During the second season of All in the Family, a very special guest showed up to visit the Bunkers. The episode “Sammy’s Visit” first aired on February 19, 1972 and musician and actor Sammy Davis Jr. made it one of the most memorable episodes of the beloved series and created one of the most infamous moments in ’70s TV history.
Davis and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie Bunker, were real-life friends, and in an appearance on The Tonight Show, Davis expressed interest in appearing on the show. Creator Norman Lear was initially hesitant to have such a big star on the show, but he relented, leading to the creation of what is widely regarded as one of the greatest sitcom episodes ever made.
The episode opens like any other day in Queens. Archie has taken a job as a cab driver and, as it turns out, one of his passengers left something behind. Not just anyone, though the passenger Sammy Davis Jr., one of the biggest stars of the day. When he calls the house to arrange picking it up, Edith can hardly contain her excitement. Mike and Gloria are thrilled too, but Archie … not so much.
From the moment Sammy walks through the door, you can feel the tension. Archie tries to be polite, but you can see how uncomfortable he is, while Sammy is charming and gracious. The jokes in the episode land, but so do the bigger points about race, celebrity and the narrow worldview Archie holds so tightly onto throughout the series.
But it’s the final scene that cemented this episode in sitcom history. Just before leaving, Sammy offers to take a photo with Archie. Archie stands stiffly beside him, doing his best to survive the moment. Just as the camera clicks, Sammy leans in and kisses him on the cheek. The look on Archie’s face says it all and audiences ate it up
The kiss was supposedly O’Connor’s idea, and the sustained laughter from the audience that followed was thought to be the longest laugh to ever occur in a TV taping. O’Connor improvised a line following the kiss — “What the h***, he said it was in his contract” — that also got a big laugh from the audience, but was cut from syndicated episodes as it was out of character for Bunker.
But the kiss was more than just good comedic timing. It caught America off guard in the best way, making people laugh while also nudging them to think a little deeper. The first interracial kiss ever broadcast on network TV had only happened a handful of years before, in 1968, on Star Trek — an event that had been considered highly controversial at the time. For a show just four years later to use a kiss to tackle issues of racism and to make it funny — well, that was unprecedented. That was the magic of All in the Family.
