Today Father Geek has the sad job of posting the following notice from our Hollywood insider Uncapie...
Actor Carroll O'Connor died Thursday of a heart attack in Los Angeles at the age of 76. His wife, Nancy, of nearly 50 years, was at his side. Born in New York, he had developed his acting skills through stage in the fifties and gaining notoriety in tv and film in the sixties.
In television, he was featured in "The Man From U. N. C. L. E. ," "I-Spy," "Wild, Wild West," "Mad About You," "The Fugitive," "Ben Casey," "Voyage To the Bottom Of the Sea," "The Untouchables," "Gunsmoke," and "The Time Tunnel." Best known for the "Archie Bunker" character on Norman Lear's "All In the Family" and later as "Sheriff Bill Gillespie" on "In the Heat Of the Night" series.
Some of his best theatrical performances were in "Kelly's Heroes", "Point Blank"(The scene with O'Connor telling Lee Marvin as "Walker", "You're a very, very bad man, Walker!" after he has maimed or killed half the bad guys in the film is priceless.), "In Harm's Way", "Death Of A Gunfighter", "Marlowe", "What Did You Do In the War, Daddy?", "Lonely Are the Brave" and "Waterhole No. 3."
Though never a leading man, but an incredibly talented character actor, O'Connor was never out of work and his performances, no matter how small, always brightened up the screen and complemented the actors he worked with.
Certainly, one of the most memorable television performances was on the original "Outer Limits" in the episode, "Controlled Experiment" where he and fellow actor Barry Morse portrayed "Diemos" and "Phobos"; two Martians studying and disrupting time in the name of love with Grace Lee Whitney as the femme fatale.
Mr. O'Connor suffered his own personal loss in 1996 with the suicide-death of his only son, Hugh, due to drugs. Heartbroken, he was never the same and took some time off before he returned to acting.
Though the character he portrayed in "All In the Family" was a bigot, Mr. O'Connor's real persona was that of love and kindness to all people. A gentleman actor with a heart of gold. He will be missed.
Uncapie
Father Geek back again. Archie... I mean Carroll was honored with 5 personal Emmys, was nominated 11 times for Golden Globes for his performances, and was the winner of The People's Choice Awards' "Favorite All-Time Television Star" award. Yet many of his fans were unaware that he also composed the closing song for his longrunning TV series. Yes, he is responsible for that great little diddy the whole world was singing. We have received scores of letters concerning this tragic loss... Some that link to further information concerning O'Connor's life and career are as follows...
Sad, Sad Day...
Just wanted to pass this along Harry.
So few left..............
Jim
Then there was this...
Long time reader, first e-mail. Wasn't sure if you have heard or not but AP has released the following concerning Actor Carol O'conner.
Keep up the good work.
Bryan
And this...
i guess you know, he is no longer with us, i just saw it on the news, please
do a great writeup as this is a man who reminds me f my father so many
differnt ways... i grew up watching All In the Family... this is the=WORST!!!!
John Lee Hooker died today too... man i am sick over here
do him justice Harry .... this is a big deal, just as big as Anthony
Quinn...BIGGER EVE!!!!!
thank you... the Jaff
Annnnnnd....
John Lee Hooker died today too... man i am sick over here
do him justice Harry .... this is a big deal, just as big as Anthony
Quinn...BIGGER EVE!!!!!
thank you... the Jaff
Annnnnnd....
thank you... the Jaff
Annnnnnd....
I just heard about this from Fox News: All in the Family Star Carroll O'Connor Died Thursday, June 21, 2001.
From FOX News:
Carroll O'Connor, best known for his portrayal of irascible bigot Archie Bunker on All in the Family, died from a heart attack Thursday at California's Brotman Medical Center, his publicist said. He was 76.
O'Connor died with his wife of nearly 50 years, Nancy, by his side after collapsing at his home and being rushed to the hospital.
While the public will always remember him for his role in helping to make the groundbreaking TV comedy part of the American dialogue on race and politics, personal tragedy darkened the actor's later years. His only child, Hugh, shot himself in a drug-related suicide in 1996.
In November, O'Connor was hospitalized at UCLA Medical Center, where he had a toe on his left foot amputated because of a circulatory problem related to diabetes.
A native of New York, O'Connor had been working for two decades on stage and in TV and movie supporting parts when he was tapped by producer Norman Lear to play a blue-collar worker from Queens with the gift of gab and a big chip on his shoulder.
On Jan. 12, 1971, Archie began spouting off against minorities, liberals and his long-haired son-in-law (whom he called "Meathead") and kept at it for 13 years. O'Connor didn't flinch at playing an unlikeable character and deftly brought Archie's intolerance to feisty comic life.
The actor also managed to give Archie a vulnerability that allowed him to be seen as a beleaguered soul, bound by his unthinking prejudices and buffeted by the changes sweeping Vietnam War-era America.
Further softening the character was his love for wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), lovingly known as "Dingbat," and their daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers), and his grudging affection for Meathead Mike (Rob Reiner).
All in the Family, adapted from the British series Till Death Do Us Part, shattered the sitcom mold that had produced decades of superficial and bland series featuring, invariably, a wise and kindly paternal figure.
Lear considered other actors for the pivotal role of Archie, but said he found the right combination of "bombast and sweetness" in O'Connor, whom he had seen in the film What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?
The sitcom got off to a rocky start. Many found it unsettling and offensive, and tuned it out. Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint, who later worked with Bill Cosby on his popular sitcom, called All in the Family's bigotry "dangerous because it's disarming."
Eventually, however, viewers came to embrace Archie and the series as a comedy and a source of debate. It ranked No. 1 for five years, was top-rated for much of its 1971-92 run and gave birth to two spin-offs, Maude and The Jeffersons.
O'Connor moved from All in the Family (1971-79) to Archie Bunker's Place (1979-83), which was based in a bar owned by Archie rather than in the Bunker household.
The actor put his controversial character in perspective.
"I have a great deal of sympathy for him," O'Connor said of Archie in a 1986 Playboy magazine interview. "As James Baldwin wrote, the white man here is trapped by his own history, a history that he himself cannot comprehend, and therefore what can I do but love him?"
O'Connor and his two brothers were raised by their father, an attorney, and schoolteacher mother in New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, a more prosperous section of Queens than Archie would ever know. O'Connor grew up in a life of financial comfort and social tolerance.
"I never heard Archie's kind of talk in my own family," he once said. "My father was a lawyer and was in partnership with two Jews, who with their families were close to us. There were black families in our circle of friends. My father disliked talk like Archie's -- he called it lowbrow."
O'Connor served as a merchant seaman in World War II, enrolling at the University of Montana on his return. Although both his siblings became physicians, O'Connor studied literature and discovered acting.
He met his future wife, Nancy Fields, while appearing in a play.
Captivated by Ireland during a visit in 1950, O'Connor finished his undergraduate studies at the National University of Ireland. Fields joined him and they were married in Dublin in 1951.
O'Connor appeared on stage throughout Ireland and in London, Paris and Edinburgh. Making it in New York proved to be a struggle. He worked as a substitute teacher, earned his master's degree at Montana and, in the late 1950s, finally began getting roles in theater and films.
Lonely Are the Brave and Cleopatra (both 1963), Hawaii (1966) and Point Blank (1967) were among the movies in which he appeared.
Then All in the Family made him a star and, eventually, a four-time Emmy winner.
"Today's public recognition is something I never wished for or even cared about," he said in 1971. "But now that it is here, I find it wonderful, of course."
He followed Archie's Place with a return to the New York theater, then came back to TV series in 1988 with In the Heat of the Night, a police drama based on the Rod Steiger-Sidney Poitier film. O'Connor played Bill Gillespie, police chief of a small Mississippi town; Howard Rollins co-starred as detective Virgil Tibbs.
O'Connor continued with the series through health problems and a network change, from NBC to CBS.
O'Connor, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, appeared in the 2000 romantic comedy Return to Me, starring Minnie Driver, David Duchovny and Bonnie Hunt.
The O'Connors adopted their son as an infant in 1962 in Italy, where O'Connor was filming Cleopatra. Hugh O'Connor, who appeared with his father on In the Heat of the Night, battled a longtime alcohol and drug addiction problem.
On March 28, 1995, in several phone conversations, Hugh told his father "this is a very black day," said he had a gun and was going to "cap" himself. O'Connor recalled telling him "you're just saying crazy things" and advising him to seek a doctor's care.
"So long, I love you," his son replied. O'Connor called police, who arrived just as Hugh O'Connor shot himself.
O'Connor turned his grief over the death of 32-year-old Hugh into an anti-drug crusade and a quest for legal vengeance against his son's drug supplier.
"Nothing will help," O'Connor said after Harry Perzigian was sentenced to a year in jail. "Our lives have changed. My wife's and mine, and his widow."
sign me, Just Another Meathead
