American actor (1924–2001)
John Carroll O'Connor (August2, 1924– June21, 2001) was an American actor whose television career spanned over four decades. He found widespread fame as Archie Bunker (for which he won four Emmy Awards), the main character in the CBS television sitcoms "All in the Family" (1971–1979) and its continuation, "Archie Bunker's Place" (1979–1983). He later starred in the NBC/CBS television crime drama "In the Heat of the Night" (1988–1995), where he played the role of police chief William "Bill" Gillespie. In the late 1990s, he played Gus Stemple, the father of Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt) on "Mad About You". In 1996, O'Connor was ranked number 38 on "TV Guide"'s 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. He won five Emmys and one Golden Globe Award.
Early life.
Carroll O'Connor, the eldest of three sons, was born on August2, 1924, in Manhattan, New York City, to Edward Joseph O'Connor, a lawyer, and his wife, Elise Patricia O'Connor (née O'Connor), a teacher. Both of his brothers became doctors: Hugh, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1961, and Robert, a psychiatrist in New York City. O'Connor spent much of his youth in Elmhurst and Forest Hills, Queens, which is where his character Archie Bunker would later live.
O'Connor graduated from Newtown High School in Elmhurst. In 1941, he enrolled at Wake Forest University in North Carolina but dropped out when the United States entered World War II. During the war, he was rejected by the United States Navy and enrolled in the United States Merchant Marine Academy for a short time. After leaving that institution, he became a merchant seaman and served in the United States Merchant Marine during the war.
After the war, O'Connor attended the University of Montana, where he worked at the "Montana Kaimin" student newspaper as an editor; in 1949 he resigned his editing position in protest to the pressure from the campus administration that led to the confiscation and destruction of an issue of the paper, which carried a cartoon depicting the Montana Board of Education as rats gnawing at a bag of university funds. At the University of Montana, he also joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. O'Connor did not take any drama courses as an undergraduate at the University of Montana, but he did act in student theater productions. He met Nancy Fields (born 1929), who later became his wife, when she was working as a makeup artist and lighting technician in a student-produced production of "Our Town". He later left that university to help his younger brother Hugh get into medical school in Ireland, where Carroll completed his undergraduate studies at University College Dublin. There he studied Irish history and English literature, graduated in 1952, and began his acting career.
After O'Connor's fiancée, Nancy Fields, graduated from the University of Montana in 1951 with degrees in drama and English, she sailed to Ireland to study at Trinity College Dublin and met Carroll, who was visiting his brother, Hugh. The couple married in Dublin on July28, 1951. In 1956, O'Connor returned to the University of Montana to earn a master's degree in speech.
Career.
Prolific character actor.
After acting in theatrical productions in Dublin and New York during the 1950s, O'Connor's breakthrough came when he was cast by director Burgess Meredith (assisted by John Astin) in a featured role in the Broadway adaptation of James Joyce's novel "Ulysses". O'Connor and Meredith remained close, lifelong friends.
O'Connor made his television acting debut as a character actor on two episodes of "Sunday Showcase" in 1960. These two parts led to other roles on such television series as "The Americans", "The Eleventh Hour", "Bonanza", "The Fugitive", "The Wild Wild West", "Armstrong Circle Theatre", "The Outer Limits", "The Great Adventure", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", "Dr. Kildare", "I Spy", "That Girl", "Premiere", "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Insight", and "The Twilight Zone", among many others. O'Connor guest-starred as Josef Varsh in the first season of "", season one, episode 18 "The Trial". Late in his career, he appeared on several episodes of "Mad About You" as the father of Helen Hunt's character.
He was among the actors considered for the roles of the Skipper on "Gilligan's Island" and Dr. Smith in the TV show "Lost in Space", and he was the visual template in the creation of Batman nemesis Rupert Thorne, a character who debuted at the height of "All in the Family"'s success in "Detective Comics" No. 469 (published May 1976 by DC Comics).
Early film roles.
O'Connor appeared in a number of studio films in the 1960s and early 1970s, including "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962), "Cleopatra" (1963), "In Harm's Way" (1965), "What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?" (1966), "Hawaii" (1966), "Not with My Wife, You Don't!" (1966), "Warning Shot" (1967), "Point Blank" (1967), "The Devil's Brigade" (1968), "For Love of Ivy" (1968), "Death of a Gunfighter" (1969), "Marlowe" (1969), "Kelly's Heroes" (1970) and "Doctors' Wives" (1971). In many of his roles he portrayed a military or police officer, in several a particularly blustery one.
Television roles.
In the 1960s, O'Connor appeared in episodes of notable television series such as "The Americans", "The Untouchables", "Naked City", "Death Valley Days", "Bonanza", "The Defenders", "The Outer Limits", "The Fugitive", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", "Ben Casey", "Dr. Kildare", "I Spy", "The Wild Wild West", "", "The Time Tunnel", "That Girl" and "Gunsmoke" (1966 - "The Wrong Man"; S12E7).
O'Connor also performed in anthology television shows such as "NBC Sunday Showcase", "The United States Steel Hour", "Armstrong Circle Theatre", "The Play of the Week", "The Dick Powell Show", "Alcoa Premiere", "The DuPont Show of the Week", "Profiles in Courage" and "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre."
"All in the Family".
O'Connor was living in Italy in 1968 when producer Norman Lear asked him to come to New York City and star in a series that he was creating for ABC titled "Justice For All." Lear recruited O'Connor to play the role of Archie Justice, a bigot who was able to bring forth some measure of empathy from the audience. After two television pilots of the sitcom were produced (between 1968 and 1970), the hosting network was changed to CBS. For the third pilot, the last name of its main character was changed to Bunker, and its title was changed to "All in the Family". The show was based on the BBC's "Till Death Us Do Part", and Bunker was based on Alf Garnett, but he was somewhat less abrasive than the original British character.
O'Connor's Queens background and his ability to speak with a working-class New York accent both influenced Lear to set the show in Queens.
Desiring a well known actor to play the lead, Lear approached Mickey Rooney, but he declined the role. O'Connor accepted the role because he did not expect the show to succeed, and he believed that he would move back to Europe when it failed. In her book "Archie &amp; Edith, Mike &amp; Gloria: the Tumultuous History of All in the Family", Donna McCrohan revealed that O'Connor had requested that Lear provide him with a return airplane ticket to Rome as a condition of his acceptance of the role so that he could return to Italy when the show failed. Instead, "All in the Family" became the highest-rated show on American television for five consecutive seasons.
While O'Connor's personal politics were liberal, he understood the Bunker character and played him not only with bombast and humor but with touches of vulnerability. The show's writing was consistently left of center, but O'Connor, while his character held right-wing views, could also deftly skewer the liberal pieties of the day. Bunker was famous for his English language malapropisms, but O'Connor was in truth a highly educated and cultured man and taught English before he turned to acting. Archie Bunker's long-suffering wife Edith was played by Jean Stapleton, also from New York City, a Broadway actress whom Lear remembered from the play and film "Damn Yankees". The show also starred then-unknown character actors Rob Reiner as Archie's liberal son-in-law Michael "Meathead" Stivic and Sally Struthers as Gloria, Archie and Edith's only child and Mike's wife.
CBS debated whether the controversial subject matter of "All in the Family" would mesh with a sitcom. Racial issues, ethnicities, religions, sexuality, class, education, women's equality, gun control, politics, inflation, the Vietnam War, energy crisis, Watergate and other timely topics of the 1970s were addressed. Like its British predecessor "Till Death Us Do Part", the show lent dramatic social substance to the traditional sitcom format. Archie Bunker's popularity made O'Connor a top-billing star of the 1970s. O'Connor was apprehensive of being typecast for playing the role, but at the same time he was protective, not just of his character, but of the entire show.
A contract dispute between O'Connor and Lear marred the beginning of the show's fifth season. Eventually O'Connor received a raise and appeared in the series until it ended. For his work as Archie Bunker, he was nominated for eight Emmy Awards as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series; he won the award four times (1972, 1977, 1978 and 1979). At the end of the eighth season in 1978, Reiner and Struthers left the series to pursue other projects.
Rob Reiner said in a 2014 interview about his on- and off-screen chemistry with O'Connor: "We did over 200 shows in front of a live audience. So I learned a lot about what audiences like, what they don't like, how stories are structured. I would spend a lot of time in the writing room and I actually wrote some scripts. And from Carroll O'Connor I learned a lot about how you perform and how important the script and story are for the actors. So the actor doesn't have to push things. You can let the story and the dialogue support you if it's good. I had great people around me, and I took from all the people who were around." Comparing O'Connor's character to Archie Bunker, Reiner said: "Carroll O'Connor brought his humanity to the character even though he had these abhorrent views. He's still a feeling, human being. He loved his wife even though he acted the way he did, and he loved his daughter. Those things come out. I don't think anybody's all good or all bad."
"Archie Bunker's Place".
When "All in the Family" ended after nine seasons, "Archie Bunker's Place" continued in its place and ran for four additional years. Longtime friend and original series star Jean Stapleton appeared as Edith Bunker on the new show, but made only five guest appearances in Season 1. Stapleton decided she did not want to continue in the role, and in the second-season premiere, her character died of a stroke, leaving Archie to cope with the loss. At the time, O'Connor was receiving $200,000 an episode, making him one of the highest paid stars on television. The show was canceled in 1983. O'Connor was angered about the show's cancellation, maintaining that the show ended with an inappropriate finale. He would later work for CBS again when he starred in "In the Heat of the Night" on NBC and they decided not to renew the series. CBS allowed the series to continue for two more years and have a proper ending.
"In the Heat of the Night".
While coping with his son's drug problem, O'Connor starred as Sparta, Mississippi, Police Chief Bill Gillespie, a tough veteran cop on "In the Heat of the Night". Based on the novel by John Ball and the 1967 movie of the same name, the series debuted on NBC in March 1988 and performed well. He cast his inexperienced son Hugh O'Connor as Officer Lonnie Jamison. The headquarters of the Sparta Police Department was actually the library in Covington, Georgia.
In 1989, while working on the set, O'Connor was hospitalized and underwent open heart surgery, which caused him to miss four episodes at the end of the second season. (Actor Joe Don Baker took his place in those episodes as an acting police chief.) O'Connor would later serve as one of the executive producers for the series, starting with the third season. The series was transferred from NBC to CBS in 1992 and cancelled two years later after its seventh season. O'Connor reprised his role the following year for four two-hour "In the Heat of the Night" television films.
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