"All In The Family" trivia

Always loved this show. I grew up watching it with my dad.

In 7th grade my school took a field trip to D.C. and we went to the Smithsonian with Archie's chair in it. Very cool.

 

Yeah they get locked in the basement and drink to stay warm. From Archie's story Mike realizes that Archie's father use to beat him as a kid. One of those great episodes.

 

AITF is one of those rare series that did both comedy and drama very well. Not very many other shows could pull that off.

 

Here is the single version of the theme

 

The Draft Dodger

 

704 Hauser was the other one. Giving the house its own spinoff would either be really good idea or a bad one and I wanted it to work. Unfortunately it only ran six episodes, which probably wasn't enough for it to find its footing. It was essentially a mirror image of its parent show: black liberal parents living with conservative married children. The first episode had a (rather forced) appearance by a grown-up Joey. It featured John Amos who was already part of the All In the Family universe. The first episode appears on the complete AinF box set, a slap in the face for those of us who bought the season sets.

Mike and Gloria were in a couple episodes of Archie Bunker's Place, at least one two-parter that's worth checking out.

I was not happy that they divorced Mike and Gloria just for the sake of furthering the franchise with a spinoff that didn't take. I'd much rather think of them married and living, now retired, in California. If Gloria had been even mildly successful it would be easier to accept, but they ruined that.

But I also think that Mike and Gloria's marriage was one of the more accurate portrayals of a marriage at the time. They had a lot of problems, and sometimes the episode ended with a compromise more than a neat, convenient resolution, and some problems (Mike's not wanting children while Gloria eventually realized she did) would return in later episodes.

There are also a couple unaired pilots of AinF with some different actors. At least one of these is on Youtube.

 

I've always thought calling Good Times (as much as I liked that show) a spinoff was a bit of a stretch. The two characters from Maude are incompatible with their so-called spinoff where man's name had changed and their backstory is clearly established as having lived in Chicago for years.

 

Beautiful acting from Carroll O'Connor.

(Dinner table)

 

I was born in 1978 and thus never saw "All in the Family" in its original run, and never really saw it on re-runs either.

Nonetheless, I decided to buy the show whole hog via the Shout! Factory box set a few years back, based solely on the series' stellar reputation. Glad I did as the show clearly is deserving of its classic status. I agree with the earlier comments about the high quality of the acting and writing, and the deft mixing of comedy, drama and serious topics. Those were hallmarks of the Norman Lear series of that era. Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton were just incredible as Archie and Edith.

In my opinion, the show didn't really dip in quality until the final season or two (I guess this was after the Mike and Gloria characters left). I even tracked down a DVD set of the first season of "Archie's Bunker's Place," and while it's clearly not as good as the original series, it isn't half-bad. I wouldn't mind seeing some company complete "Archie Bunker's Place" for home release, but that seems like a long shot at this point.

 

Wow! I've never heard that version before. That's interesting. Thanks!

 

The show was and still is network TV at its finest. Seriously funny show, and it crossed boundaries that probably no network TV show made today would even attempt to do.
So much talent across the board, each person played their part perfectly. Those characters and the actors associated with them are burned into our memories..... and the one who had further success after the show ended?.....Meathead!
Reiner was active with labor unions for awhile and whenever he went to the AFL-CIO building, everyone still called him Meathead!

 

I agree! I wonder if the flip side was an instrumental version of "Remembering You" in a Dixieland style?

 

That idea is a lot interesting than what it apparently is- a double A-Side.

https://www.discogs.com/Carroll-OCo...-Days-All-In-The-Family-Theme/release/4545115

 

Absolutely (although The Honeymooners is just about (if not) it's equal)
It's amazing to me now how so many people don't really understand "All In The Family" now and take it all out of context in the name of political correctness.
You had to be there.

 

Remember the episode when Archie gets stuck in the elevator?
Or the episode when Sammy Davis Jr visits The Bunkers?
Or the episode where Cousin Maude comes to visit the Bunkers when they're all sick?
...some of the funniest moments on 70's television.
Laugh out loud moments by the ton on that program.
I loved it until Mike and Gloria moved away; it should have ended there and then with that tear-inducing episode.

 

I thought the little girl they added to the show in the last season was a surprisingly good actress and pretty funny.

 

The B SIDE has to be the version on the soundtrack

 

Ah! I didn't notice the time differences! D'oh!

Yeah, you're probably right.

 

Then discogs lists an album by Carroll O'Connor, which includes Remembering You, co-produced by Roger Kellaway who plays piano on it with a band, and the band members are named but hard to read from the discogs photo, so I guess this relates. The TV soundtrack version LP, which was the theme and comedy bits right off the TV episode soundtracks of the first season, was common enough, but I don't remember ever seeing this LP, or that single:

https://www.discogs.com/Carroll-OConnor-Remembering-You/release/5160232

Guessing from the master numbers on the front and back of the single, the longer single version above may have been recorded at the same session as this album, bringing Jean Stapleton in for that non-album song version. That longer single version has a poor edit at 1:17, did anyone notice?

 

It was attempted again back in the mid-90s. ABC bought three or four episodes of a sitcom starring Sherman Hemsley that involved bigotry. However, the show flopped. No one watched it. The show was moved to the UPN network.

 

First unaired pilot. Different set of kids (and different Lionel). Different arrangement of the theme. Notably different layout of the house. Different last name.


Second unaired pilot:
All in the Family Second Pilot: Those Were The Days Part 1 »

 

"Good night, Shoe-Booty"

 

Useless trivia:

my wife's great-aunt (by marriage) was an aunt of Jason Wingreen, who played Harry on All In The Family and Archie Bunker's Place.

 

The Original Boba Fett!!

 

It was a great show, very much a product of its time. I actually have that 45 R.P.M. single of the theme song.