US
actor. Born in New York City,
U.S.A., 2 August 1924. Died 2001
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 drug, and gave a
number of well-publicized
interviews on these topics on
television. He continued to
devote much of his time to the
social problems surrounding drug
addiction until his death in
2001
-Diane Negra
