At 5’1” tall, TV legend Sally Struthers is undeniably petite. Her showrunners cleverly capitalized on this, surrounding the diminutive actor with much taller performers for comedic effect. Even on the ’90s Disney Afternoon cartoon “TaleSpin,” Struthers voiced Rebecca Cunningham, a petite brown bear entrepreneur who, despite her small stature compared to her laid-back employee, the sloth bear pilot Baloo, was twice as intimidating. What Struthers’ characters lacked in height, they more than made up for in outsized personality.
On Norman Lear’s classic ’70s sitcom “All in the Family,” Struthers was a whole (meat)head shorter than her onscreen husband, the 6’2” Rob Reiner. She also stood well below her costars Carroll O’Connor (5’11”) and Jean Stapleton (5’8”). The show got a lot of mileage out of this sight gag, with Reiner’s hippie Michael “Mike” Stivic and O’Connor’s right-wing Archie Bunker frequently bellowing at one another—very literally—over the protests of Struthers’ Gloria. This dynamic fed into Gloria’s relationship with her parents; to Archie and Edith, she truly was their little girl, even as an adult woman.
The height difference posed a challenge for close-up shots of Struthers standing next to her taller cast members. In an interview archived online by the Television Academy, “All in the Family” costume designer Rita Riggs (who passed away in 2017) revealed how early ’70s fashion provided a helpful workaround.
Fortunately, platform shoes, which originated as beach footwear in the 1930s, had come into style with the disco music culture of the previous decade. Struthers simply had to strap on a pair of groovy booties, and suddenly, her problems were solved.
All in the Family Gave Struthers a Platform
Thanks to “All in the Family,” Struthers transitioned from playing a no-name “dancer girl” on “The Tim Conway Comedy Hour” to one of the most famous daughters in sitcom history. With her dainty build and unmistakable raspy voice (which was extra gruff during her audition for Lear due to a case of laryngitis), Struthers easily stood out from the rest of the cast. Riggs recalled just how small Struthers was compared to everyone else:
“She was so short that to get her into camera range with Carroll and [Jean] and Rob particularly, she wore—thank God at that time platforms were fashionable—the tallest platforms you have ever seen with those little cute short skirts.”
Gloria eventually came into her own on “All in the Family,” refusing to kowtow to the men in her life and embracing the ideals of the women’s liberation movement (albeit only after Struthers threatened to leave the show). Her style, however, remained more or less consistent. “She always wore young things,” Riggs explained. “I think we tried to keep what we had started with, even though this family had grown up with America now.”
The only cast member who dressed noticeably differently over the course of the series was Reiner. As Riggs put it:
“He was really despicable-looking in the beginning, wasn’t he, with those tie-dye awful shirts. […] I love chambray shirts, and that was very much a statement politically in the ’70s. All of the protestors and students and the working-class protests wore the chambrays and the jeans, so he became very much a symbol of the ’60s’ other point of view.”
One can imagine Archie cracking a smirk at Riggs calling the young Mike “despicable-looking.”