Dead Celebrity Alert

Lance Loud, the beguiling eldest son in a family whose conflicts were laid bare in a landmark 1973 public television documentary series, has died. He was 50.

Loud, a freelance journalist who had been living in Echo Park, died Saturday morning at a hospice in Los Angeles of complications from hepatitis C, his sister, Delilah, said Monday. With him at the time of his death, in addition to Delilah, were his mother, Pat, and sister Michele.

Loud emerged as a protagonist in “An American Family,” the controversial PBS series that was a progenitor of today’s unscripted programming. A real-life soap opera, it was the television sensation of 1973. The series examined the Louds of Santa Barbara, who had allowed documentarians to trail them in their daily lives for seven months in 1971.

The result was a prime-time, 12-part series that drew record audiences for public television stations with its revelations: from father Bill’s philandering and wife Pat kicking him out of the house, to then-20-year-old Lance declaring himself gay in a rundown New York hotel.

His public avowal, quite bold for the times, made him a hero in the gay community. But in other quarters he and the rest of the family were ridiculed for participating in what has been called the most expensive home movie in history.

“In 1970, television ate my family,” Lance Loud wrote many years later. “The Andy Warhol prophecy of 15 minutes of fame for any and everyone blew up on our doorstep.” … Read full obituary

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