Carroll oconnor almost quit all in the family because of
Daly, president of the entertainment division, spent long hours talking Lear into another season with just O'Connor and Stapleton, who were both willing to continue in roles that have made them the kind of national figures that only television can create. Lear, who knocked television for a loop with "Family" in 1971 and went on to produce 15 other series, some of them "Family" spinoffs, had been declaring all year that the eighth season of "All in the Family" would be the last and that production would stop even though the show remains a hit.ĬBS has anything but a surplus of hits, however, and Robert A. So when Edith hugged Mike and Archie hugged Gloria and Gloria hugged Edith and Mike even brought himself to hug Archie - and tell him, "I know you always thought I hated you, but I love you" - it was art hugging life as it rarely does for television or anything else.Įxcept that about an hour later, everybody was hugging everybody else again during a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton as Archie and Edith Bunker will stay on for at least one more season. Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers, who play Mike and Gloria Stivic, are leaving the show for separate projects of their own. Jankowski of the mother of series creator Norman Lear - knew it. The goodbyes were for real, and everybody in the invited audience - from CBS Network President Gene F.
People sniffled and dabbed at their eyes throughout Friday night's taping of the season's last episode of "All in the Family." The waterworks inside nearly matched the Biblical rains outside the studio when Gloria and Mike said their goodbyes to Archie and Edith. It was the final breakup of an American home, and it happened before 300 weepy onlookers in a little corner of Queens just footsteps away from Sunset Boulevard.