Playing a television character beloved by generations of viewers is a rare achievement. Doing it twice makes you an icon. Carroll O’Connor did just that: first, as loveable loudmouth Archie Bunker on All In The Family and then as Mississippi police chief Bill Gillespie on In The Heat Of The Night. Show O’Connor could not have been more different than Archie, but that didn’t stop him from making us love him. While Norman Lear created All In The Family (based on the British sitcom 'Til Death Us Do Part), O’Connor made Archie Bunker who he was: the most memorably real character primetime TV had seen to date. His Archie was a product of a particular time, mentality, and upbringing, one that many of our parents and grandparents shared. O’Connor’s portrayal didn’t pull any punches, nor did it apologize. O’Connor did the same with In The Heat Of The Night’s Chief Gillespie, a character with an equally problematic history (as depicted in the Oscar-winning 1967 film). His Gillespie became the anti-Archie, and O’Connor’s creative and supervisory role on the series gave him an opportunity to highlight diversity and tell stories unseen on primetime, before or since. In the process, Carroll O’Connor earned five Emmys, a Golden Globe, a Peabody Award, and a place in our hearts. Here are some facts about one of the most enduring stars in TV history. 1. Like Archie, O’Connor was a New Yorker. Carroll O’Connor was born on August 2, 1924 in The Bronx, New York. Like the character who made him famous, O’Connor lived in Queens as a child: first in Elmhurst and later in Forest Hills. (The Bunkers lived in Astoria.) Unlike Archie, O’Connor came from a family of white collar professionals; his father was a lawyer, his mother was a teacher, and his two younger brothers became doctors. 2. Both Archie and O’Connor served our country. Archie Bunker is a proud veteran of World War II, a Purple Heart recipient who served in the Army Air Corps in Italy. (Fans of All In The Family know exactly where Archie was hit with shrapnel when he was wounded!) In real life, Carroll O’Connor was a student at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and served in the Merchant Marine during the war. Afterward, O’Connor attended the University of Montana, where he met the future Mrs. O’Connor: Missoula native Nancy Fields. 3. Burgess Meredith gave him his big break. O’Connor married Nancy in 1951 while studying acting at the National University of Ireland. After living and working in Europe for three years (using the stage name George Roberts), O’Connor and Nancy moved to New York City. In 1958, he was cast in the Off-Broadway adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, earning acclaim from critics. That production was directed by Burgess Meredith, a future Oscar nominee for Rocky and Day Of The Locust. O’Connor would return the favor decades later, casting Meredith as Judge Cully on In The Heat Of The Night. (Meredith also co-starred on the short-lived All In The Family spin-off Gloria with Sally Struthers, and made guest appearances on Archie Bunker’s Place.) 4. O’Connor’s adopted son had a troubled life. O’Connor made his film debut in 1958 in The Defiant Ones, a racially fraught drama. Four years later, while filming Cleopatra in Italy with Elizabeth Taylor, Carroll and Nancy adopted a newborn baby boy. They named him Hugh, after O’Connor’s younger brother (who had recently died in a motorcycle accident). Sixteen years later, Hugh O’Connor was stricken with Hodgkins Lymphoma and forced to endure chemotherapy and surgeries. He survived, but reportedly developed a dependency upon drugs that would plague him for the rest of his life. Hugh O’Connor worked behind the scenes on Archie Bunker’s Place in the early 1980s and was cast in In The Heat Of The Night as Sparta cop Lonnie Jamison, a character he played for the run of the series. Sadly, he took his own life in 1995, just weeks before the final episode aired. He was 32-years-old. 5. He first played Archie three years before All In The Family premiered. O’Connor first caught Norman Lear’s eye as a blustery general in Blake Edwards’ What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? (1966). He was living in Rome when he got the call from Lear offering him the role of “Archie Justice” in 1968. The series – then titled Justice For All – was so unlikely to sell (at least in O’Connor’s opinion) that the star demanded a return plane ticket as part of his deal. He was right, but only temporarily. After one more pilot in 1969, the re-titled All In The Family was finally sold to CBS and debuted on January 12, 1971. 6. He nearly quit All In The Family in a contract dispute After starring in television’s highest rated series for four seasons, O’Connor requested a raise in July of 1974. Lear balked, and O’Connor walked. He missed three episodes, with Archie’s disappearance explained by his going missing during a business trip. If O’Connor had indeed left the show, Lear’s plan was for Archie’s co-worker Stretch Cunningham (James Cromwell) to take over as the lead. Cromwell’s first appearance came just weeks before O’Connor’s walk-of. He was killed off in season seven, with Archie himself doing the eulogy for the man who nearly replaced him. 7. Archie never said goodbye. After nine seasons, All In The Family morphed into Archie Bunker’s Place in the fall of 1979. (Lear chose not to continue, but allowed O’Connor to keep the show going as long as he changed the name.) Sally Struthers (Gloria) and Rob Reiner (“Meathead”) had departed after season 8 and co-star Jean Stapleton would do the same after appearing in five episodes of the sequel series. (SPOILER ALERT! Edith dies off-camera.) Archie Bunker’s Place was cancelled unexpectedly by CBS in 1983 after four seasons, with no opportunity for a finale. After 12 years and more than 300 episodes, O’Connor never got the chance to give his career-making character a proper send-off. 8. He was more than just an actor on In The Heat Of The Night. Five years after Archie Bunker’s Place, In The Heat Of The Night debuted on NBC. O’Connor clashed frequently with producers over scripts and storylines, and was himself named showrunner beginning in season three. Changes were visible almost immediately, with a greater focus on Sparta and its residents, rather than outside forces. O’Connor also hired Denise Nicholas, who would play Gillespie’s African-American girlfriend Harriet DeLong. In addition, O’Connor wrote the teleplay or story for two dozen episodes of the series using the pseudonym Matt Harris and directed three episodes. 9. Carroll O’Connor and Jennifer Love Hewitt worked together. Just months after In The Heat Of The Night concluded its eight-season run in 1995, O’Connor took on a recurring role on Fox’s family drama Party Of Five. He played Jake Gordon, maternal grandfather of the Salinger kids and secret benefactor of Bailey Salinger (Scott Wolf). O’Connor appeared in four episodes with future Ghost Whisperer star (and getTV favorite) Jennifer Love Hewitt, who played Bailey’s girlfriend. 10. O’Connor and Carol Burnett played husband and wife! After shooting his last episode of Party of Five in 1996, O’Connor was cast as Helen Hunt’s father Gus Stemple on NBC’s long-running sitcom Mad About You. In a bit of inspired casting, Gus’s wife was played by fellow television icon Carol Burnett. The two living legends had never acted together, but they did share the screen in a number of TV specials. The most notable of these was Keep U.S. Beautiful, a 1973 ecology-themed special on CBS. 11. BONUS! His final role pays subtle tribute to Archie Bunker. In his final years, O’Connor wrote the memoir I Think I’m Outta Here and taught screenwriting at the University of Montana, where he had earned a master’s degree in 1956. O’Connor made his final acting appearance in the romantic drama Return To Me (2000) starring David Duchovny and Minnie Driver. He played Driver’s grandfather Marty, the Irish-American owner of a bar in a working-class neighborhood. Sound familiar? For airdates and times, visit the All In The Family show page.
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 Carroll O'Connor (born John Carroll O'Connor; August 2, 1924 – June 21, 2001) was an American actor, Television producer and Television director whose television career spanned four decades. Known at first for playing the role of Major General Colt in the 1970 movie Kelly's Heroes, he later found fame as the bigoted working man Archie Bunker, the main character in the 1970s CBS television sitcom series All in the Family (1971 to 1979) and Archie Bunker's Place (1979 to 1983). Carroll later starred in the NBC/CBS television crime drama In the Heat of the Night from 1988 to 1995, where he played the role of southern Police Chief William (Bill) Gillespie. At the end of his career in the late 1990s, he played the father of Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt) on Mad About You. In 1996, O'Connor was ranked #38 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.[2] Early lifeO'Connor, an Irish American, was the eldest of three sons born in Manhattan,[1] New York, to Edward Joseph O'Connor, a lawyer, and his wife, Elise Patricia O'Connor. Both of his brothers became doctors: Hugh, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1961, and Robert, a psychiatrist in New York City.[1] O'Connor spent much of his youth in Elmhurst, Queens and Forest Hills, New York, Queens, the same borough in which his character Archie Bunker would later live. [3] In 1941, Carroll enrolled at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, but dropped out when the United States entered World War II. During World War II]] he was rejected by the U.S. Navy and enrolled in the US Merchant Marine Academy for a short time. After leaving that institution, he became a merchant seaman.[4] O'Connor attended the University of Montana-Missoula where he met Nancy Fields, who would later become his wife. He also worked at the Montana Kaimin student newspaper as an editor. At the University of Montana, he joined Sigma Phi Epsilon.[5] At that time, however, O'Connor did not take any drama courses as an undergraduate. O'Connor later left Montana University to help his younger brother Hugh get into medical school in Ireland, where he completed his studies at the University College Dublin. It was there that he began his acting career.[1] After he graduated from the University of Montana in 1951 with degrees in drama and English, Carroll's then fiancée, Nancy, sailed to Ireland to meet Carroll, who was visiting his brother, Hugh. [6] The couple married in Dublin on July 28, 1951.[7] In 1956, O'Connor returned to Missoula to earn a master's degree in speech.[6] Prolific Character ActorAfter acting in theatrical productions in Dublin (Ireland) and New York during the 1950s, O'Connor's breakthrough came when he was cast by director Burgess Meredith (assisted by John Astin) in a featured role in the Broadway adaptation of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. O'Connor and Meredith remained close, lifelong friends.[8] Carroll made his television acting debut as a character actor on two episodes of Sunday Showcase. These two parts led to other roles on such television series as The Eleventh Hour, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Fugitive, The Wild Wild West, Armstrong Circle Theatre, The Americans, Death Valley Days, The Great Adventure, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Dr. Kildare, I Spy, That Girl, Premiere, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Insight among many others. O'Connor starred as an Eastern European villain in the first season of Mission Impossible Season 1, Episode 18 "The Trial," brilliantly played and recognizable by his intense blue eyes.</ref> Late in his career, he appeared on several episodes of Mad About You as the father of Helen Hunt's character. Television RolesAll in the FamilyCarroll and his wife Nancy were living in Italy in 1968 when producer Norman Lear first asked him to come to New York to star in a pilot he was creating for ABC called Justice For All, with O'Connor playing Archie Justice, a lovable yet controversial bigot. After three pilots done between 1968 to 1970, a network change to CBS, and the last name of the character changed to Bunker, the new sitcom was renamed All in the Family. The show was based on the BBC's Till Death Us Do Part, with Bunker based on Alf Garnett, but somewhat less abrasive than the original. It has been stated that O'Connor's Queens background and New York accent influenced Lear to set the show in Queens.[9] Wanting a well-known actor to tackle the controversial material, Lear had approached Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney to play Archie; both declined. O'Connor accepted, not expecting the show to be a success and believing he would be able to move back to Europe. (In her book Archie & Edith, Mike & Gloria : the Tumultuous History of All in the Family, Donna McCrohan noted that O'Connor requested that Lear provide him with a return airline ticket to Rome as a condition of his accepting the role, so that he could return to Italy when the show failed.) Instead, the show became the highest-rated television program on American television for five consecutive seasons until the 1976-1977 season (the sixth season). The Cosby Show has since met the record set by All in the Family. O'Connor's own politics were liberal. He understood the Bunker character and played him not only with bombast and humor but with touches of vulnerability. The writing on the show was consistently left of center, but O'Connor often deftly skewered the liberal pieties of the day. Although Bunker was famous for his malapropisms of the English language, O'Connor was highly educated and cultured and was an English professor before he turned to acting. The show also starred a seasoned Broadway theatre actress, also from New York City, Jean Stapleton, in the role of Archie Bunker's long-suffering wife, Edith Bunker, after Lear saw her in the play Damn Yankees. The producer sent the show over to ABC-TV twice, but it didn't get picked up. They then approached CBS-TV executives with more success, and accordingly, All in the Family was retooled and debuted early in 1971. The show also starred unknown character actors, such as Rob Reiner as Archie's liberal son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic and Sally Struthers as Archie and Edith's only child and Meathead's wife, Gloria Bunker-Stivic. The cast had a unique on- and off-camera chemistry, especially Reiner, who became O'Connor's best friend and favorite actor. CBS was unsure whether the controversial subject matter of All in the Family would fit well into a sitcom. Racial issues, ethnicities, religions, and other timely topics were addressed. Like its British predecessor Til Death Do Us Part, the show lent dramatic social substance to the traditional sitcom format. Archie Bunker's popularity made O'Connor a top-billing star of the 1970s. O'Connor was afraid of being typecast for playing the role, but at the same time, he was protective of not just his character, but of the entire show.[10] A contract dispute between O'Connor and Lear marred the beginning of the show's fifth season. Eventually, O'Connor got a raise and appeared in the series until it ended. For his work as Archie Bunker, he was nominated for eight Emmy Awards as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series; he won the award four times (1972, 1977, 1978, and 1979). At the end of the eighth season in 1978, Reiner and Struthers left the series to pursue other projects, but O'Connor and Stapleton still had one year left on their contracts. At the start of the final year, the show cast a child actress, Danielle Brisebois, in the role of Archie's and Edith's niece, Stephanie Mills. The series was finally cancelled in 1979 after nine seasons and 210 episodes. Archie Bunker's PlaceArchie Bunker's Place ran for 4 years. Longtime friend and original series star Jean Stapleton reprised her role as Edith Bunker, but her screen time was limited. Her character died of a stroke, leaving Archie to cope with the loss. Danielle Brisebois played Stephanie Mills, Archie's niece in the series. The show was a hit, but not as big as its parent show. The show was unceremoniously canceled in 1983, after 97 episodes, and O'Connor was angered about the show's cancellation, maintaining that the show ended with an inappropriate finale. He vowed never to work in any type of show with CBS again, although he starred in In the Heat of the Night, which aired on CBS in that show's last three seasons. All told, he played Archie Bunker for 13 years in 307 episodes. In the Heat of the NightWhile coping with his son's drug problem, O'Connor starred as Sparta, Mississippi, Police Chief Bill Gillespie, a tough veteran Mississippi cop on In the Heat of the Night. Based on the 1967 movie of the same name, the series debuted on NBC-TV early in 1988 and performed well. He cast his son Hugh O'Connor as Officer Lonnie Jamison. The headquarters of the Sparta Police Department was actually the library in Covington, Georgia. Much like O'Connor himself, Gillespie was racially progressive and politically liberal. But the character of Bill Gillespie was also a smart and tough police officer who was not afraid to use his gun when the occasion called for it. In 1989, while working on the set, O'Connor was hospitalized and had to undergo open heart surgery, which caused him to miss four episodes at the end of the second season (actor Joe Don Baker took his place in those episodes as an acting police chief.) The series was transferred from NBC to CBS in 1992 and cancelled two years later, after its seventh season. O'Connor reprised his role the following year for four two-hour In the Heat of the Night television films to critical acclaim While on the series, O'Connor recorded "Bring A Torch, Jeanette Isabella," for the 1991 "In the Heat of the Night" Christmas CD "Christmas Time's A Comin'." He was joined by Grand Ole Opry star mandolinist Jesse McReynolds, Nashville accordionist Abe Manuel, Jr., and Nashville fiddlers Buddy Spicher and Randall Franks. CD Producer and series co-star Randall Franks created the arrangement which was co-produced by series co-star Alan Autry. He joined other members of the cast for a recording of "Jingle Bells" with vocals by Country Music Hall of Fame members Little Jimmy Dickens, Kitty Wells, Pee Wee King, and The Marksmen Quartet, Bobby Wright, Johnnie Wright and Ken Holloway. Career honors
Other honorsIn 1973, his fraternity conferred its highest honor, Sigma Phi Epsilon Citation, on him. In July 1991, O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers were reunited to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of All in the Family, which made its debut on CBS. Thanks to reruns which aired in syndication, TV Land, Antenna TV, and on CBS-TV, the show continued to be popular. Those reruns led producer Norman Lear to create a new sitcom, Sunday Dinner, which was soon cancelled. The following year, Lear created The Powers That Be, which was also unsuccessful. In March 2000, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was given a St. Patrick's Day tribute by MGM. His caricature figures prominently in Sardi's restaurant, in New York City's Theater District. Later lifeIn 1962, while he was in Rome, filming Cleopatra, O'Connor and his wife adopted a six-day-old boy, naming him Hugh after O'Connor's brother who had died a year earlier. 17-year-old Hugh later worked as a courier on the set of Archie Bunker's Place. O'Connor would eventually create the role of Officer Lonnie Jamison on In the Heat of the Night for his son.[11] In 1989, O'Connor's long time cigar smoking finally caught up with him. He was admitted to the hospital for heart bypass surgery. In 1995, O'Connor's son, actor Hugh O'Connor, who worked with him on the long-running NBC/CBS-TV series In The Heat of the Night, committed suicide after a long battle with drug addiction. Following his son's death, O'Connor appeared in public service announcements for Partnership for a Drug Free America (www.drugfree.org) and spent the rest of his life working to raise awareness about drug addiction. O'Connor also successfully lobbied to get the State of California to pass legislation allowing family members of an addicted person or anyone injured by a drug dealer's actions, including employers, to sue for reimbursement for medical treatment and rehabilitation costs. The law, known as the Drug Dealer Civil Liability Act in California, went into effect in 1997. Eleven other states followed with similar legislation, which has been referred to as The Hugh O'Connor Memorial Law. In 1997, the O'Connors donated $1 million to their alma mater to help match a challenge grant to the University of Montana from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The university named a regional studies and public policy institute the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West.[6] Afterward, O'Connor taught screenwriting at the university. In 1998 O'Connor underwent a second surgery to clear the blockage in a cardiac artery, to reduce his risk of stroke. DeathO'Connor died on June 21, 2001 in Culver City, California from a heart attack brought on by complications from diabetes. His funeral mass was celebrated at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood, Los Angeles, California and was attended by All in the Family cast members Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers and Danielle Brisebois, as well as producer Norman Lear. Actress Jean Stapleton, who played O'Connor's onscreen wife and who had been a close friend of O'Connor's since the early 1960s, did not attend the service due to a stage production performance commitment.[12] In honor of O'Connor's career, TV Land preempted an entire weekend of programming to show a continuous marathon of All in the Family. During the commercial breaks TV Land also showed interview footage of O'Connor and various All in the Family actors, producers with whom he had worked, and other associates. O'Connor's best friend Larry Hagman and his family were also there, alongside the surviving cast of In the Heat of the Night, including Alan Autry and Denise Nicholas, who also attended the memorial. Actor Martin Sheen, then starring on The West Wing, delivered the eulogy. O'Connor is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery with his son Hugh's cenotaph placed on his grave stone. Personal quotes"Nothing will give me any peace. I've lost a son. And I'll go to my grave without any peace over that."[13] "It was a lack of system that made the '30s Depression as inevitable as all others previously suffered."[14] "Get between your kid and drugs, any way you can, if you want to save the kid's life".[13] "I thought that the public would kick us off the air, because of this egregious guy. No. They loved ... they knew him."[15] On his son: "I should have spied on him. I should've taken away all his civil rights, spied on him, opened his mail, listened to telephone calls, everything."[15] "I never heard Archie's kind of talk in my own family. My father was a lawyer and was in partnership with two Jews, who with their families were close to us. There were black families in our circle of friends. My father disliked talk like Archie's—he called it lowbrow."[16] "The biggest part of my life was the acquiring and the loss of a son. I mean, nothing else was as important as that."[15] "Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire."[17] References
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