January 12, 1971: The situation comedy All in the Family premieres on CBS. There had never been anything like it on television before.
The story was set in the neighborhood of Flushing, in the Borough of Queens, in New York City. Archie Bunker -- originally said to be 49 years old at the time, but a later episode gave his year of birth as 1924, so he would have been almost 47 -- grew up in the Great Depression, with a father who passed his bigoted ideas down to him.
Like my grandmother, who was also from Queens, Archie dropped out of high school to go to work when his father died. (In a 1973 episode, Archie got his GED.) Unlike Grandma, he was terribly prejudiced. (More on that in a moment. Well, actually, my other Grandma, from Newark, was terribly prejudiced.) He served in World War II, and was wounded in the posterior, so that's how he knew when someone had been sitting in his favorite chair.
Since he was a dropout, and didn't take advantage of the G.I. Bill to finish high school and go to college, he was under-educated. He was the foreman on a loading dock, and since this didn't pay enough, he supplemented his income by driving a taxicab.
While not completely stupid, he was ignorant, written that way by the show's creator and executive producer, Norman Lear. Archie believed the worst stereotypes of every race, of every ethnicity, of every religion. Not that Archie was a good Christian or a good Protestant: He was one of these people who cherry-picked the Bible to find stuff he liked, and ignored the parts he didn't. As the great Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko imagined a character he'd created saying, "I like Americans. Like me."
His saving grace was that he loved his family. But not well. He called his wife, the well-meaning but less-intelligent Edith, "dingbat," and when she said something he didn't like in her high-pitched, shrill voice, he said, "Stifle yourself!"
Together, they had 1 child, a daughter named Gloria -- or, as Archie frequently called her in his N'Yawk accent, "Little Goil." As the show begins, she is recently married to Michael Stivic -- Polish-American, officially Catholic but a practicing atheist, long-haired with a mustache, and seemingly forever in college, but still living with Gloria under Archie's roof and, to Archie's eternal dismay, on his dime.
In essence, he was Archie's anti-matter, and there were explosions, which caused Gloria to start crying. Gloria's ability to burst into tears broke the TV record of Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo on I Love Lucy, and hasn't even been approached since, not even by Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green on Friends. Edith rarely reacted to this, but regular viewers could tell that it bothered her.
In real life, Archie and Edith were very different people. Carroll O'Connor was an Irish Catholic liberal, who agreed with Lear that it was important to make Archie a figure of ridicule, but not totally unsympathetic, emphasizing that he did love his family, and, as the show went on, and Mike proved himself, developed a healthy respect for him -- not that he'd ever admit it.
Jean Stapleton wasn't much like Edith. She was very smart, the voice was a put-on, she was a match for O'Connor in terms of acting chops, and did not suffer fools gladly. But Sally Struthers, who played Gloria, and Rob Reiner, who played Mike, were pretty much like their characters. Mike was the son of Carl Reiner, already a comedy legend.
The show was based on a British show, Till Death Us Do Part. Johnny Speight created it, and it ran on BBC1 from 1965 to 1975. The "Archie" was named Alf Garnett. Lear thought it could work, and CBS gave it a try in 1968, as Justice for All, with the elder Bunkers named the Justices, and Gloria's husband named Richard.
It didn't work, but, like NBC did with Star Trek, CBS ordered a 2nd pilot. In 1969, it aired as Those Were the Days, and a theme song with that title was written, sung in character by O'Connor and Stapleton. Gloria and Richard were replaced by new actors. It still didn't work, but CBS decided to try one more time. Richard was renamed Michael, and he and Gloria were recast again.
One common theme to all 3 pilots was the character of Lionel Jefferson, the Stivics' black friend, who managed to make a fool out of Archie all 3 times. He was played by the same actor in the 1st 2 pilots, but was recast for the 3rd, played by Mike Evans. From him grew the characters of the Jefferson family.
The show lasted 8 seasons, and introduced storylines unthinkable before it. While The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which debuted on CBS 4 months earlier, touched on feminism, All in the Family really explored it. An early episode featured the first admittedly (if not openly) gay character in any American sitcom, but it wasn't the one Archie would have predicted.
Gloria had a miscarriage, a prime-time TV first. Eventually, she had a son named Joey in 1975. Edith went through menopause and a breast cancer scare, and on her 50th birthday, fought off a would-be rapist. And, at one point, Archie was invited to join a local advocacy group, which he thought was called the Queens Council of Crusaders. It turned out, it was spelled "Kweens Kouncil of Krusaders." Archie had low opinions of black people, but he wasn't gonna be part of no Ku Klux Klan.
The show produced several spinoffs. Bea Arthur was introduced as Edith's liberal cousin, and she and Archie hated each other. In 1972, she was spun off into Maude. She had a housekeeper named Florida Evans, who in 1974 moved back to her hometown Chicago, leading to Good Times, TV's 1st-ever spinoff of a spinoff.
Lionel's parents were George and Louise "Weezy" Jefferson, played respectively by Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford. When the show began, they were living next-door to the Bunkers. In 1975, with George's drycleaning business taking off, they were, as their new theme song said, "Movin' on up to the East Side," and The Jeffersons premiered. Gloria and Mike moved into their house.
The Jeffersons also got a spinoff, Checking In: For 1 season, 1981, Marla Gibbs' Florence Johnston left George & Weezy's employ, got a job as head of housekeeping for a Manhattan hotel, where her stuffy boss was played by former M*A*S*H antagonist Larry Linville. It tanked, and was canceled after 4 episodes, and Gibbs returned to The Jeffersons.
After 7 seasons, Mike got a job as a professor at a college in California, and he and Gloria moved away. To fill the void, Danielle Brisebois joined the cast as Stephanie Mills, Edith's half-Jewish niece. After 1 season in this format, in 1979, All in the Family was retooled as Archie Bunker's Place, after Archie bought out his local hangout, Kelcy's Bar.
After 1 season of this, Stapleton finally had enough of playing Edith, and quit. It was written into the story that Edith had died. Archie, 56 by this point, now had to raise Stephanie alone. But not really, as she helped out in the bar, and the employees and even the patrons kind of looked out for her.
Like M*A*S*H, which debuted a year and a half later, Archie Bunker's Place wrapped up in early 1983. Unlike M*A*S*H, there was no big finale, just an ordinary episode on April 4, 1983. The Jeffersons lasted 2 more years.
Struthers appeared on Archie Bunker's Place in the last season, explaining that Mike had left her. Many fans of the show prefer to dismiss that episode, and the entire run of the show after Gloria and Mike left, as non-canon. But this episode spun off Gloria, in which Gloria moves back to New York, and becomes the assistant to an old veterinarian, played by Burgess Meredith.
In 1994, Lear created 704 Hauser, named for the Bunkers' address. Except he flipped the script: A middle-aged black couple now lived there, and they had a conservative son dating a white girl. In the pilot, Joey Stivic (he would have been 19) drops by, and, when he sees the father and son of the house arguing, says, "Yeah, this is the place." The father, Ernie Cumberbatch, was played by John Amos, who had played James Evans on Good Times, and objected to the elevation of Jimmie Walker's character of James Jr., a.k.a. J.J., as "an idiot," and was fired over it. Apparently, Lear and Amos made peace.
But while the original show was a classic, its time had passed: Gloria lasted only 21 episodes before being canceled; 704 Hauser, only 6. Still, All in the Family is still on the short list for the title of the greatest sitcom ever made. Beyond any question, it is the most groundbreaking.
O'Connor died in 2001, Stapleton in 2013. As of January 12, 2022, Reiner and Struthers are still alive, both at the age of 74. Brisebois is 52. And Lear is 99.
UPDATE: Lear made it to 101, before he died on December 5, 2023. Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered in their Los Angeles home on December 14, 2025.
And it took me until
2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were
Schrödinger's Decade. There was too much influence by television, and, at the same time, not enough of it. A lot of TV went too far. There was also a lot of bad TV. And some of the good TV didn't go as far enough in doing good that it could have.
*
January 12, 1971 was a Tuesday, although All in the Family would air on Saturdays for Seasons 2 to 5, Mondays for Season 6, briefly on Wednesdays and then back to Saturdays for Season 7, and Sundays for Seasons 8 and 9.
Baseball was out of season on that Tuesday. The NFL was preparing for Super Bowl V the following Sunday. The Baltimore Colts beat the Dallas Cowboys, 16-13 at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
There were no games played in the NBA that night, but there were 3 in the American Basketball Association:
* The Pittsburgh Condors beat the Miami Floridians, 122-106 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. Larry Jones scored 39 for the Floridians, but John Brisker led the Condors to victory with 31.
* The Denver Rockets beat the Texas Chaparrals, 120-112 at the Auditorium Arena in Denver. The Chaparrals became the San Antonio Spurs in 1973, and Rockets became the Denver Nuggets in 1974. Both were part of the ABA-NBA merger in 1976, along with the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets and the Indiana Pacers.
* And the Utah Stars beat the Carolina Cougars, 131-120 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. Frank Card scored 36 for the Cougars. Willie Wise led the Stars, who would win the ABA Championship that season, with 25.
And there were 2 games played in the NHL:
* The New York Rangers beat the Vancouver Canucks, 4-2 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. The Broadway Blueshirts got goals from Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield in the 1st period, and Walt Tkaczuk and Bill Faibairn in the 3rd.
* And the St. Louis Blues beat the California Golden Seals, 8-2 at the St. Louis Arena. The Oakland-based Golden Seals would move in 1976, becoming the Cleveland Barons. In 1978, they were merged with the Minnesota North Stars.
