‘70s Redux: ‘All in the Family’ and ‘The Jeffersons,’ Live

“Maude, Archie, Mike Stivic—they all talked about what they believed far more far more than they understood what they believed. They were all people who were not scholarly. They were arguing in the idiom of the moment, not out of deep understanding of the issues. And they were reflexively liberal or conservative. Archie, for example, was not a bigot in my mind. He was just afraid of tomorrow. Blacks moving into the neighborhood was a different world for him, and that was a future he was afraid of. But he wasn't a hater. He refused in one episode to sign an organization's racially hateful thing.”—Sitcom producer Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family, Maude, and The Jeffersons, quoted in John Jurgensen, “Influencers: Archie Bunker Returns, on Live TV,” The Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2019

All in the Family was the favorite TV show of my boyhood and youth. I loved it for more than its audacity in raising social issues, its absolutely appropriate casting of its leads, or simply its unerring ability to smake the audience laugh. 

No, I became a committed viewer for its depiction of a social environment I could recognize as my own, the blue-collar world of my parents, their relatives and friends. Archie Bunker might have been a figure of satire, but, especially as he collided with the outside world as the series went on, also a complicated human to whom attention needed to be paid. He was as real as any of my neighbors.

(Even closer to home, a number of people told my father that he looked like the actor whose reputation was made by playing Archie Bunker, Carroll O’Connor.)

I was curious, then, to hear that an episode of the show would air live last Wednesday, with different actors in the roles played by O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers, and that the same format would be followed for its spinoff, The Jeffersons. I wondered how Norman Lear’s taboo-breaking sitcom would stand up over time. 

I feared for the worst. Sometimes in recent years, in catching old All in the Family reruns on TV, I thought that I could often figure out when they had aired from particular topical jokes. (I had never faced this dilemma with my other favorite show from the Seventies, The Mary Tyler Moore Show.) They could be, in a word I hate to hear on other occasions, “dated.” 

So, how would this experiment work now? Would it be a case of old wine in new bottles?

In terms of the script, for the "Henry's Farewell" episode from Season 4 in the fall of 1973 (and let us acknowledge here not only Lear, but also teleplay writer Don Nicholl), very well indeed. The studio audience, after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, #MeToo and #TimesUp, whooped it up for the stout defenses of women’s rights by Gloria Stivic and Louise Jefferson, and—sensing more than a few parallels to the current political situation—they seemed to laugh and clap harder with each succeeding line in the following scene:

Archie: “Meathead, turn off the garbage on that radio.”

Mike: “Okay. I thought you'd be interested in hearing what King Richard was up to today.”

Archie: “And shut that hole in the middle of your face too, huh? Wise guy! Trying to insult the president by calling him a king.”

Gloria: “Why not? Nixon acts like one.”

Archie: “I've got news for you, little girl. Being a president is much better than being a king.”

Mike [straight-faced]: “You can probably make more money that way.”

Archie: “Get out of here, huh? Richard E. Nixon ain't interested in getting rich.”

Gloria: “He's not interested in getting rich? Why not?” 

Archie: “Because he's got plenty of money.”

Edith: “ ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven.’”

Archie: “And it is easier for you to pass me the coffee than for me to go over there!”

But what this special made me realize, far more than ever before, was that the best lines from the original All in the Family could not have landed with such devastating force without excellent acting across the board, not just among its four principals but among its subsidiary players. Unfortunately, that comprehensive casting brilliance was far more hit or miss last week.

Whether screeching for the high notes on the show’s opening theme, “Those Were the Days,” hopping hurriedly from living room to kitchen, or looking befuddled, Marisa Tomei as Edith Bunker came the closest of the central quarter to matching her original inspiration, Jean Stapleton. 

Except for one flubbed line, Jamie Foxx also expertly channeled his predecessor, Sherman Helmsley, in conveying George Jefferson’s Bunker-like mixture of bigotry and familial warmth. Ellie Kemper and Anthony Anderson, taking over the roles of Gloria Stivic and Henry Jefferson, acquitted themselves very well, though not as markedly.

But, with a curly, dark-haired wig matched in ridiculousness only by his fake Italian accent, the normally clever Sean Hayes offered up an ethnic stereotype that verged close to offensive, and Ike Barinholtz could not match Rob Reiner’s arsenal of deadpan stares and comic timing as Mike Stivic. 

Worst of all, in the central role of Archie, Woody Harrelson was utterly miscast. While evoking Archie’s broad Queens accent well enough, he added assorted unnecessary hand gestures. While it was easy to imagine the burly O’Connor wanting nothing more at the end of the day than to collapse in his favorite chair with a beer at his side, the far leaner Harrelson looked like he’d just come from an invigorating pick-up basketball game or 18 rounds of golf. And it strained credulity to have one of America’s greatest cannabis enthusiasts playing a character with nothing but contempt for hippies and their mind-altering substances.

I am sorry that I did not watch more of The Jeffersons portion of the program. Due to scheduling conflicts during its original run, I had never been able to watch that sitcom as frequently as All in the Family.  

But the actors on the special (including Wanda Sykes as Louise Jefferson and Kerry Washington and Will Ferrell as the groundbreaking interracial couple, the Willises) appeared true to their original characters without simply copying the original actors. And Jennifer Hudson delivered a delightful rendition of the show’s theme, “Movin’ on Up.”

James Burrows, a veteran who has helmed some of TV’s classic sitcoms (Cheers, Friends), should have been a more-than-adequate replacement for John Rich as director of “Henry’s Farewell.” But, whether through his own fault or Lear’s, he was undone by the several instances of miscasting.

Nevertheless, I am glad the show aired and that a nationwide audience had a chance to think again about an episode of this classic sitcom that, while not perhaps one of the top 10 episodes of its nine-year run, was certainly superior to much of today's TV fare, on network TV or cable.

American divisions over race, ethnicity, class and culture linger tenaciously from the Vietnam-Watergate era when All in the Family reigned as the #1 show in prime time. But change did occur over time—with, in what would have been an extreme surprise to the audience when “Henry’s Farewell” first aired, America even electing a white President. 

African- and Hispanic-Americans have entered all kinds of occupations whose doors were once shut to them, and whites once unalterably opposed to that change have had to adjust. Close up, white Americans in such proximity have seen the humanity of their fellow citizens and are increasingly judging them more on what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. termed “the content of their character” than on the sum of their own fears.

I worry that Americans retreat into their self-selected circles of friends on social media or their red and blue states. Archie Bunker might have rolled his eyes and even barked at the Jeffersons and Mike Stivic, but he had to deal with them—and by the time the Jeffersons had moved off Hauser Street in Queens for the tonier precincts of Manhattan, he and they had come to understand each other at least a bit better. 

That close, sometimes uncomfortable encounter with the humanity of others might be the only way to bridge the gap between the Occupy Democrats and the Trump voters today.

Quote of the Day (Norman Lear, on Almost Casting Mickey Rooney for ‘All in the Family’)

“Before I came out here and met Carroll [O’Connor], I thought about Mickey Rooney playing the role [of Archie Bunker]…. I called his manager, and he said, ‘Oh, Mickey happens to be in the office. Why don’t you talk to him!’ And I said, ‘No, no, this is a character I would rather talk to him about and then have him read,’ and he said, ‘No, no, no.’ Anyway, before I know it, Mickey [was on the phone] talking about himself in the third person. ‘You got the Mick!’ ‘Mickey is gonna be out there, can I see you out there? I’ll be out there Tuesday.’ ‘You got something for the Mick, just tell him!’ I said, ‘Well, he’s a bigot, he’ll say spics and spades and hebes” — and he said, ‘Norm, they’re gonna kill you. They’re gonna shoot you dead in the streets.’ I can never forget this speech. ‘You wanna do something with the Mick? Listen to this: Vietnam vet. Private eye. Short. Blind. Large dog.’”—Norman Lear, creator and producer of All in the Family, interviewed by Kenya Barris in “Two Titans Dish: Norman Lear and Kenya Barris,” Entertainment Weekly, April 7-14, 2017

I normally pick a joke or something else obviously funny for a quote to start the work week. Yet I trust that you reacted in much the same way that I did when I read this recollection by Norman Lear about how he seriously considered casting Mickey Rooney as Archie Bunker in All in the Family: a guffaw at the actor’s self-aggrandizing use of the third person; his cluelessness about the success of the show; and the sheer improbability of MGM’s Andy Hardy playing the first regularly appearing bigot in American sitcom history.

But on further reflection, I think I was unfair to Rooney, and that realization led me to some alternative history about what might have happened if he rather than Carroll O’Connor had been chosen for this role that broke very markedly with the notion of “Father Knows Best.”

First, Rooney was far from alone in questioning the prospects for this path-breaking comedy. Sure, there were people such as director John Rich who saw possibilities in making TV history by working on this show. But ABC network brass rejected the pilot of the show (originally known as Those Were the Days), and even after CBS gave it the green light, that episode repeated the below-average performance on audience tests that ABC had received for it. 

Second, Lear was not simply picking a big name to draw attention to his show by conceiving of Rooney as his star. Despite the actor’s stereotyping from 20 years, off and on, as Hardy, America’s lovable boy next door, he had, when given a chance, shown that he could not only appear to advantage in gritty, downbeat material (e.g., as a trainer in Requiem for a Heavyweight), or even in unsympathetic roles (e.g., in film noir such as Baby Face Nelson).

In particular, Rooney’s turn as a megalomaniac TV star in the Rod Serling/Ernest Lehman-scripted 1957 Playhouse 90 episode The Comedian demonstrated that he was unafraid to risk displeasing a mass audience. 

How well that would have translated to Archie Bunker is another matter. The series’ more than 200 episodes, filled with countless varieties of racial, ethnic and religious slurs, represented shocking stuff nearly 50 years ago. Not everyone appreciated the point of this satire (including a nun in my parochial elementary school, who asked how I could like a show featuring such an awful man).

The dynamics of the show would be quite different had Rooney been cast—most notably, in how Archie was physically envisioned. The same 5-ft., 2-in. frame that had limited Rooney’s possibilities as a movie leading man would also have made TV audiences see, quite literally, Archie’s contention that he was “the little guy.”

Furthermore, the nose-to-nose confrontations between Archie and son-in-law Mike Stivic (played to perfection by O’Connor and Rob Reiner) would have been impossible with Rooney; the advantage enjoyed by “Meathead” would have been a matter of height as well as logic, and would have looked an awful lot like bullying. The temptation would have been enormous for Lear and his writing team to create more jokes playing off Archie’s (now diminutive) size than off his malapropisms.

How physicality can affect perception of a role can be seen in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The original script called for title character Willy Loman to say “I’m short,” a line changed after the casting of burly Lee J. Cobb to “I’m fat.” When Dustin Hoffman played the role 35 years later, Miller went back to his original line. 

O’Connor was so right as Archie Bunker—indeed, Lear says he knew it from the first line reading—that it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else playing the part. But Mickey Rooney might have brought so much to the role, in terms of audience expectations and physicality, that reactions to the character might have ended up markedly different from what they turned out to be.  

How might Rooney have fared if he had been cast? O’Connor, at the height of the show’s success, stayed off the set for three episodes in a salary dispute with Lear. But there is good reason to think that Rooney would have been far more difficult to handle.

At the show’s premiere, Rooney would have been better known not only than O’Connor—a middle-aged character actor who had made little impression on the public—but also Jean Stapleton, Sally Struthers and even Rob Reiner (still striving to emerge from his father’s shadow). 

Before long, Rooney might have felt entitled to demand a salary commensurate with his status as the show’s biggest draw. His lifestyle might have pushed him even more powerfully in this direction. He was fond of cracking jokes about his multiple divorces (eight, by the time of his death), but the alimony did not help his finances.

Worse still, if that was possible, was his betting on the ponies. In a preface to The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney, Roger Kahn recalled how he couldn’t find him for weeks when they were supposed to be collaborating on the star’s memoir, because the actor was spending his non-working hours at the racetrack. Rooney, given to racking up high debts, might have felt compelled to push for a higher salary on All in the Family to help deal with this issue.

The rest of the cast would also surely have rebelled against his longtime tendency toward scene-stealing—a propensity so strong that Boys Town co-star Spencer Tracy warned the “little snot” that if he tried it in one of their scenes, “I’ll send you to Purgatory.”

Even his initial response to Lear’s crusty protagonist (“Vietnam vet. Private eye. Short. Blind. Large dog”) suggests that Rooney would have pushed for any means to soften, even sentimentalize, this bigot well before these tendencies were well-established for the audience. The point of the satire, then, might have been irretrievably lost.

For all his many gifts as a performer, then, Rooney would have been ill-suited to play Archie Bunker. It is fortunate indeed that Lear found his ideal Archie in O’Connor .

This Day in TV History (“All in the Family” Tackles Gay Theme)

Feb. 9, 1971—All in the Family, the CBS sitcom demolishing taboos ever since its debut four weeks before, pioneered treatment of gay characters in an episode co-written by creator Norman Lear.

Last month, I was unable to write about the 40th anniversary of the irreverent comedy that was an institution in my house throughout the Seventies. This particular episode, "Judging Books by Covers," gave me that opportunity again.

The archetypal comedies of the 1970-71 season for the “Tiffany Network” were All in the Family (hereinafter referred to as AITF) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (MTM). Veteran TV director John Rich (The Dick Van Dyke Show), who had the opportunity to work on the pilots of both series, chose AITF because it was an extraordinary “experiment,” particularly in its use of language--i.e., the then-extraordinary, for TV, series of racial and ethnic slurs cast in every direction by blue-collar paterfamilias Archie Bunker. This episode proved him right.

As a comedy centered on character, MTM has aged better than the more ripped-from-the-headlines AITF. Indeed, the only signs distinguishing one season of MTM from another were a) the absence of Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman, both of whom had spinoff series of their own; and b) Mary’s changing fashions and growing professional self-confidence.

Nevertheless, for all its stylish wit and its exquisite balance between character complexity and consistent high standards throughout its run, MTM sometimes pulled its punches—or, at least, was forced to by network censors. Mary Richards, for instance, was transformed from a divorcee to a single working girl who lit out for Minneapolis after being jilted by her fiancé. It wasn’t until its third season that the show featured a homosexual character: Phyllis’ brother.

At the time of the AITF episode on homosexuality, television shied away from treating gays. There were certainly flamboyant types on the air, mind you (e.g., Paul Lynde’s “Uncle Arthur” on Bewitched). But it was impossible to see homosexuals in anything other than the stereotype of Ernie Kovacs’ lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils.

Come to think of it, Rich was only half correct when he signed on for what he believed to be an “experiment” in AITF. It was more like a revolution.

Particularly in its early seasons, AITF was centered around the assault of the modern world on Archie. He perpetually retreated to the male domain of Kelsey’s Tavern when he couldn’t take what always seemed to land on his doorstep at Hauser Street in Queens. But in this episode, even Kelsey’s was no longer a place where he could figure out, as the opening song “Those Were The Days” went, “girls were girls and men were men.”

What drives him there to begin with this time is the open-arms treatment of daughter Gloria and son-in-law Mike of their friend Roger—or, as Archie puts it, “Sweetie-Pie Roger” or “Tinkerbelle.” Roger has just returned with pictures from a vacation in England (“a fag country,” Archie tells “Meathead” Mike), and it looks like he’s raided every clothing shop on Carnaby Street. It’s all too much for Archie, who’s glad to get away to his favorite bar, filled with macho guys like his friend Steve, a former professional football player.

Bit by bit, Archie is rattled there, too. For starters, he can’t understand how Steve could not only know Roger, but act friendly toward him. But his world is really turned upside down when Steve (after beating him a couple of times arm-wrestling) confirms the secret Mike had earlier heard from the bartender: it’s not fluttery Roger who’s gay, but he-man Steve.

At the time this episode aired, it was only a year and a half after the Stonewall riot, and a full four years before former pro running back David Kopay came out of the closet. It would take a half-dozen years more before primetime TV featured an ongoing gay character: Billy Crystal’s Jodie Dallas on Soap.

This particular episode was supposed to air February 2, 1971, but it was moved back a week. One wonders if his controversial subject matter was behind the move. Lear certainly had to battle network censors countless times to get his way, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this was one of those cases.

Ironically, the censors might have relaxed if they had known that nobody would be watching the show. That’s what happened in its early weeks. Everybody associated with the sitcom, in fact, was ready for CBS’ cancellation announcement throughout the spring and early summer.

The first inkling that things might be different came to Rich, on vacation in Hawaii at the time. As he recounted in an appearance on the public-radio show Fresh Air a few years ago, a Japanese woman he met told him she had to go home to watch AITF. “That Archie Bunker, he’s my husband,” she said.

He had been hearing such comments more frequently, and in increasingly surprising cases such as this one. The universality of this character began to impress itself on him. Several weeks later, CBS network executive Fred Silverman, pleasantly surprised that summer reruns of the show were proving to be a smash hit, issued a stay of execution. The next year, AITF stormed to the top of the ratings, where it stayed through much of the rest of the decade.

(Incidentally, Anthony Geary and Phil Carey, who played, respectively, Roger and Steve, would go on to bigger roles on daytime soap operas: Geary on General Hospital and Carey on One Life to Live.

This Day in TV History (“One Day at a Time” Debuts)

December 16, 1975--Critics and fans were quick to note that the sitcom One Day at a Time, which premiered on this date on CBS, was produced by Norman Lear, already known for such boundary-pushing series as All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Maude and Sanford and Son. But few viewers of the series starring Bonnie Franklin, Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli took notice of the opening credits, which revealed that the series had been created by writer Allan Manings and actress Whitney Blake.

It’s hardly surprising that Manings’ contribution was overlooked. As Joe Gillis, William Holden’s cynical screenwriter in Sunset Boulevard, notes, “Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture. They think the actors make it up as they go along.” But the lack of notice for Blake was another matter entirely. Amazingly enough, in a reunion 30 of the show’s stars on The Today Show 30 years later, Phillips, Bertinelli and co-star Pat Harrington still had no idea about the nature of her contribution.

Only a decade before the show's debut, Blake had concluded a five-year run in a sitcom herself: Hazel, starring the Oscar-winning character actress Shirley Booth as a maid. Maybe because she played second banana to Booth, Blake did not make the same kind of impression that other actresses of the time, such as Barbara Billingsley, Donna Reed or Jane Wyatt, did as TV moms.

If viewers were to recall Blake at all by 1975, it might have been because her blond good looks had been inherited by daughter Meredith Baxter, then not far into a long TV career of her own. By this time in her late 40s--an age that, at that point (and even, to a somewhat lesser extent, now) was regarded as a danger zone for leading ladies--Blake was running the danger of disappearing into the rabbit hole of TV memory.

But if Blake had barely registered as a TV mom herself, she made sure that she’d create a truly memorable one secondhand. It was Blake’s memories of raising Baxter and her siblings as a single mom that Manings, her third husband, channeled into the creation of Franklin’s character, Ann Romano.

Ann Romano might, in a way, be regarded as the missing link between The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Gilmore Girls. Allow me to explain.

Think of the situation common to MTM and ODAAT: A young woman, fresh from a busted-up relationship, relocates to a Midwestern city, where she hopes to start over and wash that man right out of her hair.

Actually, if Ms. Moore and her husband of the time, producer Grant Tinker, had had their way, there would have been an even larger similarity: Mary Richards would have been a divorcee, too.

But the Tiffany Network would have none of it. Not only were such characters practically invisible at the time (these didn’t get past the programming censors), but the network had a more prosaic concern: they were so afraid that Ms. Moore would be so associated with her previous great role as Laura Petrie that audiences would think she had run out on Dick Van Dyke!

Five years later, due in no small part to Lear, all the old taboos were gone--and Bonnie Franklin, better known for roles on the stage (notably Applause, the musical version of All About Eve), was far more of a blank slate than Moore. The top brass at CBS, then, were far more ready for an idea about a divorced mom struggling to make ends meet in Indianapolis with her teenage daughters. Blake and Manings brought the idea to Lear, who developed it further.

One Day at a Time went on to run for nine years and 209 episodes. Some of its DNA ended up encoded in the likes of Kate and Allie, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and The Gilmore Girls. (The latter show also featured an actress, Lauren Graham, who, like Franklin, was only in her early 30s when the show premiered--not much older than the actress(es) who played her daughter(s).)

The Gilmore Girls had one less daughter than One Day at a Time, but somehow the estrogen level seemed more amped up. True, Lorelai Gilmore had her diner love interest, Luke, but there’s a Sensitive New Age Guy lurking beneath his blue baseball hat (tipped off by the fact that he cooks but Lorelai doesn’t, which allows him to criticize her unhealthy eating habits).

“Sensitive” is not the word that comes to mind about Dwayne Schneider, the building superintendent played to perfection by Pat Harrington. With his moustache constantly twitching expectantly in the hope that Ann Romano would respond to his flirtatious hints, his cigarette dangling from his lip and his tool-belt hanging from his waist like a gun holster, the character became “the Burt Reynolds of the Boiler Room.”