Sally played Gloria, the cute blue-eyed blonde with the long hair and little-girl voice. She was the conciliator in the Bunker-Stivic household who kept peace between her biogeted father Archie and her ultra-liberal husband Michael.
Although all four lead actors won Emmys -- a first for TV -- Sally had the smallest role in "All in the Family." Co-stars Carroll O'Connor (Archie), Jean Stapleton (Edith) and Rob Reiner (Michael) garnered the most screen time and critical acclaim.
It took several years for Gloria's character to develop. She later
joked that during the early seasons she spoke only three lines:
“I'll help you set the table, Mom.”
Michael, where are you going?”
“Oh, Daddy, stop it!”
“I think I would have had quite a career in films had I not landed in 'All in the Family,'” she told interviewer Mickey Burns. “Back in the seventies once you got a TV series you were branded a 'TV actor.' Thirty years ago there was a stigma, you didn't do TV if you wanted to be a major motion picture actor.”
Based on the British series “Till Death Us
Do Part,” “All in the Family” was the
Norman Lear series that became the most watched TV show from 1971-76 and it was nominated for 34 Emmys and 21 Golden Globe awards during its nine-year run.
The Museum of Broadcast Communications called the program “one of the most important and influential series ever to air...it ushered a new era in American television characterized by programs that did not shy away from addressing controversial or socially relevant subject matters.”
Reiner didn't believe the series would last. “It was so hip for the room I didn't think it would succeed, and I could go back to writing and directing,” he said in an interview with the Archive of America Television. “But we knew we were doing something special.”
Reiner and Sally were the third set of Mike and Gloria, and Reiner read with four different women vying for Gloria's part, including his future wife Penny Marshall. Sally was convinced that Marshall would get the role, partly because she resembled her TV mother Stapleton.
“But Norman liked the chemistry I had with Sally,” Reiner said, “And he thought Sally was more Carroll's daughter” than the other actresses were.
“Sally was perfect casting and a bit younger and less cosmopolitan than Candy,” Stapleton said, referring to actress Candice Azzara, who played Gloria in the pilot but wasn't called back.
“All in the Family” initially struggled in the ratings, but by the second season it was the No. 1 rated show on TV. It held the No. 1 position as the most watched show on American television for five consecutive years, the first series to reach that pinnacle.
Sally left the show in 1978 due to a salary dispute, but the character returned a few years later for several episodes in the spin-off show “Archie Bunker's Place.”
Gloria then got her own show (“Gloria,” of course), playing a single mother, with the storyline that Michael had left her to join a commune. Although “Gloria” was rated No. 18 in the Nielsens, it was canceled after just one season.
Born in Portland, Oregon, Sally made her TV debut as a dancer on a TV special featuring “Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass.” She also danced in “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and on “The Tim Conway Show.” Sally provided the voice of Pebbles in the animated “Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show,” and in later years worked in other children's animated programs.
In film, Sally worked with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw in “The Getaway,” and had a memorable sex scene with Jack Nicholson in 1970's “Five Easy Pieces.”
Sally returned to prime time television in 2000 as the recurring character Babette Dell in “The Gilmore Girls.” For all seven seasons of the show, she played the loud, jovial neighbor to the Gilmores.
No. 20
Classic TV Beauties 1970s Countdown
SALLY STRUTHERS as Gloria Stivic in "All in the Family"
