In January 1971, “All in the Family” exploded onto American television, shaking up the status quo and injecting prime time with a bold new energy. The show’s fiery protagonist, Archie Bunker, quickly became a lightning rod for a politically divided nation, holding up a mirror to society through humor, outrage, and intense debate. This groundbreaking series forever changed the landscape of television.
“We didn’t know Archie Bunker, but we felt we did,” series creator Norman Lear, 98, told The Post on the show’s 50th anniversary. “He was so American, but a specific type of American. There was an Archie Bunker that lived next door to me, and my father had a little bit of Archie in him — he would say ‘Jeanette, stifle!’ to my mother. If you didn’t live with Archie, he was up the street, down the street, or across the street. The fact that he was on television was a surprise — but it wasn’t like we didn’t know him.”
The CBS sitcom, based on the British TV hit “Till Death Us Do Part,” was initially intended for ABC. Several actors, including Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney, were considered for the lead role. (Rooney turned it down, deeming it “un-American.”) Archie Bunker, portrayed by Carroll O’Connor, was a bigoted but lovable loading-dock foreman living in a Queens row house with his high-pitched, “dingbat” wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), his beloved daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers), and her liberal, hippie husband Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner), whom Archie derisively called “Meathead.”
What shocked audiences most were the ethnic and racial slurs that flew from Archie’s mouth, yet the public couldn’t get enough. CBS had a massive hit on its hands. “All in the Family” dominated TV ratings for five consecutive seasons, at its peak drawing over 30 million viewers each week during a time when only three networks existed.
“It shows you that very little has changed,” Struthers, 73, told The Post. “If you took a recording of an [‘All in the Family’] episode and just heard the audio, especially where there’s a discussion or argument about politics, if the names being shouted by Mike and Archie were removed — and you inserted the names of politicians today — all of the arguments still hold up.
“It sounds silly now, in this day and age of ‘everything goes,’ but at that time, a married couple had never slept in the same bed before, a toilet had never been audibly flushed before,” she said, referring to a memorable scene with Archie. “People had never sat at the table in anything but their best clothes and perfect manners. We broke all the taboos — they lived like real people and hadn’t been portrayed like that on any television series.
“They were lower socioeconomic real people living their lives and loving each other and arguing — and reaching over one another at the table for food.”
O’Connor and Stapleton, both native New Yorkers, were 46 and 48 when the series premiered; Reiner and Struthers were both 23. None of them could have predicted how “All in the Family” would change their lives forever.
“I was very young and certainly had no crystal ball — I had just been let go from ‘The Tim Conway Comedy Hour’ when I went to read for [the role of Gloria] for this man named Norman Lear,” said Struthers, who won two Emmys for her portrayal. “I had laryngitis, and they handed me a yelling scene to do. I’m sure that’s why he remembered me. It was just another job. There was no way to know what it was to become.”
Struthers recalled how John Rich, who directed that first episode, told the cast as they left rehearsals to head home and watch the premiere that CBS had staffed its affiliates nationwide with extra operators to handle angry phone calls. “He said, ‘So please show up tomorrow morning but be prepared for all of us to be out of a job.’ When we came in the next morning, he told us that, yes, the affiliates received more phone calls than they’d ever received before — but that the majority of [the calls] were gleeful and exciting, with people asking, ‘What was that?’ ‘Is it coming back?’ “
America had spoken. Lear, who had been arguing with CBS about a particular line of dialogue in the premiere, felt vindicated.
“The storyline in that first episode was very easy and straightforward because I wanted to show 360 degrees of Archie,” said Lear. “The Bunkers were returning from church earlier than expected on a Sunday morning. Mike and Gloria weren’t expecting them and were about to make love upstairs. They heard the door open and close, and they came running down, with Mike buttoning his shirt.
“Archie’s very first line is, ’11:30 on a Sunday morning?’ The network wanted that line out,” he said. “Why? Because he’s talking about 11:30 on a Sunday morning and it implants a picture in the audience’s mind. I remember thinking, if the line comes out, I’m going to be in trouble from then on with the silliest things. So that was our first disagreement. I said, ‘If you don’t play that line, I won’t be in tomorrow.’
“It wasn’t until the show went on the air in New York, three hours earlier [than California] and someone from my family called and said that it was [kept] in.”
Both Lear and Struthers attributed a big chunk of the show’s on-air magic to O’Connor and Stapleton.
“I was so in love with Carroll and Jean,” Struthers said. “My own father died two years before I got ‘All in the Family,’ and Carroll became my dad, off-screen as well as on-screen. He and his wife, Nancy, took me everywhere with them and even introduced me to my husband. Carroll protected me, loved me, socialized with me, joked with me. He was a dad to me. And I loved Jean with all my being. She was such an angel.”
“Edith was somebody we fell in love with immediately. Jean [Stapleton] saw to that,” Lear said. “I must have auditioned 30 guys [to play Archie], and it wasn’t until Carroll O’Connor, who was maybe the 40th audition, sat down with me and read three pages. He wasn’t off the second page before I knew I had Archie, who didn’t become that character until Carroll O’Connor said those words.
“I can’t imagine anyone else in that role.”
