2024-02-14 08:38:35
Matt Groening made television history with a yellow family of five. “The Simpsons” has been running for almost 35 years, and now its creator is turning 70. Fans don’t have to worry for now.
When looking for first names for his cartoon characters, Matt Groening looked around his own family: father Homer and mother Margaret, i.e. Marge, were name sponsors, as were his sisters Lisa and Margaret (Maggie). And so “The Simpsons” was born in the 1980s. Its inventor, the US cartoonist Groening, turns 70 this Thursday (February 15). He made television history with the yellow family from the fictional small town of Springfield around the naive, idiotic father Homer, who works in a nuclear power plant, the always worried mother Marge, the little boor Bart, the nerdy Lisa and the eternally sucking Maggie.
In December 1989, Fox television broadcast the first half-hour episode of The Simpsons in the United States. In Germany, “The Simpsons” premiered in 1991 as an evening series on ZDF, and three years later it moved to ProSieben. The recipe for success is profound humor and a merciless look at American society.
Longest-running US series with its own script
In 2018, the production celebrated the milestone as the longest-running primetime series with its own script on US television – the “Simpsons” overtook the western series “Smoking Guns” with its 636th episode. And things continue happily and snappy: in January 2023, the iconic animated series was extended for a 35th and 36th season. This could bring the award-winning show to over 800 episodes. At the 75th Emmy Awards in January, “The Simpsons” won its 37th trophy.
Groening started drawing as a college student. His darkly humorous comic strip “Life in Hell” made it into US newspapers in the late 1970s. The characters with their everyday worries already had a lot of the Simpsons – from googly eyes to overbites. James L. Brooks also liked the comics. The television producer and director (“Time of Tenderness”, “It Couldn’t Get Any Better”) was looking for break fillers for the successful “Tracey Ullman Show”. Instead of sketches from his comic, Groening invented a new family: The Simpsons. The Ullman show was canceled in 1990, but by then the Fox broadcaster had already made the strange hit family its own format.
Many stars have already been guests on The Simpsons
Well-known guest stars appeared as yellow cartoon characters on The Simpsons, from Paul McCartney to Britney Spears, Werner Herzog and Stephen Hawking to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, often voicing the roles themselves. As Groening in 2012 with one star was celebrated on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, he listed some prominent series guests, including James Brown, Johnny Cash, George Harrison, Bob Hope, Michael Jackson, Jack Lemmon and Elizabeth Taylor – “and those are just the dead ones”, he added.
Groenig co-invented other cartoon series
Groening is also co-creator of the snappy animated series “Futurama”. The ironic science fiction format revolves around the adventures of 25-year-old pizza delivery boy Fry, who accidentally freezes himself on December 31, 1999 and wakes up 1,000 years later in a brave new world. In 2018, Groening created the fantasy animated series “Disenchantment” for Netflix about a hard-drinking princess in the medieval kingdom of Dreamland. The story is about “life and death, love and sex and how to keep laughing in a world full of suffering and idiots…” Groening described the content in his usual biting tone.
Groening has nine children from two marriages. Last year, the comic author landed in fifth place on Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-earning entertainers, along with “Simpsons” co-producer James L. Brooks. And if Groening has its way, this source of income will not dry up any time soon. Asked by the US magazine “USA Today” in 2021 whether he was thinking about an end to the hit show “The Simpsons”, Groening said: “Every time I think about ending the show, the employees get upset and the die-hard fans are very excited. So I always say that there is no end in sight.”
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