“They often balked and more than once threatened to quit, but I too more than once threatened to quit.”
An actor is only as good as their writers, and without writers, actors are left to flounder. This isn’t to say that actors are without appeal; many actors are talented in their own way, and many actors eventually become writers. Furthermore, a writer is equally as lost without an actor to deliver their words.
Carroll O’Connor wasn’t shy about acknowledging his more than tumultuous history on All in the Family in his memoir, I Think I’m Outta Here: A Memoir of All My Families. O’Connor was creative and wasn’t afraid to stand up for himself if he felt that an episode wasn’t fulfilling its full potential.
“Our ‘Archie’ writers were the cleverest joke draftsmen in television, and what they delivered every week was the very special product they were hired to write,” O’Connor wrote. “But I refused to play the naked joke, to do the setup-punchline routine, and asked them to recast jokes as characteristic thrusts and rejoinders, and rework sketch material to the emotional dimensions of a short play. They often balked and more than once threatened to quit, but I too more than once threatened to quit.”
O’Connor explained that these disagreements also put him at odds with series creator Norman Lear, who O’Connor said wasn’t interested in disturbing the ecosystem of the All in the Family crew.
“Lear didn’t write for the show, but he gave the writers orders, watched dress rehearsals, and gave notes. He hated to tamper with a joke, and he and I had frequent arguments about jokes.”
Luckily, writers and actors alike all had the same end goal in mind: to make the show as funny as possible.
