Frank and Irene Lorenzo loved each other, so why did Frank leave the show?
While the Bunker family was able to stir up some hefty misadventures all by themselves, there was no shortage of neighbors on All in the Family. Characters like The Jefferson family and Irene and Frank Lorenzo often served as a helping hand to characters like Gloria and Edith, and a hilarious foil to Archie’s gruff nature.
But some neighbors didn’t stay as long as others. While characters like the Jeffersons were mainstays of the series until they withdrew All in the Family to begin their own show, and Irene was a longtime friend to the Bunkers, her husband, Frank Lorenzo, left the show after only two seasons.
While the character’s actor, Vincent Gardenia, left the series to pursue a career on stage, the show was a bit evasive about where Frank had run off to, especially considering his wife, Irene, was often still included in episodes.
According to the book Archie & Edith, Mike & Gloria: The Tumultuous History of All in the Family, written by Donna McCrohan, excuses were sometimes written to explain Frank’s absence. “We never really got to explain too clearly where Frank had gone,” said Betty Garrett. “There was very often a line in the show where Edith would ask about him, and I’d say ‘Oh, he’s fine. He’ll be home from the road next week,’ or something on that order. But during cutting, to make the time come out right, the line always managed to get cut because it wasn’t necessary to the plot.”
With no indication that Gardenia planned to return to the series, there was a bit of discussion over how to handle his absence, to no avail. “I think at one point there was even talk about dispensing with Frank in some more permanent way,” said Garrett. “Of course, because Irene was such a good Catholic, we couldn’t get a divorce, but maybe he could have died.”
With her husband out of the way, Garrett’s character would have had the opportunity to engage with a new love interest, which Lear and the crew briefly dabbled with the idea of ”They were going to build a little romance with me and Stretch Cunningham, an interesting older woman/younger man thing,” said Garrett. “Then another thing that came up was the possibility of my having a crush on a priest.”
