No TV character could ever get away with talking like that in our politically correct times. In fact, when “All in the Family” debuted in 1971, CBS was nervous enough that it ran a viewers’ advisory. But in the hands of actor Carroll O’Connor, America not only accepted Archie, it adored him. O’Connor, who died of a heart attack last week at 76, took what could have been a monster of a man and somehow made him sympathetic and even lovable. It helped that the classically trained character actor could express frustration and outrage–Archie’s signature emotions–with a seemingly endless supply of smirks, grimaces and hilarious vocal eruptions. But O’Connor always said that Archie succeeded not so much because of him but because the character of a beleaguered working-class man struggling to hold on in a fast-changing world was so real. “Right from the start I loved the idea of this show,” O’Connor said. “It was frank and refreshing, a lot more true to life than anything on the air. Everybody was talking about creating shows that were relevant, but nobody wanted to touch the real thing.”
O’Connor was working in relative obscurity onstage and in the movies when Norman Lear cast him as Archie. “I just loved his face,” says Lear. “I had the words and attitude of Archie clear, but everything else was amorphous until Carroll gave it flesh and blood.” O’Connor went on to other noteworthy roles, including a six-year stint as a Southern sheriff on TV’s “In the Heat of the Night,” for which he won his fifth Emmy Award. He spent the last several years crusading against drug abuse after his son, Hugh, a cocaine addict, committed suicide at 32. But long after O’Connor moved on to other projects–and his “All in the Family” chair was moved into the Smithsonian–fans on the street called him Archie. The politically liberal son of a New York lawyer said he never minded being confused with his reactionary alter ego. “I don’t want the public to forget Archie Bunker,” he said. They never will.
