How Old Was Jean Stapleton on All in the Family
- She won three Emmys playing Archie Bunker%27s compassionate-but-ditzy married woman in the groundbreaking TV show
- Stapleton had a long career on Broadway before landing on Television
- She also fabricated several film appearances
NEW YORK (AP) — Jean Stapleton, the phase-trained graphic symbol actress who played Archie Bunker's far improve half, the sweetly naive Edith, in Boob tube's groundbreaking 1970s comedy All in the Family, has died. She was 90.
Stapleton died Fri of natural causes at her New York City abode surrounded by friends and family unit, her son, John Putch, said Saturday.
Little known to the public earlier All In the Family unit, she co-starred with Carroll O'Connor in the superlative-rated CBS sitcom about an unrepentant bigot, the wife he churlishly but fondly chosen "Dingbat," their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) and liberal son-in-law Mike, aka Meathead (Rob Reiner).
Stapleton received eight Emmy nominations and won three times during her eight-year tenure with All in the Family unit. Produced past Norman Lear, the serial bankrupt through the timidity of U.S. TV with social and political jabs and ranked as the No. ane-rated program for an unprecedented five years in a row. Lear would go on to create a run of socially conscious sitcoms.
Stapleton as well earned Emmy nominations for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1982 pic Eleanor, Get-go Lady of the World and for a guest appearance in 1995 on Grace Under Fire.
Her big-screen films included a pair directed by Nora Ephron: the 1998 Tom Hanks-One thousand thousand Ryan romance You lot've Got Mail service and 1996'southward Michael starring John Travolta. She besides turned down the chance to star in another popular sitcom, Murder, She Wrote, which became a showcase for Angela Lansbury.
The theater was Stapleton's start love and she compiled a rich resume, starting in 1941 every bit a New England stock histrion and moving to Broadway in the 1950s and '60s. In 1964, she originated the office of Mrs. Strakosh in Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Others musicals and plays included Bells Are Ringing, Rhino and Damn Yankees, in which her performance — and the nasal tone she used in All in the Family — attracted Lear's attention and led to his auditioning her for the part of Archie's wife.
"I wasn't a leading lady type," she one time told the Associated Press. "I knew where I belonged. And actually, I found character work much more interesting than leading ladies." Edith, of the dithery manner, cheerfully high-pitched phonation and family loyalty, charmed viewers but was viewed past Stapleton equally "submissive" and, she hoped, removed from reality. In a 1972 New York Times interview, she said she didn't think Edith was a typical American housewife — "at least I hope she's not."
"What Edith represents is the housewife who is notwithstanding in bondage to the male figure, very submissive and restricted to the dwelling house. She is very naive, and she kind of thinks through a mist, and she lacks the education to expand her globe. I would promise that virtually housewives are not like that," said Stapleton, whose graphic symbol regularly obeyed her hubby'southward demand to "stifle yourself."
But Edith was honest and compassionate, and "in most situations she says the truth and pricks Archie'southward inflated ego," she added.
She confounded Archie with her malapropos — "You know what they say, misery is the best company" — and open up-hearted credence of others, including her beleaguered son-in-law and African-Americans and other minorities that Archie disdained.
As the serial progressed, Stapleton had the take a chance to offer a deeper take on Edith as the graphic symbol faced milestones including a breast cancer scare and menopause. She was proud of the show's political edge, citing an episode nigh a draft dodger who clashes with Archie as a personal favorite.
But Stapleton worried about typecasting, rejecting whatever roles, commercials or sketches on variety shows that chosen for a character like to Edith. Despite pleas from Lear not to let Edith die, Stapleton left the prove, re-titled Archie's Place, in 1980, leaving Archie to acquit on equally a widower.
"My decision is to go out into the world and practice something else. I'm non constituted as an extra to remain in the same part…. My identity as an actress is in jeopardy if I invested my entire career in Edith Bunker," she told The Associated Printing in 1979.
She had no trouble shaking off Edith — "when you finish a role, you're done with it. There's no deep, spooky connection with the parts you play," she told the AP in 2002 — just after O'Connor'south 2001 death she got condolence letters from people who thought they were really married. When people spotted her in public and chosen her "Edith," she would politely remind them that her name was Jean.
Stapleton proved her own toughness when her married man of 26 years, William Putch, suffered a fatal eye attack in 1983 at age 60 while the couple was touring with a play directed by Putch.
Stapleton went on phase in Syracuse, N.Y., that night and continued on with the bout. "That'south what he would have wanted," she told People magazine in 1984. "I realized information technology was a refuge to have that play, rather than to sit and wallow. And information technology was his testify."
Stapleton was born in New York City to Joseph Murray and his married woman, Marie Stapleton Murray, a singer. She attended Hunter College, leaving for a secretarial stint before embarking on acting studies with the American Theatre Fly and others.
Stapleton had a long working relationship with playwright Horton Foote, starting with one of his beginning total-length plays in 1944, People in the Bear witness, and continuing with half dozen other works through the 2000s.
"I was very impressed with her. She has a wonderful sense of graphic symbol. Her sense of coming to life on stage — I never get tired of watching," Foote told the AP in 2002. He died in 2009.
Her early Television set career included guest appearances on series including Lux Video Theatre, Dr. Kildare and The Defenders.
She and Putch had two children, John and Pamela, who followed their parents into the entertainment industry.
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/01/son-jean-stapleton-beloved-edith-bunker-on-all-in-the-family-dies-in-nyc-at-90/2380961/
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