In an interview with The Evening Sun, Carroll O’Connor confessed that he actually pitied the character of Archie Bunker. While it was a role that made him famous, O’Connor expressed that, while he vehemently disagreed with nearly all of the All in the Family character’s opinions, were the character actually a real person, he’d actually have some sympathy for him. He stated, “Sure, I would like him if I met him. I feel sorry for him. He’s a victim of his upbringing and his environment.”
But while Carroll O’Connor was nothing like Archie Bunker, that didn’t mean he was a perfect man. Betty Garrett, best known for playing Irene Lorenzo, neighbor to the Bunker family, wrote about such an incident in her memoir, Betty Garrett and Other Songs: A Life on Stage and Screen. Of her costar, Garett stated, “Personally, Carroll could not be more different from Archie. He is very intelligent, quite liberal in his politics, and soft-spoken.”
However, O’Connor’s wife offered Garett an alternative view of her husband. Garett wrote, “His wife, Nancy, said to me one day while we were watching a rehearsal, ‘You think he isn’t like Archie? Let me tell you something. Every morning, I cook him a hard-boiled egg. You know how sometimes you have trouble peeling a hard-boiled egg? Well, the other morning he got an egg he couldn’t peel. I walked into the kitchen and there he’s got it in his hand and he’s growling at it and squeezing it. Finally, he goes ‘AARGH!’ and squeezes it so hard the egg goes all over the kitchen.'”
Nancy asked Garett, ‘Now isn’t that something Archie Bunker would do?’
Unlike her character, Garett actually found the story very endearing. She wrote, “Carroll was mad at Nancy for telling me that story, but I think it makes him sound adorable.”
