12 Facts About the Actor Who Played Archie Bunker in ‘All in the Family’

If you were to reduce Carroll O’Connor’s entire acting career to his two most-recognized roles, it would be bigot Archie Bunker in All in the Family and evolved bigot Bill Gillespie of In the Heat of the Night. On face value, that would seem to indicate a pretty limited range for a performer, though nothing could be further from the truth given the depth that O’Connor was able to bring to both roles, effortlessly moving from the live audience sitcom setting of the former and the filmed dramatic approach of the latter.

Driving home all of that is the fact that Carroll O’Connor was recognized for his skills, Archie Bunker bringing him four Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award for the episode “Archie Alone;” while Bill Gillespie proved no slouch, delivering his real-life alter-ego a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe.

Born John Carroll O’Connor on August 2, 1924, in New York City, the oldest of three sons, he enrolled at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University but dropped out to enlist in the United States Navy, from which he was rejected. Instead, he was a part of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy for a time before becoming a merchant seaman and serving as a United States Merchant Marine during World War II.

Following World War II, O’Connor enrolled at the University of Montana, where he became an editor of the student newspaper and met his future wife, Nancy Fields, before leaving for Ireland to help his brother, Hugh, get into medical school. While there, he enrolled at the University College Dublin.

A lot happened there: Upon her graduation, Nancy Fields came to Ireland and the two were married on July 28, 1951. And while O’Connor had no interest in becoming an actor — instead envisioning himself a professor of European history — he did some acting while there and was discovered by producer Sheila Richards, who got him involved with Dublin’s Irish Players group. As he would tell The Los Angeles Times in 1972, “The press said I was the only American actor who ever worked in Ireland who could perform an Irish part faithfully, and they were correct.”

Returning to America, he got his start in an off-Broadway production of James Joyce’s Ulysses, directed by Burgess Meredith (the Penguin from Adam West’s Batman TV show and Mickey from the Rocky franchise), followed a year later by a revival of Clifford Odets’ Big Knife. He also appeared in 20 movies between 1958’s The Defiant Ones and 1971’s Doctor’s Wives. Additionally, he made his television debut in the 1951 TV movie The Whiteheaded Boy and then, between 1960 and 1971, starred in several others and made numerous episodic guest appearances.

Television made a major transition between the late 1960s and early 1970s, and writer/producer Norman Lear was leading the way with All in the Family, which originally aired from 1971 to 1979. Looking at modern-day America through the eyes of conservative Archie Bunker and his wife Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton), and their liberal daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and son-in-law Mike “Meathead” Stivic (Rob Reiner), the show was not only a genuine exploration of the generation gap and changing mores, but tapped into everything from the Vietnam War to racism, homophobia, and criticizing the presidency while breaking various taboos in the medium along the way.

All in the Family was enormously popular, particularly Archie Bunker, though Carroll O’Connor had no illusions about the character, candidly giving an interview to the Redlands Daily Facts in 1972 in which he reflected, “I don’t know how many Americans are as short-sighted as Archie. He’s an ignorant man. He’s popular on TV, because viewers enjoy watching him, but I don’t think many of them would have him for a friend or feel they share his traits. Remember, Archie is a victim, too. He’s a victim of his own background and education. His thinking was shaped at an early age when he was inculcated with bigotry. He got it from his parents.”

“I’m not making Archie lovable,” he added. “I’m making him a human being. And there’s always an element of love in a human being.”

With Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner ready to move on from the sitcom All in the Family, and Jean Stapleton to follow not long after, O’Connor convinced Norman Lear to allow him to spin off the Archie Bunker character into the series Archie Bunker’s Place, which saw the character running a bar. That show ran until 1983.

Carroll O’Connor’s next major role was in the television version of the crime drama In the Heat of the Night (on which he also served as executive producer), which aired from 1988 to 1995. The 1967 film of the same name won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture of the Year and Best Actor for Rod Steiger, who originated the role of Sheriff Bill Gillespie. When we’re introduced to that Gillespie, he, like many of the people of Sparta, Mississippi, are racist and have no use for visiting detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier). By the end of the film, though, Gillespie has gone through an attitude adjustment.

In the television version, Tibbs, now played by Howard Rollins, returns to the fictional Sparta for his mother’s funeral and is convinced by the town’s mayor to stay on as the chief of detectives, where he works once again with Gillespie to solve crimes.

Not surprisingly, given the apparent similarities between Archie Bunker and Bill Gillespie, O’Connor was asked about it. He gave an interview to The Signal in 1989 in which he said, “Rod Steiger’s version was closer to Archie Bunker. Rod played him much tougher. It was the 1960s and Gillespie had to reflect that period. Today the South is an entirely different place. And my interpretation of Gillespie reflects that.”

He added that the two characters came from very different cultural backgrounds, with their similarities really only stemming from the fact that the same actor played both. Said O’Connor, “Archie would never give in or admit he was wrong. He is still carrying his old prejudices around. Gillespie is more intelligent. He understands that the old prejudices must be shucked off little by little.”

It should be noted that in 1989, in the middle of the run of In the Heat of the Night, Carroll O’Connor was made an Honoree at the Emmy Awards’ Hall of Fame.

As In the Heat of the Night came to an end, O’Connor appeared in a couple of movies (1998’s Gideon and 2000’s Return to Me), the 1999 TV movie 36 Hours to Die and had a recurring role as Jake Gordon on six episodes of the original version of Party of Five and four episodes of Mad About You, on which he played Jamie Buchman’s (Helen Hunt) father, Gus Stemple, opposite Carol Burnett as her mother, Theresa.

While O’Connor’s marriage to Nancy Fields was a happy one and he was with her from the time they got married until his death, the challenge they had was with their son, Hugh. Adopted by the couple in 1962 while O’Connor was filming Cleopatra and named after his brother, who had died the previous year in a motorcycle accident, Hugh played Officer Lonnie Jamison on In the Heat of the Night. Sadly, he suffered from a major drug addiction and on March 28, 1995, committed suicide.

Devastated, O’Connor went public in a campaign against Hugh’s drug dealer — a man named Harry Perzigian — who failed in his efforts to respond with a defamation lawsuit against the actor, who in turn commented to the media that “there isn’t a day I don’t think of [Hugh] and want him back and miss him. I’ll feel that way until I’m not here anymore.”

This may seem unlikely on some level, but O’Connor and I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas star Larry Hagman were best friends, having met in 1959 when the latter was starring on Broadway in God and Kate Murphy and the former was serving as an assistant stage manager on the show. They were both struggling young actors at the time and rented New York City apartments near each other, remaining close through the years.

On June 21, 2001, Carroll O’Connor died at the age of 76 from a heart attack as a result of complications from diabetes. Those attending his funeral included his family, Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers, Norman Lear, and Larry Hagman.

Back in 1989, he shared that he knew the image of Archie Bunker was one that he would never shake and he was actually fine with that, commenting, “I don’t want to escape Archie Bunker. I love Archie. He follows me all over the world. It’s a wonderful image, probably the best I’ll ever play.”

Source: particlenews.com, The Los Angeles Times, The Signal