It's really hard, if not impossible, to describe how different TV became after this night 40 years ago.
You see, it was on this day in 1971 that All in the Family made its debut — and everything changed.
Well, not right away. I'm not sure how good the ratings were when it first aired — or whether they were good at all.
Those who were even aware of it in January 1971 may or may not have known of its frequent use of epithetical language before watching the pilot episode.
And some people, as I recall, claimed to be offended by it — even after it was revealed later that they had not seen the program at all.
The claim seemed plausible, though. I've seen retrospective programs about the series in which the stars — Jean Stapleton, Sally Struthers, Rob Reiner and, of course, the late Carroll O'Connor — spoke of how they expected the show to be yanked from the schedule after four or six episodes at the most. They spoke of the high regard they had for the writing, but they were convinced that parts were simply too extreme. They didn't think mainstream viewers would accept it.
The network may not have had much faith in the series' future, either. The night the pilot episode aired, CBS ran the following disclaimer:
The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are.
My memory is that not all TV viewers demonstrated the kind of maturity that CBS hoped for.
But enough viewers accepted the often–ugly but sometimes–amusing and frequently–insightful reflection they saw in the mirror of television. In its way, All in the Family may have been the first of the reality shows — albeit a fictionalized one.
It directed an extremely bright light on some unpleasant truths and forced viewers to laugh — at themselves as much as, if not more than, others.
In 2011, that pilot episode seems tame, but in the first half of the episode alone there were things that TV viewers weren't accustomed to in 1971 — things like a spoof of stereotypical Negro dialect, displays of and dialogue about sexuality, a debate about the existence of God and open use of epithets that had rarely been uttered on American television before.
As with any successful series, it is hard to imagine anyone else in the starring roles, but, in fact, the producers originally wanted Mickey Rooney to play the part of Archie. Rooney, however, turned it down. I have heard that he was concerned about the likelihood of controversy — and the probability, in Rooney's view, that the program would fail.
I don't know if anyone other than Stapleton was ever considered for the part of Edith, but Struthers and Reiner had some hurdles to clear before they joined the cast. My understanding is that Reiner was always series creator Norman Lear's choice to play Mike/Meathead, even though Richard Dreyfuss (one of Reiner's friends) apparently lobbied for the part.
Not getting the part doesn't seem to have hurt Dreyfuss' career. He didn't get the All in the Family gig, but his film credits have included such movies as "Jaws," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Goodbye Girl," "Mr. Holland's Opus" and a long list of lesser–known big– and small–screen productions.
Struthers, on the other hand, was not the first choice to play Gloria. In an unaired pilot for the series (when its title was Those Were the Days and the family was called Justice instead of Bunker), Gloria was played by Candice Azzara, a character actress who appeared in several TV series in the 1970s. Mike (named Dickie in the pilot) was played by an actor named Chip Oliver.
When All in the Family joined the primetime lineup, it was in CBS' stable. But the original pilot was produced by ABC, which was not happy with Azzara and Oliver. Eventually, ABC canceled the project and CBS picked it up.
CBS, I have heard, was eager to change its image. At the time, it was strongly associated with so–called "rural" programming like Mayberry RFD, Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. CBS wanted a more modern image, and it sure got it.
From the perspective of the 21st century, it is hard to tell how well received the series was at first. By the end of the 1971 TV season, the show ranked 34th, which wasn't necessarily good in an era when only three networks controlled the airwaves. It had only been on the air for half a season, though, so it may have been gaining momentum.
In fact, logic insists that it must have been gaining momentum because it was ranked #1 for the next five seasons. No other TV series had ever accomplished that before and only two have duplicated the achievement since.
I was a young boy when the series made its debut, and I have spotty memories of what TV — in fact, what American culture — was like before it came along.
It's hard to imagine at a time when American presidents have appeared on TV talk shows with some frequency, but, in 1971, an American president simply didn't do that sort of thing.
Maybe that had something to do with who was president — Richard Nixon. My memory of him as president is that he always seemed uptight (George Carlin once said Nixon looked constipated) — but, apparently, he was a little more freewheeling back when he was running for president and he appeared on Rowan & Martin's Laugh–In and spoke the phrase that the show made famous, "Sock it to me."
Only he uttered it as a question.
But it is clear, from the infamous tapes that Nixon made of his conversations, that he and his associates were paying attention to the program's influence on popular culture. On one occasion, he and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, discussed an early episode in which Archie wrote to the president.
To my knowledge, Nixon rarely, if ever, discussed popular culture in public when he was president, but All in the Family's contributions to American life were undeniable.
When I was growing up:
- Everyone knew that an Archie Bunker was a bigot, probably a racist, possibly a sexist and a homophobe.
If you were called an Archie Bunker, chances were good that you had a reputation for being intolerant. - Everyone knew what words like dingbat, stifle and meathead meant.
Maude was rather short lived, compared to The Jeffersons, but it still enjoyed more success than many series, running for six seasons. The Jeffersons lasted for 11 years.
But Maude was responsible for another, more popular spinoff — Good Times — that ran for six years.
All in the Family itself continued for a few more years under the name of Archie Bunker's Place. The cast changed, but, when all was said and done, Archie Bunker, his family and his former neighbors influenced American culture for most of the 1970s and nearly half of the 1980s.
