Jean Stapleton Was Ready for ‘All in the Family’s Edith Bunker to Die — But Norman Lear Wasn’t
A year after Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner had moved on from All in the Family, Jean Stapleton felt it was time. “I had decided we’d done everything we could,” she recalled in an interview with EmmyLegends.org. “It was time to go on or be buried as far as casting is concerned in this kind of part.” She was ready for something new, and she left with no regrets. However, series creator Norman Lear just wasn’t ready to let her character go quite yet.
About a year later, while she was touring in a play in Florida, Stapleton got a call from producer Bud Yorkin, followed by another from Lear, who wanted to know if she truly wasn’t coming back. His show Archie Bunker’s Place was moving forward, and they were planning to expand the storyline, get Archie out of the bar and have him date again. But there was one problem. Lear couldn’t bring himself to approve a script that would say Edith had died.
CBS/Everett Collection
“He said that they had been having meetings with CBS,” Stapleton remembered, “and he was the last one … he could not say yes to allow Edith to die so that Archie could get on with his life.” It was a deeply emotional moment for him, and Stapleton could feel the weight of it. “I said to Norman, Norman, you realize don’t you, she is only fiction.” There was a long pause. Then Lear answered, “To me, she isn’t.”
Shortly after that call, Lear gave the word. Edith Bunker would die offscreen, and the show would move forward. Stapleton was in Winston-Salem the night the episode aired. “Carroll did a great job,” she said, recalling how O’Connor’s Archie came home after the funeral and found one of Edith’s slippers under his chair. “He did a whole monologue to this slipper … it was very moving. He was marvelous.”
Everett Collection
For Stapleton, the most surprising moment came the next morning after the episode aired. A hotel maid entered Stapleton’s room, looked at her with wide eyes, and said, “My God, I thought you were dead.” Stapleton could only laugh. Edith may have passed, but Stapleton was very much alive and went on to continue acting in projects such as Bagdad Cafe and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle until her death on May 31, 2013 at the age of 90.
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1970s Fall TV
September 2023
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