Production
Unlike All in the Family's first eight seasons, Archie Bunker's Place was not videotaped before a live audience, with the exception of a few select episodes (including "Thanksgiving Reunion" and "Archie Alone"). Instead, the show was shot on a closed set with multiple cameras, with the best takes being edited together. The finished product was then shown to live audiences attending tapings of One Day at a Time, thus providing real laughter for the show.
Production of the first three seasons of Archie Bunker's Place took place at Studios 31 and 33 at CBS Television City in Hollywood, the original production home of All in the Family for that show's first six seasons. The final season was taped at Universal City Studios in nearby Universal City, just north of Hollywood. By 1982, most, if not all, of the Norman Lear-produced situation comedies still on the air by this point relocated from Television City or the now-defunct Metromedia Square to Universal City.
The theme song for Archie Bunker's Place was a re-scored instrumental version by Ray Coniff of "Those Were the Days," the long-familiar opening theme to All in the Family. The closing theme, "Remembering You," was a re-scored version of All in the Family's closing theme. Both versions featured a Dixieland-styled arrangement. The opening credits featured a view of the Queensboro Bridge, which connects Manhattan to Queens, followed by shots taken along Steinway Street in Astoria.
Carroll O'Connor was angered about the show's cancellation, maintaining that the show ended with an inappropriate finale. He vowed never to work in any type of show with CBS again, although he starred in In the Heat of the Night, which aired on CBS in that show's last three seasons.
The series was briefly rerun on TV Land in 2002 and 2003, including the unaired Gloria pilot. The last episode did air in a marathon along with the final episodes of All in the Family, The Jeffersons and Gloria.
Whereas All in the Family had been inspired by a British series, Till Death Us Do Part, Archie Bunker's Place would eventually inspire creator Johnny Speight to produce a sequel to the British series. In Sickness and in Health aired in the UK from 1985 to 1992. Several of the episodes were adapted from the American series.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)