There would be no “All in the Family” without the late Carroll O’Connor. The actor spent nine seasons endearing audiences to his character Archie Bunker, a middle-aged, blue-collared, conservative working stiff who wouldn’t think twice about referring to someone by a derogatory term. Year in and year out, viewers delighted in watching Archie make his liberal, self-righteous son-in-law Mike’s (Rob Reiner), aka “The Meathead,” blood boil. (Just listen to that live studio audience cackling at Archie’s unbothered response here.) Even if you disagreed with just about every single thing that came out of Archie’s mouth (which you absolutely should), O’Connor had a way of winning you over.
Perhaps that’s why the actor was keen to keep the good times rollin’ along, even when everyone else around him was ready to pack it in. While season 8 was clearly intended to serve as the show’s swan song, O’Connor succeeded in keeping “All in the Family” on the air for another year. However, far from wrapping the whole thing up with a bow, season 9 instead gave rise to “Archie Bunker’s Place,” a continuation that saw the action shift from the Bunkers’ household to Archie’s tavern (which he bought in season 8).
Not that creator Norman Lear didn’t try and interfere. “The only one who didn’t [want to stop] was Carroll, and he was the most difficult,” said Lear, speaking at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016 (via The Hollywood Reporter). For as much as Lear, who himself passed away at 101 in 2023, “worshipped the ground [O’Connor] walked on” (as he put it) and knew “there couldn’t be another Archie Bunker in the history of the world ,” that didn’t stop him from trying to sabotage the actor. There was just one problem: O’Connor had CBS on his side.
Lear didn’t want to put people out of work
“Archie Bunker’s Place” was far from “All in the Family” with a different name. Besides the new setting, Archie’s doting wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) only appeared a few times in season 1 before dying at the beginning of the second season in 1980. Meanwhile, other progressive-minded characters were introduced to butt heads with Archie, filling the hole left by The Meathead, with Archie and Edith’s daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) only showing up a handful of times (and Mike even less than that). Mind you, this only came to pass after Lear spent “some months” trying to stop the series in its tracks.
In the end, though, Lear gave in, not wanting to put a whole lot of people out of work:
“The only time I met Mr. [William] Paley, who owned the network, was when he called to ask me to lunch, nine years later, to talk about wanting ‘Archie Bunker’s Place’ on air. The only way it got on was when [he] called me to his office and had four or five pages of names of people who would be out of work if the show didn’t go on. And so the show went on.”
It seems Lear’s issues were creative. “All in the Family” worked thanks to the unique alchemy of its cast and characters; take a piece or two away, and it just wasn’t the same. As unforgettable as O’Connor was as Archie, he could only hold the ship together for so long by himself. That was enough to keep “Archie Bunker’s Place” on the airwaves for four seasons, which is nothing to sneeze at. Still, there’s a reason the series didn’t enjoy anywhere near the lasting cultural impact as its parent show.
