January 12, 1971: All in the Family Premieres

January 12, 1971, 50 years ago: 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, he 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. He 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. 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.

In essence, he was Archie's anti-matter, and there were explosions, which caused Gloria to start crying. Her frequency of crying surpassed that of Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo on I Love Lucy, and hasn't been approached since except by Jennifer Aniston's 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 health respect for him, not that he'd 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, though eventually 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 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. In 1975, with George's drycleaning business taking off, they were, as their new theme said, "Movin' on up to the East Side," and The Jeffersons premiered. The Stivics moved into their house, next door to the Bunkers'.

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.

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. Reiner and Struthers are still alive, both at the age of 74. Brisebois is 52.