To Absent Friends - Ed Asner

Ed Asner 

1929-2021

Actor Edward Asner died yesterday at the age of 92.  He is being hailed, and rightly so, for his role as Lou Grant in both the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the spinoff eponymous "Lou Grant" series that followed.  Between both of those shows, he was nominated for Emmy Awards seventeen times and won seven times in that role.   He became well known as an actor when the Moore show debuted in 1970 - who can forget him looking at Mary in that first show and saying "I HATE spunk"? -  but he had been around a long time before that.  His 397 (!!) acting credits in IMDB stretch back to 1957.  In addition to playing Lou Grant, his obits laud his role as the voice of Carl Frederickson in the absolutely wonderful Pixar animated feature "Up" from 2009.  However, in this Absent Friends tribute allow me to dwell on one of the favorites of both Marilyn and me, the 1977 television Christmas movie, "The Gathering."

This movie was filmed in Chagrin Falls, Ohio at the time that we were living in Cleveland, so the movie received quite a bit - a whole lot, actually - of attention in the Cleveland media at the time.  It was, and is, the quintessential schmaltzy Christmas movie. 

Asner player Adam Thornton, an extremely driven and highly successful business man in charge of his own engineering firm, Thornton Industries. However, his single-mindedness has caused him to become separated from his wife, Kate (Maureen Stapleton), and alienated from his children, each of whom fit a 1970's stereotype to a T....

• Tom (Lawrence Pressman), the company attorney who fancies himself as a mover and shaker in New York City.  He must put up with the old man at company board meetings, but he hates him.  His wife is played by Veronica Hamel, years before "Hill Street Blues."
• Peggy (Gail Strictland), the daughter on a fast track career as a high powered bureaucrat in some unnamed, but highly significant, department in Washington, DC
• Julie (Rebecca Balding), married and a mother of two kids, Adam's only grandchildren, whose husband, played in an incredibly wimpy performance by Bruce Davison, is struggling career-wise, but is just too goddamned proud to go to his father-in-law and ask for a job.
• Bud (Gregory Harrison), Adam Thornton Jr., who fled to Canada rather than fight in an immoral war in Viet Nam, and whose father told him to  GET THE HELL OUT.  Unbeknownst to any of the Thorntons, Bud is married and now has son.   Bud's wife is played by Stephanie Zimbalist, years before "Remington Steele."

Anyway, shortly before Christmas, Adam is diagnosed with a terrible, yet unnamed, disease, and he has sixty, ninety days tops, to live.   Adam, finally seeing the errors of his ways, goes to Kate and proposes a gathering of the Thorntons for an old fashioned Christmas at the gorgeous Thornton home. It will be a way for Adam to see everyone one last time and attempt to make things right with his children, especially Bud.  One thing though: under no circumstances are the children to be made aware that the Old Man is dying.  Otherwise, the thing will turn out to be as "phony as plastic Christmas trees and piped in Christmas carols."

Will Adam and Kate be able to pull it off?  Will the kids actually show up, and what about draft-dodging Bud?  Will he make it in from Canada, or will Adam never see him again?

Well, this being a Movie-of-the-Week, you can probably guess how it all turns out.  We have a copy of this on DVD, and we watch it every year.  We make fun of the cornball nature of the movie, and we tear up and special moments (Stapleton: "It's BUD!!!) that we know are coming.  We can recite the dialog as it goes along.  It's as cornball as it can possibly be, but we love it.  And Ed Asner, who spends much of the movie wearing a skin tight turtleneck sweater about four sizes too small (and old pro Stapleton) are terrific.

It is how Mrs. Grandstander and I will forever remember Ed Asner.

RIP Ed Asner.