Best friends with Larry Hagman, O’Connor won an Emmy and Golden Globe for ‘In the Heat of the Night’
If you were to reduce Carroll O’Connor’s entire acting career to his two most-recognized roles, it would be bigot Archie Bunker in All in the Family and evolved bigot Bill Gillespie of In the Heat of the Night. On face value, that would seem to indicate a pretty limited range for a performer, though nothing could be further from the truth given the depth that O’Connor was able to bring to both roles, effortlessly moving from the live audience sitcom setting of the former and the filmed dramatic approach of the latter.
Driving home all of that is the fact that Carroll O’Connor was recognized for his skills, Archie Bunker bringing him four Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award for the episode “Archie Alone;” while Bill Gillespie proved no slouch, delivering his real life alter-ego a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe.
Learn much more about Carroll O’Connor in the facts below.
1. Early days
Born John Carroll O’Connor on August 2, 1924 in New York City, the oldest of three sons, he enrolled at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University, but dropped out to enlist in the United States Navy, from which he was rejected. Instead, he was a part of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy for a time before becoming a merchant seaman and serving as a United States Merchant Marine during World War II.
2. He went from Montana to Ireland
Following World War II, O’Connor enrolled at the University of Montana, where he became an editor of the student newspaper and met his future wife, Nancy Fields, before leaving for Ireland to help his brother, Hugh, get into medical school. While there he enrolled at the University College Dublin.
A lot happened there: Upon her graduation, Nancy Fields came to Ireland and the two were married on July 28, 1951. And while O’Connor had no interest in becoming an actor — instead envisioning himself a professor of European history — he actually did do some acting while there and was discovered by producer Sheila Richards, who got him involved with Dublin’s Irish Players group. As he would tell The Los Angeles Times in 1972, “The press said I was the only American actor who ever worked in Ireland who could perform an Irish part faithfully, and they were correct.”
3. Early Roles
Returning to America, he got his start in an off Broadway production of James Joyce’s Ulysses, directed by Burgess Meredith (the Penguin from Adam West’s Batman TV show and Mickey from the Rocky franchise), followed a year later by a revival of Clifford Odets’ Big Knife. He would also appear in 20 movies between 1958’s The Defiant Ones and 1971’s Doctor’s Wives. Additionally, he made his television debut in the 1951 TV movie The Whiteheaded Boy, and then, between 1960 and 1971, starred in several others and made numerous episodic guest appearances.
4. His Character Archie Bunker and ‘All in the Family’
Television made a major transition between the late 1960s and early 1970s, and writer/producer Norman Lear was leading the way with All in the Family, which originally aired from 1971 to 1979. Looking at modern day America through the eyes of conservative Archie Bunker and his wife Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton), and their liberal daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and son-in-law Mike “Meathead” Stivic (Rob Reiner), the show was not only a genuine exploration of the generation gap and changing mores, but tapped into everything from the Vietnam War to racism, homophobia and criticizing the presidency (at the time Nixon’s) while breaking various taboos in the medium along the way.
5. Carroll O’Connor was not making Archie Bunker ‘lovable’
All in the Family was enormously popular, particularly Archie Bunker, though Carroll O’Connor had no illusions about the character, candidly giving an interview to the Redlands Daily Facts in 1972 in which he reflected, “I don’t know how many Americans are as short-sighted as Archie. He’s an ignorant man. He’s popular on TV, because viewers enjoy watching him, but I don’t think many of them would have him for a friend or feel they share his traits. Remember, Archie is a victim, too. He’s a victim of his own background and education. His thinking was shaped at an early age when he was inculcated with bigotry. He got it from his parents.
“I’m not making Archie lovable,” he added. “I’m making him a human being. And there’s always an element of love in a human being.”
6. ‘Archie Bunker’s Place’
With Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner ready to move on from the sitcom All in the Family, and Jean Stapleton to follow not long afterwards, O’Connor convinced Norman Lear to allow him to spin-off the Archie Bunker character into the series Archie Bunker’s Place, which saw the character running a bar. That show ran until 1983.
