Why Did Edith Die on All in the Family?
- She won three Emmys playing Archie Bunker%27s compassionate-but-ditzy married woman in the groundbreaking TV evidence
- Stapleton had a long career on Broadway before landing on TV
- She as well made several film appearances
NEW YORK (AP) — Jean Stapleton, the stage-trained character actress who played Archie Bunker'south far better one-half, the sweetly naive Edith, in TV'south groundbreaking 1970s comedy All in the Family, has died. She was 90.
Stapleton died Fri of natural causes at her New York City home surrounded by friends and family, her son, John Putch, said Saturday.
Fiddling known to the public earlier All In the Family unit, she co-starred with Carroll O'Connor in the top-rated CBS sitcom virtually an unrepentant bigot, the wife he churlishly but fondly called "Dingbat," their girl Gloria (Sally Struthers) and liberal son-in-law Mike, aka Meathead (Rob Reiner).
Stapleton received eight Emmy nominations and won 3 times during her eight-year tenure with All in the Family. Produced by Norman Lear, the series broke through the timidity of U.Due south. Goggle box with social and political jabs and ranked equally the No. 1-rated program for an unprecedented v years in a row. Lear would go on to create a run of socially conscious sitcoms.
Stapleton also earned Emmy nominations for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1982 film Eleanor, Starting time Lady of the Globe 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-Meg Ryan romance You've Got Mail service and 1996'southward Michael starring John Travolta. She besides turned downwardly the risk to star in another popular sitcom, Murder, She Wrote, which became a showcase for Angela Lansbury.
The theater was Stapleton's first honey and she compiled a rich resume, starting in 1941 as a New England stock player and moving to Broadway in the 1950s and '60s. In 1964, she originated the part of Mrs. Strakosh in Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Others musicals and plays included Bells Are Ringing, Rhinoceros and Damn Yankees, in which her performance — and the nasal tone she used in All in the Family unit — attracted Lear's attention and led to his auditioning her for the role of Archie'due south wife.
"I wasn't a leading lady type," she once 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 voice and family loyalty, overjoyed viewers merely was viewed by Stapleton as "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'south not."
"What Edith represents is the housewife who is however in chains to the male effigy, very submissive and restricted to the habitation. She is very naive, and she kind of thinks through a mist, and she lacks the education to expand her world. I would hope that almost housewives are not similar that," said Stapleton, whose graphic symbol regularly obeyed her husband's 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 all-time visitor" — and open-hearted credence of others, including her beleaguered son-in-law and African-Americans and other minorities that Archie disdained.
As the series progressed, Stapleton had the chance to offer a deeper take on Edith equally the character faced milestones including a chest cancer scare and menopause. She was proud of the show's political border, citing an episode about a typhoon dodger who clashes with Archie equally a personal favorite.
Just Stapleton worried about typecasting, rejecting whatever roles, commercials or sketches on variety shows that called for a graphic symbol like to Edith. Despite pleas from Lear not to allow Edith dice, Stapleton left the bear witness, re-titled Archie's Place, in 1980, leaving Archie to carry on every bit a widower.
"My decision is to become out into the earth and exercise something else. I'm non constituted as an actress to remain in the same role…. My identity as an extra is in jeopardy if I invested my unabridged career in Edith Bunker," she told The Associated Press in 1979.
She had no problem shaking off Edith — "when you lot finish a office, you're done with it. At that place'southward no deep, spooky connectedness with the parts you play," she told the AP in 2002 — but later O'Connor'southward 2001 death she got condolence messages from people who thought they were really married. When people spotted her in public and called her "Edith," she would politely remind them that her proper noun was Jean.
Stapleton proved her own toughness when her husband of 26 years, William Putch, suffered a fatal heart attack in 1983 at historic period threescore while the couple was touring with a play directed past Putch.
Stapleton went on stage in Syracuse, N.Y., that night and continued on with the tour. "That'south what he would have wanted," she told People mag in 1984. "I realized it was a refuge to have that play, rather than to sit and wallow. And it was his show."
Stapleton was born in New York City to Joseph Murray and his wife, Marie Stapleton Murray, a vocalist. 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 first full-length plays in 1944, People in the Show, and continuing with six 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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