Broadway’s marquee lights will dim for one minute at 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 5. It is the theater world’s tribute to Jean Stapleton.
The landmark work of “All in the Family” has been much on my mind since Stapleton’s death at 90 last Friday. I keep remembering something Rob Reiner told me more than 20 years ago. He said that “All in the Family” maintained such an amazingly consistent level of quality because of the tone set at the top.
Now, you might be thinking that Reiner meant the show’s pioneering executive producer, Norman Lear. But, at that particular moment, he was thinking of another aspect of the series. He was thinking about the incredibly high standard established on the “All in the Family” set by his co-stars, veteran stage actors Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton.
“They demanded the best of themselves, and everyone around them had to rise to that,” said Reiner, who played son-in-law Mike Stivic to O’Connor and Stapleton’s Archie and Edith Bunker. “So we pretty much shot every episode just like a play, and you had to be ready. You go to a sitcom shooting today and it can take hours to shoot 22 minutes. We almost never stopped, and, if we did, it was for a technical reason. We approached each week like opening night.”
There were two ’70s sitcoms renowned for highly disciplined sets — “All in the Family” and “The Odd Couple.” And, not surprisingly, “The Odd Couple” starred two Broadway veterans, Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, who believed in filming episodes as much like a stage play as possible.
“All in the Family” just ranked very high in a Writers Guild of America poll, finishing behind only “The Sopranos,” “Seinfeld” and “The Twilight Zone” on a list of best-written TV shows of all time. It was, of course, a comedy that pushed boundaries and challenged viewers with its handling of social issues
But when you watch those early ’70s episodes, the writing can seem a little preachy, stilted and, well, dated. It is, understandably, a product of its time. But what holds up 100 percent are the performances, particularly O’Connor’s bigoted Archie and Stapleton’s sweet-tempered, tenderhearted, adorably vague Edith.
The performances are what still ring magnificently true in “All in the Family.” They seem every bit as textured and nuanced today as they did when CBS premiered the controversial comedy in January 1971. Lear gave the series a conscience. O’Connor and Stapleton gave each episode such vast quantities of heart and soul, they transformed Queens couple Archie and Edith into iconic TV characters.
And, in so many challenging ways, Stapleton had the more difficult role. In lesser hands, Edith would have been nothing more than what Archie frequently called her — a dingbat. She would have come across as a daffy, one-joke stereotype.
But this was Jean Stapleton playing Edith. She had 30 years of stage, film and TV experience at this point. Her Broadway credits included “Damn Yankees,” “Bells Are Ringing,” “Juno” and “Funny Girl.” She had logged hours of work on live television in the 1950s and filmed series in the ’60s. She was a consummate pro.
So Edith was never annoying. She was endearing. She wasn’t stupid or weak. Indeed, when you gazed beyond the often-confused look, you found remarkable wisdom and strength.
On small matters, she often could get muddled. On the things that really mattered, she held her family together.
It was a deceptively brilliant performance, week in and week out. Archie roared. Edith trilled. Yet her trill spoke more loudly and profoundly than all of his bellows.
The trill also disguised just how versatile an actress Stapleton was. She won three Emmys for playing Edith, then, as if to remind us how wide her acting range was, she played Eleanor Roosevelt in the TV movie “Eleanor: First Lady of the World.” She later toured the country in a one-woman show about Roosevelt.
But there wouldn’t be another TV role to equal Edith. There might have been, however. Writer-producers Richard Levinson, William Link and Peter S. Fischer created “Murder, She Wrote” with Stapleton in mind as crime-solving mystery writer Jessica Fletcher.
“We had a slightly different image in mind for Jessica,” Levinson told me in 1985. “We thought Jean Stapleton was perfect, but she wasn’t interested in doing another series.”
By turning it down, Stapleton opened the way for another iconic TV character, Angela Lansbury’s Jessica.
Still, Stapleton already had secured her honored place in TV history. Although the lights of Broadway go dark Wednesday night in her memory, nothing can dim the comedic genius of her work on “All in the Family.” Watch an episode and see how dazzlingly it shines through.
