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Golden Globes to honor legendary TV producer Norman Lear

The Golden Globes will bestow the Carol Burnett Award to Norman Lear during the 78th annual awards ceremony in February.

FILE - Norman Lear, executive producer of the Pop TV series "One Day at a Time," poses for a portrait during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour on Jan. 13, 2020, in Pasadena, Calif.. The Golden Globes will bestow the Carol Burnett Award to Lear during the 78th annual awards ceremony next month. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021, that Lear will be honored during the Feb. 28 event. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
FILE - Norman Lear, executive producer of the Pop TV series "One Day at a Time," poses for a portrait during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour on Jan. 13, 2020, in Pasadena, Calif.. The Golden Globes will bestow the Carol Burnett Award to Lear during the 78th annual awards ceremony next month. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021, that Lear will be honored during the Feb. 28 event. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)Read moreChris Pizzello / Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
    by Jonathan Landrum Jr., The Associated Press
    Published 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Norman Lear made his mark as a television producer who strived to explore social and political issues through his famed sitcoms, including All in the Family, Good Times, Maude, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and more. And now, the Golden Globes will honor Lear with its TV special achievement trophy.

Lear will receive the Carol Burnett Award during the 78th annual ceremony on Feb. 28, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced last week, for his work as a writer, director, and producer.

HFPA President Ali Sar said in a statement that Lear is among the “most prolific creators of this generation.” He also said Lear’s work “revolutionized the industry.”

“His career has encompassed both the Golden Age and Streaming Era, throughout which his progressive approach addressing controversial topics through humor prompted a cultural shift that allowed social and political issues to be reflected in television,” Sar said of Lear.

The Carol Burnett Award is given annually to honor someone “who has made outstanding contributions to television on or off the screen.” It’s the small-screen version of the group’s film counterpart, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which will be handed to Jane Fonda during the awards ceremony.

Past recipients of the Burnett award include Ellen DeGeneres and Burnett.

Nominations for the upcoming Golden Globes are scheduled to be announced Feb. 3.

Lear, 98, is a World War II veteran and six-time Emmy winner whose shows confronted war, sexuality, abortion, and poverty with topical humor.

He has collected many other accolades in his career. He received the Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1999, and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. He was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2017.

Lear also founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way and several other nonprofits promoting thoughtful citizenship, including the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication.

In the early 2000s, he purchased an original copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. He then founded the Declaration of Independence Road Trip to share the document with people across all 50 states.