Jean Stapleton has died. You may know her as Edith Bunker. She was a wonderful actress. I guess I probably learned a lot about politics from watching All in the Family. The Bunker family wasn’t anything like my family on pretty much any level. About the only thing we had in common is that our fathers worked in New York City. Meathead and Gloria were tackling some of the same issues as my older brothers, I guess, but there was no one my age on the show. My favorite character was Lionel Jefferson. I loved how he handled Archie. I mostly just felt badly for Edith. I enjoyed it on the rare occassions when she stood up for herself. I’m sad to know she’s gone.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Stapleton was a true talent. A wonderful actress, and I mean that with all sincerity. There isn’t anyone today who comes close to her level of talent.
She was great in whatever role she took on. I’ll always remember her in Michael with John Travolta.
From “Michael” John Travolta and Jean Stapleton ‘Dancing to Heaven
We have lost a true artist today.
She was superb in a difficult role. The less flashy and more subtle acting gigs are often the most challenging and require the greatest skill.
As I thought about “All In the Family” which I enjoyed from the first episode and several years thereafter, it occurred to me that it wasn’t quite contemporary in its time during the first three or four years of its run — off by a few years. Years of significant cultural change. The British original, initially aired in 1965, was probably more in sync with real times. Edith and Archie were characters that came of age during WWII and Mike and Gloria were early Boomers and were more real than fictional. Except Edith would have had a little job at least by the time Gloria was a teenager.
While there were plenty of women who worked during WW II and afterwards, there remained a cultural pull for mothers in that generation to stay at home and raise the kids. Edith’s daughter Gloria was born around 1950; Archie had a decent Union job which would have supported a family of three in their modest neighborhood just fine.
I felt the show was quite contemporary in the way it portrayed the changes this older couple was forced to deal with. When “All In The Family” was broadcast, the Labor movement was losing its ability to provide the security the Bunker family had enjoyed. This dovetailed with the feminist movement to cause Edith to spread her wings as the seasons passed. Archie’s decades of dominance over Edith added an extra incentive for Edith’s escalating defiances of her husband. This slow but consistent development in their marriage came off very believably, sometimes heartbreakingly so. Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton’s performances had a lot to do with these fine qualities.
I felt badly for Edith at first, but even before she began standing up more frequently and explicitly to Archie, she was shown holding her own with him in some way, even when it was limited to her quietly maintaining her dignity when Archie behaved foolishly. Like BooMan, I got a fair amount of political education as a child from that show, but I differ from him in my experience of Edith. Norman Lear’s writers loaded the deck for her and against Archie, always.
Yes, Jean Stapleton, RIP.
There was a massive federal government propaganda campaign to get women to marry and quit their jobs and open those jobs up for returning vets. However, depending on the number of children and their ages along with the income of their husbands, women that had been housewives, began returning to the labor force in the late fifties.
Have no problem with the character development of Archie and Edith over the course of the series. And wouldn’t quibble much with the visual representation of their standard of living from Archie’s job which while unionized was still at a lower level from factory jobs. Was merely pointing out that it was lifted more from the mid-1960s than the 1970s. Debate on the Vietnam War was ebbing by the time the show premiered and while the “Archies” were still alive and well by then (almost a decade later those contemporaries that Archie would have argued with when younger turned into Reagan Democrats), the character of Michael was slightly dated.
But was really attempting to explain why the “Ediths,” once so prevalent, wouldn’t be seen much by younger viewers.
Well, yes, the show presented the Bunkers as a bit anachronistic. This seemed intentional, for social and comic effects. And Michael’s liberal rageathons were a couple of years past their cultural peak. But again, this seemed intentional. I’d suggest that these were attributes of the show that ensured its survival and popularity. If “All In The Family” had debuted in the ’60’s, I believe it would have been cancelled after the first season- way too hot for the U.S. to handle culturally.
Agree — it would have been “too hot” for a network to green light any earlier than 1971 and iirc it barely made the cut then. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was cancelled April 1969.
I remember this episode, for example, as being about as hot as top popular culture allowed in the ’70’s. I also remember being very upset by Stapleton’s performance, which felt very, very real:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUqRqRXW37g
Such a terrific performance. And definitely a contemporary reflection of its time, 1977. MS. magazine premiered in 1972, ERA passed Congress the same year, and Against Our Will was published in 1975. Rape crisis centers for women only began to be organized a few years earlier. Statutory rape victims shield laws didn’t begin to be passed until the late 1970s. Not included at the federal level until 1994. Yet, even today, over thirty year’s later, he blame the rape victim attitude still exists:
Takes a long time to change deeply engrained racial and sexual attitudes. (Galsworthy’s “Forsyte Saga” that correctly portrayed marital rape as violence against a woman was published in 1922.)
She was one of the very few who played a role so well that it becomes impossible to imagine anyone else doing it. I’m glad she had such a long life, and hope she enjoyed it right up to the end.
She turned down roles that had similarity to Edith because she didn’t want to be typecast. Indeed, she played the role so convincingly that one could believe that she was playing herself. All in the Family was almost revolutionary in its day in that it mixed biting social satire into its humor. My step dad, who shared Archie’s world view, often left the room in disgust when we watched the show. To me it stands as the best ever television comedy. We watched a few episodes on youtube last night, and, while they play like a time capsul, the human drama is still relevant, and the shows don’t seem dated.
Back when I was tending bar at a working-class suburban diner, the kneejerk righties loved the show — they saw Archie as the hero and the rest of the characters as exposes of stupid liberals and hippies. Your father may have been unusual.
This was the reason the show was so spectacularly popular in its prime, and a sign of what Lear and his crew achieved artistically. Liberals and conservatives could see their own reflections in the show’s debates.
when a great artist dies at 90.
When a great artist dies at 30, you should be sad.
But anyone who survives to 90 has lived a long life, and sometimes it has been a good life, and sometimes it has not.
But at 90, you have outlived the biblical promise of “3 score and 10”. My Motherinlaw just died at 89, and she was not interested in living longer. I just bet that Jean Stapleton was not interested in living longer either. Nothing works in the body anymore. Everyone you know is dead.
My dad died 3 years ago. I do miss him, but I was glad that he died. He was very tired of living, and was not interested in things anymore. He was ready for death. So, when he died, it was right.
The first time I saw an interview with her, I just about fell out of my chair.
She was a witty, sparkling, glamorous, classical British stage actress. She was a great performer who imbued the role of Edith Bunker with so much depth, and made her so real, that it came as a shock when I saw her out of character.