Ed Asner, the Iconic Lou Grant on Two Acclaimed TV Series, Dies at 91
Ed Asner died Sunday. He was 91. Publicist Charles Sherman said Asner died of natural causes at his home in Tarzana, CA. Edward Asner was born on Nov. 15, 1929, in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest of five children (the family lived across the state line in Kansas City, Kansas). His father, Morris, owned a junkyard.
Asner worked as feature-page editor on the Wyandotte High School newspaper, The Pantograph, and was an All-City lineman on the football team. Asner attended the University of Chicago, where he participated in dramatics, but dropped out after two years and returned to Kansas City, where he sold shoes and encyclopedias. Asner made his way back to Chicago, did some acting and worked on an auto-assembly line. In July 1951 Asner was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in France.
He made his big-screen debut in Elvis Presley’s Kid Galahad (1962) and played a detective who helps a suicide-center volunteer (Sidney Poitier) save the victim of an overdose (Anne Bancroft) in The Slender Thread (1965). Later, he was in another Presley film, Change of Habit (1969), as was Moore. Meanwhile, he was distinguishing himself as a busy character actor on many of the era’s top TV shows, including Medical Center, The Name of the Game, Mod Squad, Ironside and Police Story, before his big break came along on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Survivors include his children, Katie, Charles and twins Matthew and Liza, and grandchildren Jake, Will, Avivah, Max, Wolf, Eddy, Gabriel, Charlotte, Grant and Helena. He was married to Nancy Lou Sykes from 1959 until their 1988 divorce and then to Cindy Gilmore from 1998 until their 2015 divorce.
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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/ed-asner-dead-lou-grant-1235004802/
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