he could do comedy, and that comedy was important. It made people feel good and released a lot of tension they were holding in. He felt he had the audience in the palm of his hand.
He could play the curmudgeon his father was, but show a gruffly lovable side that he’d only rarely seen in his father.
He had been used to being in two or three episodes of a TV show; he was in 166 episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show as a featured character, and suddenly he was being stopped in airports and asked to sign autographs. People were holding planes for him, and sending limos for him. He loved it. He kept himself wide open, tried to sign every autograph, talk to any fan who wanted to talk to him. He was an easy touch for homeless people asking for money.
He flirted with Cloris Leachman, who played Phyllis on the show, and once asked her to sleep with him. She said if he lost 32 pounds she would. Leachman later said “He got to 29 pounds, and then he went back up. I don’t know who was more frightened, he or I.”
Asner was very impressed with Mary Tyler Moore, not just her acting talent but her willingness to defer to her co-stars, and even to people making a single appearance on the show. Mary could be a minor figure in an episode for many minutes — and then nail it on the first take when the action suddenly swung back to her.
There was always a certain tension on the show between those, like Asner, who wanted more scenes in the newsroom and those like Valerie Harper who played Mary’s friend and wanted more scenes in Mary’s apartment. But it was a great TV show and a great experience for Ed Asner.
The show ended, and Asner decided to take a chance. Instead of starring in another half-hour sit-com, he decided to remain Lou Grant in an hour long drama about life at a major Los Angeles newspaper. The show took some time to find itself but slowly built up good ratings and excellent critical reviews.
Asner was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and served two terms. Here he got into real trouble. He became vocal in his left-wing views: anti-nuclear protests, union fights, criticism of the right wing government in El Salvador. He seemed to many SAG members to be acting as if the entire Screen Actors Guild felt as he did. Many of his friends urged him to back off the politics for awhile — but he couldn’t. He still hated the idea that he might be a coward.
Right-wing preacher Jerry Falwell ripped Asner publicly. A group called the Caucus of Conservative Consumers organized a boycott of “Lou Grant.” When the show slipped to #17 in the ratings, CBS cancelled the series, reportedly after the personal intervention of chairman Bill Paley. Asner heard from some high-ups at CBS that “Politics had nothing to do with this” — but he didn’t believe that, because there were creative things the show could have done in its fifth year to broaden its appeal, and nothing like that was ever discussed.
“We got robbed,” said Asner.
It was a chilling time for his family. Suddenly, it seemed no one in Hollywood wanted to hire him anymore. He had underestimated the degree of rage among right-wingers who saw Hollywood as a festering sewer of anti-Americanism. There were even death threats and the family had to hire bodyguards. Asner didn’t mind this so much for himself, but it pained him to put his children through it.
Still, Asner didn’t back down; this was personal with him. There was always another rally, another speech, another cause. In 1988, he and Nancy divorced, after 28 years of marriage. Martin Sheen, a fellow Hollywood liberal who often got arrested with Asner in those years, said that many people in Hollywood get used to separating their brain from their heart, but that Asner never did that.
Ed Asner looked back on his own career and said, “Acting was therapy. I was not pleased with who I was. Acting took me to heights I felt my clay feet would never get me to.”