Ed Asner, the actor renowned for playing the crusading newspaper editor in The Mary Tyler Show and the follow up Lou Grant has died aged 91. He was born 15 November 1929 at 6am in Kansas City Missouri, with a poor immigrant rag-and-bone/junk man father. He was a political activist most of his adult life, especially against US support for the El Salvador junta, which he reckoned cost him his Lou Grant series and his presidency of the Screen Actors Guild to right-winger Charlton Heston.
Two Astro-points of interest. He had a 1st house Mercury in intense Scorpio trine a 9th house crusading and opinionated Pluto; with Pluto also trine his Sun Mars in Scorpio – so he would be relentless in getting his views across.
His Lou Grant groundbreaking show’s themes reflected his own viewsviews. Among the controversial issues it covered were abortion, prostitution, child pornography, racism, homophobia, the negative treatment of Native Americans, Vietnam vets, Vietnamese immigrants, illegal aliens, US support of military juntas, big business corruption and third world dumping. An obituary remarked “Looking back, it is a wonder the show lasted five years, and that Asner remained a star and in work.”
He continued to appear regularly on television thereafter though not in a major series and latterly had a productive career in animation voice overs.
On his astrocartography, his Sun Mars were on his Ascendant through El Salvador so it would arouse his combative spirit.
Lou Grant was a great show, and it broadened the character that Ed Asner played from the comic grouch in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, to the more serious and determined editor determined to get the story for his newspaper.
Today’s woke generation would do well to view it. If only to give them a wake-up call, that wanting a better, fairer society didn’t start with them!