“I grew up as Gloria grew up,” said actress Sally Struthers.
In 1982, CBS launched an unprecedented programming block. Eleven years prior, All in the Family premiered, changing the course of television history. Thes of that sea change were still felt a decade later when CBS stacked Sunday nights with 90 ripple minutes of shows that came out of All in the Family.
By ’82, Family was off the air, but its legacy was on display every Sunday. Carroll O’Connor was still everyone’s favorite curmudgeonly bigot on Archie’s Place. The Bunkers’ former neighbors, the Jeffersons, had their own program, titled, appropriately enough, The Jeffersons. Sandwiched right between those two shows was another that was spun off from All in the Family. This middle show on Sunday nights saw Sally Struthers’ Gloria get her own home in her own town on her own series, titled Gloria.
But, rather than keep it “all in the family,” decisions were made to deliberately remove Gloria from her earlier, more familiar surroundings.
“We had to move away,” Struthers told The Indianapolis Star in ’82. “If I lived in the same city, people would ask, ‘Why isn’t Carroll O’Connor in more of the Gloria shows?’
The producers wanted to give Gloria the chance to be a fresh, original show, divorced from the expectations fans might have for an All in the Family quasi-sequel.
“This way, I’m far enough away so that’s not real convenient.”
Even though Sally Struthers away from Archie and company, she felt closer than ever to her character Gloria.
“I grew up as Gloria grew up,” said Struthers. Like her character, she was a divorced parent. “As Sally Struthers went through changes, physically and emotionally, so did Gloria—my hair getting longer, my getting wiser.
“I had, after eight seasons, played every facet of Gloria at that age but, three and a half years later, she’s a completely different character than she was.”
CBS chose not to renew Gloria for a second season.
