The Super Bowl of Sitcoms: The Story of a “All In The Family”

00:00:10
Speaker 1: Can we continue with our American stories? In the nineteen seventies, “All in the Family” was watched by nearly one-third of all Americans and dominated the TV ratings throughout the decade before its last of nine seasons. In two hundred and twelve episodes, the show delivered six of the top fifty highest-rated TV programs.

00:00:34
Speaker 2: Of all time. Here’s Greg Hengler with the story.

00:00:38
Speaker 3: From Television City in Hollywood.

00:00:41
Speaker 4: Boy, no way, Glenn Miller played.

00:00:45
Speaker 5: Songs that name paraded us.

00:00:49
Speaker 6: Why, gosh, we hadn’t made.

00:00:56
Speaker 7: It was doomed from the start. The social satire television show called “All in the Family” was seen as too abrasive and failed to pull any punches. Carol O’Connor played the blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker. The show’s creator, Norman Lear, inclined O’Connor for the combination of bomb bast and sweetness the actor exuded on the big screen. O’Connor believed in the character, but not in the show’s chances to succeed on television.

00:01:29
Speaker 8: Here’s Rob Reiner.

00:01:31
Speaker 9: We knew we had a good show, but we figured it wouldn’t last very long because it was so special, it was so different. I remember Carol saying, “You know, we’ll probably do four episodes, and then we’ll probably get thrown off the air because nobody’s going to sit still for this.”

00:01:47
Speaker 7: When Norman Lear invited Gene Stapleton to read for the Edith role, Archie’s wife, she couldn’t get over the script. “This on TV?” “I was terribly amused by it, by its reality and honesty and humor.” CBS signed on for the pilot episode. O’Connor and Stapleton were joined by Sally Struthers, who played Archie’s daughter Gloria, and Rob Reiner, who played Mike Stivick, Gloria’s husband. Rob had grown up surrounded by his comic genius father and his friends, men like Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Dick Van Dyke. Says Rob, “That was my kindergarten, and they were my teachers.” Norman Lear, a friend of Rob’s father Carl, had known Rob for over a decade. There had even been one day when Lear stopped by Reiner’s house that Rob made him laugh with a routine about cheating at jacks, noted Lear to Carl Reiner, “You’ve got a funny kid there.” Rob’s father responded, “Get out of here. He’s not a funny kid.” Years later, Carl Reiner expanded on this exchange, “Oh, I knew that kid was funny. What I didn’t know until a long time later was that he had talent.” On the evening of January 12th, 1971, as soon as “Hee Haw” went off the air, “All in the Family” made its television premiere. This is what America heard at the start of the program.

00:03:23
Speaker 4: Warning: The program you were 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 lefter, we hope to show in a mature fashion just how absurd they are.

00:03:37
Speaker 8: Here’s Sally Struthers.

00:03:39
Speaker 5: I heard that they manned all the CBS stations across the country with extra operators to take all the angry phone calls that were going to come in from people seeing the show. And it didn’t happen. They got a lot of phone calls, but people were calling in and saying, “Well, is that, is?”

00:03:54
Speaker 1: “Is that coming back?”

00:03:57
Speaker 7: In the weeks following “All in the Family’s” day, CBS initiated and financed an opinion poll. The majority of the people questioned, including minority group members, indicated that they hadn’t been offended. “People who saw it disgusted” and “people who hadn’t discussed anyhow.” “Bunker gives conservatives a bad name,” “Stivick gives liberals a bad name,” were the typical responses.

00:04:24
Speaker 8: Here’s show creator Norman Lear.

00:04:27
Speaker 10: The stern warning that began our show tonight was used on the first six episodes of “All in the Family.” Nervous CBS censors required us to warren viewers lest they be offended by the Bunkers. They didn’t have bothered. Hardly anyone watched. It was in the summer reruns that you found the show.

00:04:45
Speaker 2: And it caught on.

00:04:47
Speaker 10: By the second season, “All in the Family” had become a certified hit.

00:04:50
Speaker 7: In May of 1972, “All in the Family” swept the Emmy Awards. Johnny Carson dubbed the ceremonies “An Evening with Norman Lear.” Here’s a clip of Archie Bunker and his son-in-law Mike Stivick sparring.

00:05:06
Speaker 3: Oh, no, oh no, I’m going to sue that guy first thing in the morning.

00:05:10
Speaker 4: Chi Do you.

00:05:15
Speaker 8: Always have to label people?

00:05:17
Speaker 3: Why do you just get a lawyer? Why is it got to be a George lawyer? We’re not going to sue a name. Am I? I’m going to get a guy that’s full of hate. Might I? Nobody went around calling themselves Chicanos, Mexican Americans, Afro Americans. We were all Americans after that. If a guy was a digger, his picker was his own vision.

00:05:36
Speaker 7: Archie’s a World War Two veteran turned loading dock union worker from Queens, New York. In his eyes, he’s no bigot. A bigot spouts mindless prejudice, whereas Archie believes that he’s thought things through, that he’s simply aware of the rules ordained by nature to make some people sluggish and other people cheats. Besides, to Archie, a racist would only use negative labels, while he’s the first to declare that the sharpest lawyers are Jews. At his core, Archie’s not prejudice. He hates everyone. In “The Complete Book of Nerds,” author Bob Stein lists Archie’s wife’s name as Dingbat, her nickname as Edith Bunker, and her hobby as taking abuse.

00:06:25
Speaker 8: Here’s Archie and Edith. “Chet, I’m sorry, I thought I was doing a good thing.” “Oh, sure, good thing.”

00:06:33
Speaker 11: “That’s you all over.”

00:06:34
Speaker 8: “We’re always doing good. You eat the good.”

00:06:37
Speaker 3: “You never get mad at nobody, and never holler at nobody, and never swear I know nothing.”

00:06:42
Speaker 12: “You’re like the same.”

00:06:43
Speaker 3: “You think it’s fun living.”

00:06:44
Speaker 7: “With the same?” “Yeah, ain’t they ain’t at all.”

00:06:47
Speaker 3: “Look at this, you.”

00:06:48
Speaker 8: “You don’t even cheat the wind.”

00:06:50
Speaker 3: “You cheat the loon.”

00:06:54
Speaker 2: “I needed you win’t, Yeoman.”

00:06:57
Speaker 1: “That’s a terrible thing to say. It’s as human as you are.”

00:07:02
Speaker 11: “Room.”

00:07:02
Speaker 3: “You’re just as humanish, mate, do something rotten.”

00:07:06
Speaker 7: Norman Lear gave Gene Stapleton the key to Edith’s character, that Edith no longer hears what Archie is saying, having tuned out years ago. So it’s no wonder Edith’s shuffles the way she does. Her gears are permanently out of whack from a lifetime of turning the other cheek.

00:07:26
Speaker 8: “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bunker.”

00:07:29
Speaker 3: “That’s all right, I can say, Mister Davidstadt.”

00:07:34
Speaker 7: Here’s Gene Stapleton and Carol O’Connor on the show’s secret for success.

00:07:39
Speaker 11: “I feel there was a man.” “Staple made almost every week, but you see, number one, it was entertainment and it was comedy. You can reach people through comedy.”

00:07:51
Speaker 6: “We were kidding.”

00:07:53
Speaker 3: “American attitudes, and the autistic term for that at that time.”

00:08:00
Speaker 7: Archie’s son-in-law, Mike, is an atheist who renounces his own Catholic baptism long ago. Archie believes in Catholic infant baptism so much that he kidnaps Mike’s son, Joey, and baptizes his grandson himself.

00:08:15
Speaker 3: “Yeah, she was.”

00:08:18
Speaker 4: “It is my little grandson, Joe.”

00:08:21
Speaker 6: “Now his parents, they don’t care if he’s baptized because his own man as a dopey atheist.”

00:08:29
Speaker 12: “So they’re going to do it here while we get the chance. You know, I don’t want my little grandson growing up without religion in this rotten world of yours.”

00:08:40
Speaker 9: “An intense A.”

00:08:41
Speaker 6: “Friend of their Lord, Joseph Michael Stivick, I baptized in the name of her father, a son, and a holy ghost. Now, I hope that took, lay, because they’re going to kill me when I.”

00:09:03
Speaker 1: Get. And you’ve been listening to the story of the creation of “All in the Family” and how it started. The prospects for its success, at least according to the actors and the people close to it. No one thought it would last or catch.

00:09:22
Speaker 2: The story of “All.”

00:09:23
Speaker 1: In the Family continues here on our American stories, and we continue with our American stories and the story of the making of “All in the Family.”

00:09:45
Speaker 2: When we last left off.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: We learned that the show had not initially done well, but during summer reruns it found an audience, particularly the young people of America, but soon the whole country. Let’s pick up now where we last left off.

00:10:02
Speaker 7: Although claiming to be a Christian, Archie’s God and his theology are made in Archie’s image.

00:10:10
Speaker 3: “All over the world, they celebrate the break of that baby, and everybody this time wart from White. Now, if that ain’t proved that he’s the Son of God, then nothing is. He made us all one true religionated Christians. She named after his son, Christian.”

00:10:36
Speaker 2: “Christ.”

00:10:36
Speaker 12: “For sure.”

00:10:41
Speaker 11: “I never.”

00:10:45
Speaker 8: Here’s Archie and Sammy Davis Junior. “Heart. Ooh, I think that.”

00:10:49
Speaker 3: “I mean, if God had meant us to be together, he’d have put us together. Well, look what he’s done. He put you over in Africa, he put the rest of us in all the white countries. Well, you must have told them where we were, because somebody came and got it.”

00:11:11
Speaker 7: Archie’s patriotism and American history are also made in his image.

00:11:17
Speaker 3: “That ain’t the American way, Barty. No, sirree. Listen here, professor. You’re the one that needs an American history lesson. You don’t know nothing about Lady Liberty, standing there in a harp with a torch on high, screaming out the wall of nations in a wild, ‘Send me your poor, your deadbeats. You’re filthy,’ and all the nations set them in here. I’m smalling in like hands, your Spanish.”

00:11:41
Speaker 2: “Pro’s in in California.”

00:11:43
Speaker 3: “There, your Jacks, your Chinamen, your Crouching, your Heaves, and you’re living us. Come in here, and they’re all free to live in their own separate sections.”

00:11:58
Speaker 8: “There ain’t feel safe.”

00:11:59
Speaker 3: “And that bush you ahead if you go in there, that’s not nice, right, buddy.”

00:12:06
Speaker 7: Chicago-born Mike Stivick married Archie’s daughter, Gloria, who works full-time while her husband is enrolled in college full-time. Mike is a jobless, peace-marching sociology major of heavily left-wing persuasion, and they both live with Archie and Edith in Queens. Mike’s friends frequently seem to appreciate Gloria more than he does.

00:12:29
Speaker 8: Indeed, in many.

00:12:30
Speaker 7: Ways, he treats Gloria just as Archie treats Edith, with the difference that maybe he’ll kiss her in the living room. Mike is of Polish descent, sports long hair and a parted Prince Valiant cut and a mustache which Rob Ryder grew at twenty-four to look old enough to get the part of Mike.

00:12:50
Speaker 3: “And also think, Mister Bunker, at first I thought I misjudged you, and I was right.”

00:12:55
Speaker 11: “I did misjudge you. You’re a lot more ignorant than I thought.”

00:13:02
Speaker 2: “She, did you hear what?”

00:13:03
Speaker 3: “He called me. Well, let me tell you something. Sticks and stones may break, Bargol, but you are one dumb Pola.”

00:13:13
Speaker 7: The jobless Mike doesn’t consider that Archie has lived firsthand a life he only reads about in sociology books.

00:13:22
Speaker 2: “You get all these.”

00:13:23
Speaker 3: “Ideas, oh, from the College of Hard Knocks, honey boy. I’ve been everywhere the grass grows green.”

00:13:29
Speaker 4: “I see in everything there is to see.”

00:13:32
Speaker 3: “I know people. The reason you don’t know nothing about people is you always got your big mouth open. You’re never willing to listen to nobody. How do you do, sir? May I have a moment of your time?”

00:13:42
Speaker 1: “No.”

00:13:44
Speaker 7: The relationship between Archie and Mike was written by Norman Lear to reflect his relationship with his own father. In fact, Lear’s father also referred to Norman as “dead from the neck up,” an expletive which Lear has Archie hurling at Mike as early as the first episode.

00:14:02
Speaker 8: “Let me tell you something, Mister Punker.”

00:14:04
Speaker 3: “No, let me tell you something, Mister Stivick. You are at meeting and meetek dead from the neck up me.”

00:14:16
Speaker 7: What Archie would love to see most of all is Mike working, so adding insult to injury. When Mike inherits money, he decides to donate it to George McGovern’s presidential campaign instead of toward repaying Archie, who has been subsidizing his lifestyle, and then pontificates that Archie doesn’t do enough for his fellow man, and since Archie doesn’t choose to give more of his money away, Mike advocates a socialist system that will call him nasty names and give it away on his behalf. But through all of the wincing and laughter, we also learn something. We learn how to be less hateful and bigoted towards those who are hateful and bigoted. The episode “Two’s a Crowd” chronicles the events of Archie and Mike getting locked in a storeroom overnight. When escape seems futile, the two turned to sharing a bottle and a large blanket as the episode slowly turns into an incredibly honest, personal look at who these two men are. This episode was Carol O’Connor’s favorite. Here’s a clip.

00:15:26
Speaker 4: “Did you ever think that that possibly your father just might be wrong?”

00:15:34
Speaker 12: “Oh, my old man, I’ll be still my old man. Let me tell you about it. I mean, he was never wrong about.”

00:15:39
Speaker 9: “Nothing. Yes, he was, Archie. My old man used to call people the same things as your old man.”

00:15:46
Speaker 2: “But I always knew he was wrong.”

00:15:48
Speaker 12: “So is your ole.”

00:15:49
Speaker 2: “No, he was. Yes, he was.”

00:15:51
Speaker 12: “Your father was wrong.”

00:15:53
Speaker 8: “Your father was wrong.”

00:15:54
Speaker 12: “I don’t tell me my father was wrong.”

00:15:57
Speaker 2: “Let me tell you something.”

00:16:01
Speaker 12: “Your father? Oh, me, oh, your father. The redwood in the house there, the man who goes out, I’m Bush’s butt. They keep a goop over your head, clothes on your back. You call your father wrong? Hey, hey, your father. You’re supposed to love your father. Of course, your father loves you. How can any man I love you show you anything that’s wrong?”

00:16:41
Speaker 7: As Rob Ryder’s father Carl remarked, few would deny “All in the Family” reshaped the face of television. For years, every new sitcom on the air was either liberated by or reacting to it.

00:16:56
Speaker 4: “It’s the Jefferson Sachi.”

00:16:59
Speaker 3: “Archie, I don’t want to jet. Oh, wait a minute. Holy, you don’t mean they have new people that moved.”

00:17:08
Speaker 2: “In down a from the line.”

00:17:10
Speaker 5: “They’re really very nice people.”

00:17:12
Speaker 3: “Oh, yeah, very nice. They’re wonderful people, are lovely people, leader, but they are also colored people.”

00:17:19
Speaker 5: “Better hold it there, Daddy.”

00:17:21
Speaker 3: “I listen, little girl, been around a lot of places. I’ve done a lot of things. But there’s one thing Archie Bunker right, and that we’re going to do, and that’s break bread with no jungle Bunnies.”

00:17:30
Speaker 7: Within a few years of its debut in 1971, “All in the Family,” together with its spinoffs and godchildren, “The Jeffersons,” “Maud,” “Good Times,” and “Sanford and Son,” reached one hundred and twenty million Americans, more than half the nation’s population. “All in the Family” frequently earned the accolade of “National Theater,” and its best scripts fall not in iota short of “national literature.” While Archie has joined the pantheon of American folk heroes, for his portrayal of Archie Bunker, Carol O’Connor earned more awards than any other actor ever received for a single TV characterization. When the “Guinness Book of World Wreckers” recognized “All in the Family” as commanding TV’s highest advertising rates, the series became known as the “Super Bowl of Sitcoms” and Archie as the “Most Expensive Racist on Television.” Any topical program runs the danger of quickly becoming dated. “All in the Family” escaped that fate. So strong is the story, so real are the people that the episodes work, even when occasional references elude the audience. It is why Archie’s chair, Edith’s chair, and Archie’s beer can occupy a place of honor on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. They are as much a part of our national heritage as Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hat and George Washington’s wooden teeth.

00:19:06
Speaker 8: “All in the Family” was recorded on the tape before a.

00:19:08
Speaker 1: Live audience. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And what a story he told. Norman Lear, the genius behind this show and the many shows that spawned from it. But the primary and driving force was that relationship between Michael, his son-in-law, and Archie himself. But those scenes of intimacy were always there. Both were equally ridiculed in the writing and equally human in the writing of Lear’s. It’s what made it so good. It infuriated everybody, and everybody loved the characters and recognized th.