All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

6/02/2013

Shows What I Know

'All in the Family' star Jean Stapleton dies at 90

I always thought that the reason that they cancelled the show was that she died sometime in the early 80"s.  They killed her off in the TV show from a stroke.  I always thought that she had cancer.  That's what you get for believing the story line in a show.  I reviewed her body of work, and I'm ashamed to say that even though I saw a number of the shows she did after 'All in the Family' I don't remember seeing her in any of them.

To give Mrs Stapleton her due, she no doubt had the hardest acting job on 'All in the Family'.  Playing the "straight man" is aways harder than playing the comic, or in Archie's case the buffoon.   Carroll O'Conner was as left wing as they came.  I don't want to seem to be discrediting his acting, I love it, but he was playing up an exaggerated concept of what he believed conservatives were.  Jean on the other hand had to "act down" to a subservient role of the "ding bat".  In my estimation this was much harder to pull off as an actress than any of the other character roles in the program.

Jean Stapleton, you were a wonderful actress and you did good work which I very much enjoyed watching.  "Those were the days", indeed.  Thank you and rest in peace.
Posted by at

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:37 PM

    I don't remember her acting in anything after AITF either.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Astrosmith9:44 PM

    She was in the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie about book stores.

    ReplyDelete
  3. WaterBoy1:46 AM

    @ Astrosmith: That was You've Got Mail. Don't ask how I know that.

    She was also in the movie Michael with John Travolta. Don't ask how I know that, either.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Res Ipsa11:37 AM

    "Don't ask"

    Don't tell?

    You watch chick flicks with the wife. It's OK married guys get a pass on that. We all understand that sometimes you have to bite the bullet.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Master Doh-San12:37 PM

    The whole impetus behind AITF was to show conservatives in the worst light possible.

    Backfired pretty well, didn't it? :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Res Ipsa1:05 PM

    Doh-San

    Archie was right man, Archie was right.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Astrosmith1:41 PM

    WTF did Meg Ryan do to her face? She was so cute, and now????

    ReplyDelete
  8. WaterBoy1:55 PM

    Attempts to overcome the aging process rarely work out well.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)