Secrets From the Show That Changed TV
A DINGBAT, A BIGOT, A LI’L GOIL & A MEATHEAD MINED HOT-BUTTON ISSUES FOR GROUNDBREAKING LAUGHS
On May 13, 1971, as war raged in Vietnam and protestors clashed with police on America’s streets, topic No. 1 at the White House was... All in the Family. “It was the damndest thing,” President Richard Nixon told aides John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman about a recent episode, which led Nixon to believe mistakenly that Carroll O’Connor’s blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker had a bisexual son-in-law. “I do not think you glorify on public television homosexuality,” Nixon raged, claiming the Greek Empire was brought down by gays like Socrates. “He never had the influence that television has,” concluded Ehrlichman.
And no TV series ever had the influence All in the Family did. “Our show was so ahead of its time in terms of social issues, going places that network TV often avoids going, even today,” Rob Reiner, who played Archie’s hippie sonin-law, Mike “Meathead” Stivic, tells Closer. “No one had ever done anything like it before — we presented both sides and let the sparks fly!” There was always an underlying love among the cast and crew, but the heated conflicts between Archie’s reactionary positions and Mike’s progressive beliefs raged on at viewers’ kitchen tables after the episodes were over, influencing national debates. “Every major issue came under All in the Family’s lens — minority power, abortion, women’s rights,” says Paley Center for Media curator Ron Simon. “It was like a lightning bolt — injecting political and cultural issues into this form of entertainment was revolutionary.”
The revolution was televised, but it wasn’t a hit right out of the box. “CBS was so afraid of the material offending people, they tried to hide us in a late time slot” on Tuesdays, after the demographically incompatible Hee Haw, recalls director Bob LaHendro. For a while, it worked. “The show was debated in The New York Times, but it didn’t really penetrate the heartland,” says Simon. “It took many months.” Only when All in the Family won the best comedy series Emmy after its first
season, in 1971, did the show break out in the ratings. Says LaHendro, “Word of mouth got to be so strong, they had to move us to a prominent spot” — Saturdays at 8 p.m., kicking off a classic night of comedy that soon also included M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and The Carol Burnett Show.
Archie proved the primary lightning rod. Whether people loved him or hated him, they couldn’t stop watching him — and snapping up T-shirts, books and mock campaign buttons espousing his right-wing views. “He spoke for Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ and their uneasiness about the generation gap,” says Simon. Viewers came to see Archie like a family member. “We would get letters all the time from fans saying he reminded them of their father or uncle,” says producer Gene Marcione. As Carroll once said, “Archie is made up of persons who really exist. I have seen them.”
The character’s popularity became a problem for Carroll, an unabashed liberal who worried he was giving voice to views he disagreed with. “It bothered him when the audience started to laugh with the racism instead of at it,” says actress Liz Torres, who had a recurring role as a boarder in the Bunker household.
That led to clashes between Carroll and producers, yet they were invariably resolved. “Sometimes he would get angry and walk out, but he would ultimately deliver the lines,” says Marcione. “We taped the show twice on Fridays, at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., and these things that bothered Carroll would get big laughs in the early shows, so Norman would say to him between tapings, ‘That one worked, right?’ ”
In fact, Archie’s politically incorrect diatribes worked so well that All in the Family became TV’s No. 1 show for five seasons in a row as viewers tuned in to see what he would say next. “People might have said the words Archie used in the sanctity of their own house or a bar, but it had never been broadcast,” says LaHendro. “It was shocking, but when you shock people, you get their attention.”
BUNKER MENTALITY
Of course, Archie wasn’t the only Bunker who made viewers sit up and take notice. His scatterbrained but kindhearted wife, Edith — or “Dingbat,” as he dubbed her — became a beloved presence. “She is very human, honest, compassionate, intuitive, and in most situations she says the truth and pricks Archie’s inflated ego,” explained Jean Stapleton, who played Edith. The actress was equally lovable: “Jean was our angel,” Sally Struthers, who played endearingly ditzy daughter Gloria (Archie’s “li’l goil”), tells Closer. “She giggled about everything.”
Over time, Edith spoke up more, as she was influenced by the burgeoning women’s movement and suffered a harrowing near-rape in one controversial episode. Even though she won five Emmys, Jean — a gifted musicaltheater actress — started to feel restricted by the role. By the time Danielle Brisebois joined the cast as the Bunkers’ niece Stephanie in the ninth season, “in her head, Jean was done with the show,” Danielle says. When All in the Family morphed into Archie Bunker’s Place later that year (focusing on the title character’s job as a bar owner and softening his rough edges), Edith appeared only occasionally. She was then written out, and viewers were devastated at the start of the second season when they learned her character suffered a stroke and died. Still, “Mom enjoyed every minute of creating Edith and always came home from tapings exhilarated,” son John Putch tells Closer. “She loved the whole shebang.”
Rob and Sally had also grown weary of their characters and left after season eight. (Sally later reprised the role of Gloria in a short-lived eponymous sitcom, one of many spin-offs the Bunkers spawned; see sidebar at right). But both look back on their Family days warmly. “From the get-go, it was literally All in the Family,” Rob says. “My first wife, Penny Marshall, was the other finalist for the role of Gloria, but Sally looked so much like Carroll, they gave her the part.” Adds Sally, “Carroll was Dad offscreen and on.”
“Millions thought Archie was a happy hero .... President Nixon thought we were making a fool out of a good man.” — Carroll O’Connor
Danielle, who stayed on Archie Bunker’s Place until its 1983 cancellation, felt the same way about Carroll. “He was always so wonderful, sweet, funny, loving and giving,” she gushes. “He was such a cozy person.”
It seems everyone involved in All in the Family remembers it fondly. Ask Norman Lear about his favorite moment working on the show, and he says simply, “every day.” Before she passed away at 90 in 2013, Jean “had a great time watching the repeats and loved how the show still held up,” Putch says. “She was very proud of it.”
Carroll died from a heart attack at 76 in 2001, yet the spirit of All in the Family lives on. “The constant argument between liberal and conservative predicted where we are today,” Simon says. Agrees Rob, “We’re still very divided, a red- and bluestate country. All in the Family showed all strata of society — that’s why it has such staying power.” Or, as Archie might put it, that’s why the Bunkers will never be stifled. — Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Katie Bruno, Ilyssa Panitz and Jaclyn Roth
“Those were amazing days on All in the Family — the best acting school in the world.” —Sally Struthers, to Closer