Archie Bunker - Character Biography

Character Biography

Archie was born on May 20, 1924 to parents David and Sarah. Information on his siblings is inconsistent (three are mentioned, but he is also stated to be an only child). Archie celebrated his 50th birthday in 1974, and was still alive on April 4, 1983.

While locked in the storeroom of Archie's Place with Mike in the episode "Two's a Crowd", a drunk Archie confides that as a child, his family was desperately poor and that he was teased in school because he wore one shoe on one foot and a boot on the other, with kids nicknaming him "Shoe-Booty". In the same episode, Mike learns that Archie was mentally abused by his father, who was the source of his bigoted views. Yet Archie then goes on to vehemently defend his father, who he claims loved him and taught him "right from wrong." The only clue to his father's occupation is a railroad watch that Archie receives from his brother.

Archie was a World War II veteran who had been based in Foggia, Italy for twenty-two months. During a visit with a doctor it is stated that he had an undistinguished military record for his non-combat ground role in the Air Corps, which at the time was a branch subordinate to the Army Air Forces. Archie often insisted that he was a member of the Air Corps. He received the Good Conduct Medal and in the episode "Archie's Civil Rights" it is disclosed he also received the Purple Heart for being hit in his buttocks by shrapnel.

He married Edith Bunker 22 years before the first season. Later recollections of their mid-1940s courtship do not result in a consistent timeline. On the flashback episode showing Mike and Gloria's wedding, Archie indicates to Mike that his courtship of Edith lasted two years, and hints that their relationship was not consummated until a month after their wedding night. Edith elsewhere recollects that Archie fell asleep on their wedding night, and blurts out that their sex life has not been very active in recent years. On another occasion, Edith reveals Archie's history of gambling addiction, which caused problems in the early years of their marriage.

According to Edith, Archie's resentment of Mike stemmed primarily from the fact that Mike was attending college, while Archie had been forced to drop out of high school during the Great Depression to help support his family. (Archie doesn't take advantage of the GI Bill to further his education, although he does attend night school to earn a high school diploma in 1973.) Archie is also revealed to have been an outstanding baseball player in his youth; his dream was to pitch for the New York Yankees. He had to give up this dream when he left high school to enter the workforce. His uncle got him a job on a loading dock after World War II, and by the 1970s he was a foreman.

A Protestant, Archie seldom attended church, despite professing strong Christian views. The original pilot mentions that in the 22 years Archie and Edith were married, Archie had only attended church seven times (including their wedding day), and that Archie had walked out of the sermon the most recent time, disgusted with the preacher's message (which he perceived as leftist). Archie's religiosity often translated into knee-jerk opposition to atheism or agnosticism (which Mike and Gloria variously espoused), Catholicism, and, until late in the series, Judaism.

Archie was a Republican and an outspoken supporter of Richard Nixon, as well as an early (1976) supporter of Ronald Reagan, correctly predicting his election in 1980. During the Vietnam War, he dismissed peace protesters as unpatriotic, and had little good to say about the Civil Rights Movement. Despite having an adversarial relationship with his black neighbors, the Jeffersons, he formed an unlikely friendship with their son Lionel, who performed various odd jobs for the Bunkers, and tolerated Archie's patronizing racial views.

The later spinoff series 704 Hauser features a new, black family moving into Bunker's old home. The series is set in 1994, but does not indicate whether Bunker, who would be 70 by this time, is still alive. (His grandson, Joey Stivic, appears briefly in the first episode of the series, but makes no statement one way or the other on this point.)