Perry Lafferty, 87; Executive Behind Many TV Classics

Perry Lafferty, a network executive whose reputation in the television industry was as stellar as the landmark CBS shows that he brought to the small screen in the 1970s, including “All in the Family” and “MASH,” has died. He was 87.

Lafferty died of prostate cancer Aug. 25 at his home in Century City, his family said.

His peers considered him almost the last of a breed, a network executive who came up through the ranks, beginning in radio show production before moving to TV to produce early drama anthologies.

“Perry was a hip father confessor who wasn’t looking down from the mount,” said Larry Gelbart, who co-created “MASH” and wrote many episodes of the Korean War comedy that aired on CBS from 1972 to 1983.

“You could say the network was beating up on you, and he acted as a very benign and positive kind of chief justice,” Gelbart said.

Lafferty was “as good an executive as I’ve ever worked with,” said Fred Silverman, who was in charge of entertainment programming at CBS and president of NBC when Lafferty worked at those networks. “He had great taste, good instincts and a sense of humor.”

During Lafferty’s 11-year reign as head of West Coast programming at CBS, he brought “quite a lineup” to the air, Silverman said, including such early 1970s series as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Waltons” and “Maude.” The network was consistently No. 1 in the ratings.

Putting the groundbreaking “All in the Family” on CBS in 1971 -- a comedy unafraid of dealing with such issues as racism or drugs head-on -- “was like putting a toe in the water to see how far we could go,” Lafferty told Newsday in 2000.

In 1979, he went to NBC as a senior vice president of West Coast programs and talent. During the early 1980s, he was in charge of the network’s movies and miniseries.

“He was that unique individual who was a great executive,” Silverman said. “He believed in hiring good people and letting them do their thing.”

At NBC, Lafferty’s proudest achievement was “An Early Frost,” a 1985 Emmy-winning TV movie that he developed and produced.

It tells the fictional story of a small-town couple’s discovery that their son, played by Aidan Quinn, is dying of AIDS.

In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, TV executives deemed middle-class heterosexual America unready for dramas that confronted AIDS, Lafferty told The Times in 1991.

The syndrome had been the focus of only a couple of television shows, including a 1983 “St. Elsewhere” episode on NBC. “An Early Frost” went through 13 rewrites before it finally won approval from the NBC standards and practices department.

“It took a long time to get a script that wasn’t a lecture on AIDS,” Lafferty said.

The story reminded him “of the good stuff we used to do in the ‘50s -- no car chases, no guns, no knives; just people relating to each other.”

Perry Francis Lafferty was born Oct. 3, 1917, in Davenport, Iowa, and given his mother’s last name, Perry, as his first.

As a child, Lafferty listened to the radio for the music -- he was a proficient piano player by age 9 -- but began tuning in for the live soap operas and dramas.

He earned a certificate in music in 1938 from Yale University, with an emphasis in Gershwin and Bach, his son said.

After heading to New York City to work in radio, Lafferty married Fran Carden, a radio actress, in 1943.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces and produced live performances and radio shows for the troops.

When television arrived, he produced and directed such dramatic anthologies as “Studio One” for CBS and “Robert Montgomery Presents” for NBC.

After producing variety series for Arthur Godfrey and Andy Williams, he produced “The Danny Kaye Show,” an Emmy-winning series that premiered in 1963 and got him hired in programming at CBS.

“In a world that operates at least 50% on fear, he was very confident,” Gelbart recalled. “He had the strength of his convictions, and yours.”

In “Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of ‘The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,’ ” a documentary that aired on Bravo in 2002, Lafferty confronted the controversy that dogged the irreverent variety show, which was topical and sometimes in bad taste.

Of its fights with the censors, Lafferty recalled telling Tom Smothers, “The harder you push, the harder [CBS is going to] push back -- and they’re bigger than you are.” CBS abruptly canceled the show in 1969, and ABC picked it up for the summer of 1970.

After retiring from television, Lafferty began writing mystery novels, including “Jablonski of L.A.” (1991), the first of three whodunits that featured retired FBI agent Jack Jablonski, and an aviation thriller, “The Downing of Flight Six Heavy” (1992), which drew on Lafferty’s experience as a pilot.

It was “no surprise,” the Associated Press review said, that the 1991 book read much like a TV movie.

Lafferty’s wife of 56 years died in 1999. His son, Steven, of Pacific Palisades is an agent at Creative Artists Agency, and his daughter, Marcy, is an actress-writer-producer who lives in Lexington, Ky. Lafferty is also survived by two grandchildren.

A memorial service will begin at 11 a.m. today at Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Park Chapel, 1218 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles. Instead of flowers, the family requests donations to the Motion Picture and Television Fund, 22212 Ventura Blvd, Suite 300, Woodland Hills, CA 91364.