The eldest of three brothers, Lew Grade (originally Louis Winogradsky) emigrated with his parents to Britain from Russia in 1912, when he was six, and settled in London's East End, where his father set up as a tailor. He and his younger brother Boris (later the theatrical manager Baron Bernard Delfont of Stepney) went on to establish a reputation initially as dancers, Lew becoming World Charleston Champion in 1926 and subsequently turning professional. In 1933 he became an agent for European circus acts and switched to a new career in theatrical management. Together with his youngest brother, Leslie, he set up his own theatrical agency and subsequently managed many of the most popular variety acts of the 1940s and 1950s. Stars represented by the Grades included such luminaries as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Norman Wisdom, and Morecambe and Wise.

Grade gave up his agency work in I955, by which time he had recognized the possibilities of the emerging commercial television industry. He formed a consortium to bid for one of the ITV franchises then on (ATV), won Midlands weekday and London weekend ITV contracts and came to dominate the ITV network from the 1950s to the 1970s. He also set up the Independent Television Corporation (ITC) to produce films to be screened by ATV and to be sold to other networks.

An ebullient and irrepressible character, instantly recognizable with his bald head and ever-present trademark ten-inch cigar, Grade was a pioneer of commercial television in the United Kingdom and exerted a massive influence over early television scheduling through ATV and ITC. Grade never pretended that he had a mission to educate or "improve" his public. His sole ambition was to provide the kind of entertainment he instinctively understood viewers wanted, which led to the development of a schedule largely based on a mixture of popular variety shows, action adventure series, and soap operas. He realized from the outset that the key to international and financial success lay in making programs that would appeal to both British and U.S. networks, and many of his most successful series, churned out on a "factory" basis modeled on U.S. practice, were of a deliberately transatlantic character. 

Grade's first major international success came early, with The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Richard Greene, Britain's first costume adventure series and the first of Grade's programs to be sold in the United States. Over the ensuing decades he worked much the same formula over and over again, producing adventure series that would appeal to audiences throughout the English-speaking world. Such series as The Saint, which was based on the thrillers of Leslie Charteris and starred a suave Roger Moore as the eponymous hero Simon Templar, The Avengers, and the puppet ac­ tion adventures of Gerry Anderson (notably Thunderbirds) were huge commercial successes and are now regarded as enduring classics. Others, such as The Baron, Man in a Suitcase, and The Persuaders failed to make much of an impact with U.S. audiences and are now largely forgotten, despite changes made to introduce U.S. characters and contexts. (In The Baron, for instance, the aristocratic reformed English gentleman-thief of the original John Creasey novels on which the series was based was transformed into a Texan-born ranch owner based in London.)

As well as promoting early adventure series with appeal to transatlantic audiences, Grade also oversaw the screening of television's first medical soap opera, Emergency Ward 10, which started in 1957 and (broadcast twice weekly) ran for ten years. The series pioneered the mix of surgery, melodrama, and romance that was to provide the staple fare of numerous similar series in the future. Grade decided to ax Emergency Offer and his company, called Associated Television Ward 10 in 1967 because of a drop in ratings, but later identified this as one of his biggest mistakes and in 1972 attempted (though with only modest success) to revive the series in the form of the inferior General Hospital. Another major foray into soap opera was the long-running Crossroads, which ran for 24 years--despite criticisms of the acting and the sets-and was subsequently revived.

Other programs from the Grade organization ranged from the enigmatic cult series The Prisoner, which Grade axed after just 17 of a planned 36 episodes (either because of the cost or because of controversy aroused over drug references), and the historical drama series Edward the Seventh, which was filmed in various royal locations with permission of the Queen, to The Muppet Show and adaptations of the romantic novels of Barbara Cartland. The success of many of these projects was a testament to Grade's personal judgment and understanding of what would work: several series were commissioned, and indeed sold, by him on the strength of a synopsis or a few brief rushes. Perhaps Grade's greatest success was the two-part film Jesus of Nazareth, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. The pope himself had suggested the idea to Grade (a Jew), when introduced to the latter and his wife (a Christian). Kathie Grade nagged her husband to make the film and he agreed, on condition that it would be equally accessible to people of all religions. Starring Robert Powell as Jesus, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Peter Ustinov, Rod Steiger, James Mason, and Olivia Hussey, it cost £9 million and was nicknamed "The Most Expensive Story Ever Told." Few expected it to be good, but it won wide critical acclaim, and Grade himself called it "the best thing I will ever do." With a repeated airing in the 1980s, it was estimated to have been seen by approximately 500 million people worldwide.

Always energetic and hardworking, Grade was Britain's most celebrated postwar showbiz mogul. His friendly and disarming, persuasive manner meant he had few, if any, enemies. He was also a dominant figure in theater and film, in which he became increasingly active from the 1970s. Concentrating on feature films that would appeal to family audiences, he had his successes, but on the whole his career in cinema was less lucrative than it might have been. His most expensive flop on the big screen was Raise the Titanic, a hugely ambitious project that cost $36 million to make but returned only $8 million on release, prompting Grade's famous quip "It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic." Undaunted by increasing financial difficulties, he carried on making films for both the large and small screens until his death at the age of 91. His nephew is the television executive Michael Grade (son of Leslie), who became director of programs at the BBC (1986-88), then chief executive officer of Channel 4 (1988-97).