If you were to reduce Carroll O’Connor’s entire acting career to his two most-recognized roles, it would be bigot Archie Bunker in All in the Family and evolved bigot Bill Gillespie of In the Heat of the Night. On face value, that would seem to indicate a pretty limited range for a performer, though nothing could be further from the truth given the depth that O’Connor was able to bring to both roles, effortlessly moving from the live audience sitcom setting of the former and the filmed dramatic approach of the latter.
Driving home all of that is the fact that Carroll O’Connor was recognized for his skills, Archie Bunker bringing him four Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award for the episode “Archie Alone;” while Bill Gillespie proved no slouch, delivering his real life alter-ego a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe.
Learn much more about Carroll O’Connor in the facts below.
‘Archie Bunker’s Place’
With Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner ready to move on from the sitcom All in the Family, and Jean Stapleton to follow not long afterwards, O’Connor convinced Norman Lear to allow him to spin-off the Archie Bunker character into the series Archie Bunker’s Place, which saw the character running a bar. That show ran until 1983.
‘In the Heat of the Night’ Starred Carroll O’Connor
Carroll O’Connor’s next major role was in the television version of the crime drama In the Heat of the Night (on which he also served as executive producer), which aired from 1988 to 1995. The 1967 film of the same name won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture of the Year and Best Actor for Rod Steiger, who originated the role of Sheriff Bill Gillespie. When we’re introduced to that Gillespie, he, like many of the people of Sparta, Mississippi, are racist and have no use for visiting detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier). By the end of the film, though, Gillespie has gone through an attitude adjustment.
In the television version, Tibbs, now played by Howard Rollins, returns to the fictional Sparta for his mother’s funeral and is convinced by the town’s mayor to stay on as chief of detectives, where he works once again with Gillespie to solve crimes.
The differences between Archie Bunker and Bill Gillespie
Not surprisingly, given the apparent similarities between Archie Bunker and Bill Gillespie, O’Connor was asked about it. He gave an interview to the Santa, California The Signal in 1989 in which he said, “Rod Steiger’s version was closer to Archie Bunker. Rod played him much tougher. It was the 1960s and Gillespie had to reflect that period. Today the South is an entirely different place. And my interpretation of Gillespie reflects that.”
He added that the two characters came from very different cultural backgrounds, with their similarities really only stemming from the fact that the same actor played both. Said O’Connor, “Archie would never give in or admit he was wrong. He is still carrying his old prejudices around. Gillespie is more intelligent. He understands that the old prejudices must be shucked off little by little.”
It should be noted that in 1989, in the middle of the run of In the Heat of the Night, Carroll O’Connor was made an Honoree at the Emmy Awards’ Hall of Fame.
He took on recurring roles
As In the Heat of the Night came to an end, O’Connor appeared in a couple of movies (1998’s Gideon and 2000’s Return to Me), the 1999 TV movie 36 Hours to Die and had a recurring role as Jake Gordon on six episodes of the original version of Party of Five and four episodes of Mad About You, on which he played Jamie Buchman’s (Helen Hunt) father, Gus Stemple, opposite Carol Burnett as her mother, Theresa
