Yitzhak Edward Asner was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1929, to a Russian, orthodox Jewish family, as the Jewish Virtual Library says, and was raised just over the state line in Kansas City, Kansas (via Kansaspedia). Asner showed an interest in acting during his time at the University of Chicago, per Biography, and once he finished serving in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps in the 1950s, moved to New York City to pursue a career in theater. In his own words, as he said in a 2016 interview with Variety, he “arrived in September, and by December… was doing that one-night show at the Phoenix.” He also starred in Brecht’s renowned play, “The Threepenny Opera,” as well as Chekhov’s “Ivanov.” The transition to working in front of a live studio audience for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” therefore, presented for him none of the problems it did his co-stars.

Asner, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who developed his “worker first” ethics while employed at a General Motor’s factory in his 20s, has received a lot of blowback for his activism over the years. In 1982, he sought to raise funds for medical aid for rebels against El Salvador’s military-led government, as NNDB says, and this is when sponsors pulled out of “Lou Grant.” He also sought a retrial for Black Panther member Mumia Abu-Jamal, a pardon for Native American activist Leonard Peltier, and helped fund Michael Moore’s first film, “Roger & Me” (1989). Asner was so vocal, in fact, that some dubbed him “Lou Rant.”