In the annals of television history, Carroll O’Connor’s name will forever be synonymous with the cranky curmudgeon Archie Bunker from “All in the Family,” a show that defined the ’70s. Bunker was meant to be a caricature of bigoted men at the time, and the role earned O’Connor four Emmy awards for his performance. But once “All in the Family” went off the air, O’Connor found another way to make a very similar point, albeit in a completely different role
O’Connor played the role of Archie Bunker for a total of 13 seasons – nine on “All in the Family” and another four on the spin-off “Archie Bunker’s Place” – making television history along the way. In an interview with the Television Academy, O’Connor said that while the aim was to poke fun at people like Archie, not everyone was in on the joke. “We did make a fool out of out of him, and everybody saw him being made a fool out of,” he said. “But, believe it or not, there were many, many people out there who thought Archie was 100% right about everything.”
Five years after “Archie Bunker’s Place” went off the air, O’Connor found a second life playing police chief Bill Gillespie in the TV adaptation of “In the Heat of the Night.” The show centered around Gillespie and criminal profiler Virgil Tibbs, who was Black, working together in a small, racially divided Mississippi town
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Archie Bunker and Bill Gillespie made the same point in two very different ways
Much like in “All in the Family” — considered one of the best shows CBS ever produced – “In the Heat of the Night” tackled several racially sensitive topics, framed around the idea of a white police chief working side-by-side with a Black detective. In both cases, Carroll O’Connor played a character with built-in racist tendencies. In an interview he did with The Signal, he said that’s where the similarities ended. “Archie would never give in or admit he was wrong. He is still carrying his old prejudices around,” O’Connor said. “Gillespie is more intelligent. He understands that the old prejudices must be shucked off little by little.”
The nuanced performance gave O’Connor a second wind, and his fifth Emmy. However, he told the Television Academy there was one award that he was the most proud of. “The NAACP, two years running, gave us a special award for giving the best most positive portrait of American Black people of any show,” he said. “So, I was very pleased with that.”
O’Connor said that, despite both roles having their similarities and differences, the reason that he took both roles came down to the same thing. “I liked the idea that we could do something that when people turned it off, they would say, ‘That was right on,'” he told The Grand Rapids Press. “‘That’s life as it’s lived.'”
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