Carroll O'Connor

from the Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television

Best known for his portrayal of cantankerous Archie Bunker on the long-running CBS series All in the Family, Carroll O'Connor has been one of television's most recognized actors for over twenty years. For his work on All in the Family and In the Heat of the Night the actor has received five Emmy Awards, eight Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe Award and a Peabody Award.

O'Connor's acting career began while he was a student in Ireland in the 1950s. Following on experiences in American and European theatre, he established himself as a versatile character actor in Hollywood during the 1960s. Between films he made guest appearances on television programs such as the U.S. Steel Hour, Kraft Television Theatre, the Armstrong Circle Theatre and many of the filmed series hits of the 1960s. But O'Connor became a television star with his portrayal of outspoken bigot Archie Bunker, the American archetype whose chair now sits in the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1968, ABC Television, which had the first rights to the series, financed production of two pilot episodes of All in The Family (then under the title Those Were the Days). But the network's trepidation about the program's socially controversial content led ABC to reject the show. Producer Norman Lear sold the series to CBS, where All in The Family was broadcast for the first time on 12 January 1971 with O'Connor as Archie Bunker. By using humor to tackle racism and other sensitive subjects, All in The Family changed the style and tone of prime time programming on television. It may also have opened the door for political and social satires such as Saturday Night Live and other controversial programs.

Throughout its thirteen seasons the show gained immense popularity (in its heyday, it was said to have reached an average of fifty million viewers weekly), and maintained a groundbreaking sense of social criticism. Archie Bunker's regular stream of racial epithets and malapropisms catalyzed strong reaction from critics. All in the Family was attacked by conservatives who thought that the show made fun of their views, and by liberals who charged that the show was too matter-of-fact about bigotry. The show's successor Archie Bunker's Place, was broadcast on CBS from 1979 TO 1983, and the earlier show also begat two successful spinoffs, Maude and The Jeffersons, one of television's longest-running series about African Americans.

From 1988 to 1994 O'Connor starred in and served as executive producer and head writer for the hit prime time drama In the Heat of the Night. Set in fictional Sparta, Mississippi, but shot on location in Covington, Georgia, In the Heat of the Night may be seen as a continuation of O'Connor's association with television programs designed to function as social commentary by addressing issues of racism and bigotry. O'Connor plays Bill Gillespie, a Southern police chief whose top detective (played by Howard Rollins) is African American. In its 1993 season, the show also featured the marriage of Chief Gillespie to an African American city administrator. The series has received two NAACP Image Awards for contributing positive portrayals of African Americans on television. When the series version of In the Heat of the Night ended, O'Connor produced several made-for-television-movies using the same locations and characters. In 1995, O'Connor's son and co-star on In the Heat of the Night, Hugh O'Connor died of a drug overdose. O'Connor chose to speak out publicly about his grief and his views on the legalization of drugs, and gave a number of well-publicized interviews on these topics on television. He continues to devote much of his time to the social problems surrounding drug addiction.

-Diane Negra