Ed Asner

Michael Moore told this great story about Ed Asner, who died last week at the age of 91.  When Moore was trying to get money to fund his first documentary, Roger & Me, about the decline of General Motors in the 1980s and the economic devastation its disastrous business decisions caused, he sent unsolicited requests for money to various actors and other celebrities. Asner was the only one who replied.  Along with a check, he added this note.

"I don’t know you, kid, but here’s 500 bucks," Asner wrote. "Sounds like it’ll be a great film. I was an autoworker once."

Asner played many roles in his long acting career, including Santa Claus and Pope John XXIII, but he will best be remembered for the role he played for twelve years - old-school newsman Lou Grant, first on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and then on the eponymously titled drama series.  Lou Grant was devoted to telling people the truth about what was going on and wanted to keep the people informed, and Asner mirrored his character off-screen.  He was a staunch liberal activist who spoke out for workers' rights, served as president of the Screen Actors Guild union, and demonstrated vigorously against the Reagan administration's imperialist policy toward Central America (which may have cost him "Lou Grant," as CBS cancelled it in 1982 despite its still-good ratings).  Asner may have only played a newsman, but he could have easily been one had he not caught the acting bug first.  But he was still a major cultural icon.

And, as Michael Moore would testify, he was a hell of a tipper.  That five hundred bucks gave Moore his career.    

As for his most famous character, I'd like to think that Lou Grant persisted with his journalism career and continued to break important stories for several years after we last saw him on network television.  I suppose he, like Asner, would have had to die sooner or later, but, like Joseph Heller's Yossarian, he would never die at the hands of those who created him.  RIP, Ed Asner.