From 1971 to 1979, All in the Family enjoyed a nine season run on CBS before being replaced by Archie Bunker’s Place. The show was unlike anything that American sitcoms had tackled before with the focus on the extremely bigoted Archie Bunker, whose polite wife, daughter and son-in-law constantly try to teach him the wrongs in his thinking. Despite some serious issues and reservations at first, the show became one of the most iconic for that generation and has gone down in TV history! Take a look back at the popular series with 10 things you didn’t know about All in the Family:
10. Third Time’s A Charm
Despite reservations, once All in the Family got going it became extremely successful, but getting it going wasn’t as easy as it may seem. Conception for the series began when Norman Lear read about the British sitcom Til Death Do Us Part, prompting him to buy the rights for the show and incorporate his own experiences to create an American version. Lear called his original pilot for the series “Justice For All,” which was a pilot for ABC, and while they approved, they gave money for a second pilot to be shot instead called Those Were the Days. Those Were the Days featured new actors for Gloria and Michael while Caroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton remained in the lead roles. Unfortunately, after the second pilot, ABC became concerned about having a “foul-mouthed, bigoted lead” and rejected the series entirely. Luckily, CBS immediately bought the rights from ABC and had the final cast set and the pilot for All in the Family filmed.
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