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All in the Family is an acclaimed American situation comedy that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971 to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, the show was retooled under the title, Archie Bunker's Place. This version of the sitcom lasted another four years, finally ending its run in 1983.
Produced by Norman Lear and based on the British television series Til Death Us Do Part, the show broke ground in its depiction of issues previously deemed unsuitable for U.S. network television comedy, such as racism, homosexuality, women's liberation, rape, breast cancer and impotence.
The show was wildly popular, and ranked #1 in the yearly Nielsen ratings from 1971 to 1976. Only one other program, The Cosby Show, has tied All in the Family in terms of years at the top of the ratings. In 2002, it ranked #4 on TV Guides list of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time. TV Guide also named the show's protagonist, Archie Bunker, TV's greatest character of all time.
Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) is portrayed as a working-class, very outspoken bigot, prejudiced against everyone and everything not in agreement with his view of the world. His ignorance and stubbornness tend to cause his malaprop-filled arguments to self-destruct. He often responds to uncomfortable truths by blowing a raspberry. He longs for simpler times, when people sharing his viewpoint were in charge, as evidenced by the nostalgic theme song, "Those Were the Days."
By contrast, his wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) is a sweet, understanding, if somewhat intellectually limited woman. She usually defers to her always-opinionated husband, but on the rare occasions when she takes a stand, she proves to be one of the wisest characters in the series. Archie often tells her to "stifle [herself]" and calls her a "dingbat", but despite their very different personalities, they love each other deeply.
They have one child, Gloria (Sally Struthers), who is married to perennial college student Michael Stivic (Rob Reiner). Michael is an archetypal 1960s-style liberal. He and Archie constantly clash over politics and social issues, as well as the fact that Michael doesn't hold down a job and support his wife. For much of the series, the Stivics live in the Bunker home to save money, providing even more opportunity for the two men to irritate each other. Archie frequently calls his son-in-law "meathead" and "Polack" (since Michael is of Polish descent).
The show is set in the Astoria section of Queens, one of New York City's five boroughs.
A number of actors played multiple roles during the show's run
In a warning to viewers, CBS ran a disclaimer before airing the first episode (which disappeared from the screen with the sound of a toilet flushing):
"The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are."
All in the Family was notorious for featuring language and epithets previously absent from television, such as "fag" for homosexual, "spade" and much less frequently, "nigger" for blacks and phrases such as "God damn it." It was also famous for being the first major television show to feature the sound of a flushing toilet; it became a running gag on the show.
While moral watchdogs attacked the show on those grounds, others objected to the show's portrayal of Archie Bunker as a "lovable" bigot. Defenders of the series pointed out that Archie usually lost his arguments by reason of his own stupidity (it is perhaps worth noting that Alf Garnett, Archie Bunker's counterpart in the original British series was far from lovable and used much stronger language that would not have been allowed on US network television).
In addition to its candid political dialogue, All in the Familys story lines also included a sense of realism not previously associated with sitcoms. A 1973 episode, for example, found the Bunkers discovering a swastika painted on their front door. (It had been intended for their Jewish neighbors down the street.) An activist from the Hebrew Defense League showed up, proposing violent retaliation against whomever painted it, but upon leaving, he was blown up in his car, as the Bunkers watched in horror from their front door. To interweave illness, crime, or in this case, the offscreen violent death of a character into the plot of a comedy show was an unprecedented move.
Lear bought the rights to Till Death Us Do Part and incorporated his own family experiences with his father into the show. Lear's father would tell Lear's mother to "stifle [herself]" and she would tell Lear's father "you are the laziest white man I ever saw" (two 'Archieisms' that found their way onto the show).
While in pre-production, the last name chosen for Archie's family was "Justice" and the show's title was Justice for All but was later changed to Those Were the Days.
ABC became uneasy at about the time Richard Dreyfus sought the role of Michael and canceled the project. Rival network CBS was eager to update its image, and was looking to replace much of its then popular "rural" programming (Mayberry R.F.D., The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres) with more "urban", contemporary fare (see Rural purge), and was interested in Lear's project. They bought the rights from ABC and re-titled the show All in the Family.
Lear initially wanted to shoot in black and white, perhaps feeling that it would emphasize the Bunkers' stark surroundings to greater effect. While CBS insisted on color, Lear had the set furnished in rather neutral tones, keeping everything relatively devoid of color.
All in the Family was the first major American series to be videotaped in front of a live studio audience. At the time, sitcoms were shot on film in front of an audience, and the 1960s had seen a growing number of sitcoms filmed on soundstages without audiences, with a laugh track simulating audience response. After the success of All in the Family, videotaping sitcoms in front of an audience became the standard format for the genre. However, the use of videotape also gave All in the Family the look and feel of the classic sitcoms of early television, which had been performed live before a studio audience (including the original live broadcasts of The Honeymooners, to which All in the Family is sometimes compared.
In later seasons, the practice changed to playing the already taped and edited show to an audience and recording their laughter to add to the original sound track. Thus, O'Connor's voice-over during the end credits was changed from "All in the Family is taped before a live studio audience" to "All in the Family was played to a studio audience for a live response." However, throughout its run, Norman Lear took pride in the fact that canned laughter was never used (mentioning this on many occasions); the laughter heard in the episodes was genuine.
The house shown in the opening credits is located at 89-70 Cooper Avenue in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens, New York. [1] The fictional address of the Bunker home was 704 Hauser Street. One may notice there isn't a porch to the house, which is often referred to in the episodes. This is the actual home used for exterior shots as featured in Zillow.com's Famous Homes series.
All in the Family is the first of three sitcoms in which all the main characters won Emmy Awards (O'Connor, Stapleton, Struthers, and Reiner). The other two are The Golden Girls and Will & Grace.
It won numerous Emmys:
It was nominated an additional 34 times.
Its Golden Globe Awards are:
There were also 21 nominations.
The longest sustained audience laughter in the show's history occurred in the famous episode-ending scene in which guest star Sammy Davis, Jr. plays himself. Archie is working as a cabdriver. Davis leaves a briefcase behind in his taxi and goes to the Bunker home to pick it up. Archie asks for a photograph with the famous celebrity; the picture captures Davis (after hearing some of Archie's racist remarks) suddenly kissing a stunned Archie on the cheek. The laughter went on for so long that it had to be severely edited for network broadcast as Carroll O'Connor still had one final line to get out following the kiss. (That line, "Well, what the hell -- he said it was in his contract!" is usually cut in syndication.)
All In the Family is one of two television shows, The Cosby Show being the other, that has been number 1 in the Nielsen Ratings for five consecutive TV seasons.
The ratings for each season, at the end of the season, were:
All in the Family spawned several spin-offs, beginning with Maude on September 12 1972. Maude Findlay, played by Beatrice Arthur, was Edith's cousin; she had first appeared on All in the Family in December 1971 in order to help take care of the Bunkers when they all were sick. Maude disliked Archie intensely, mainly because she thought Edith could have married better, but also because Archie was a conservative while Maude was very liberal in her politics. Maude was featured in another All in the Family episode in which Archie and Edith visited Maude's home in Westchester County to attend the wedding of Maude's daughter Carol — it aired near the end of the second season in the spring of 1972. The episode was essentially designed to set up the premise for the spin-off series Maude. In the episode, Bill Macy played Maude's husband, Walter; it was a role he would reprise for the weekly series that fall. Marcia Rodd, the actress who played Carol in the episode was replaced by Adrienne Barbeau in Maude.
The second and longest-lasting spin-off of All in the Family was The Jeffersons. Debuting on CBS on January 18, 1975 The Jeffersons lasted 11 seasons compared to All in the Family's 9 seasons. The main characters of The Jeffersons were the Bunkers' former next-door neighbors George Jefferson (played by Sherman Hemsley, who had appeared from 1973 to 1975 on AitF) and his wife, Louise "Weezie" Jefferson (played by Isabel Sanford, 1971-1975 on AitF). George Jefferson was the owner of a chain of seven successful dry-cleaning stores; as The Jeffersons began, he and Louise had just moved from the Bunkers' neighborhood in Queens to a luxury high-rise apartment building on Manhattan's Upper East Side. George was considered to be the "Black Archie Bunker", and was considered as racist as Archie, according to some people.
Other spin-offs of All in the Family include:
The series' opening theme song, "Those Were the Days" written by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, was presented in a unique way for a 1970s series, with O'Connor and Jean Stapleton seated at a spinet piano (played by Stapleton) and singing the tune on-camera at the start of every episode. Several different performances were recorded over the run of the series, including one version that includes an additional verse. The song is a simple melody in which Archie and Edith wax nostalgic for the simpler days of yesteryear. Listening to each version chronologically, there are two trends. Jean Stapleton's screeching high note on the line "And you knew who you WEEERRE then" became louder, longer, and more comical; and the final lyrics (especially "Gee, our old LaSalle ran great") were sung with increasingly deliberate enunciation as viewers had initially complained that they couldn't understand the words.
The closing theme (an instrumental) was "Remembering You", played by Roger Kellaway and co-written by Kellaway and O'Connor.
Except for some brief instances in the very first episodes, there was no background or transitional music.
In interviews, Norman Lear stated that the idea for the piano song introduction was a cost-cutting measure. After completion of the pilot episode, the budget would not allow an elaborate scene to serve as the sequence played during the show's opening credits. Lear decided to have a simple scene of Archie and Edith singing at the piano -- a sequence that became one of the most famous and parodied openings in TV history.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released the first 6 seasons of All in the Family on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time. It is expected that the remaining 3 seasons will be released soon.
Season Releases