ABC/Eric McCandless(NEW YORK) — Norman Lear will receive the Carol Burnett Award at the 2021 Golden Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press announced Thursday.

The 98-year-old television writer and producer, who created the genre-defining sitcom All in the Family, will be honored during the 78th annual ceremony on Sunday, Feb. 28.

“Norman Lear is among the most prolific creators of this generation,” HFPA president Ali Sar said in a press release. “His career has encompassed both the Golden Age and Streaming Era, throughout which his progressive approach [of] addressing controversial topics through humor prompted a cultural shift that allowed social and political issues to be reflected in television.”

Sar continued, “His work revolutionized the industry.”

Lear will become the third person to receive this award, succeeding Burnett, and Ellen DeGeneres. The honor is given each year to a person, “who has made outstanding contributions to the television medium on or off the screen.”

The television pioneer — whose other shows include Maude, Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman — is best known for addressing and raising awareness of important social and political topics through his work and the medium of television.

Lear is a World War II combat veteran who began working in the industry in 1950. He has won six Emmys and was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar for Divorce American Style.

He has won several other career-spanning honors, such as a National Medal of Arts in 1999, a Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, and he was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2017.

The 2021 Golden Globes airs Sunday, Feb. 28, at 8 p.m. ET live on NBC.

By Carson Blackwelder
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