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This article was originally printed in the Monday, October 5, 1998 edition of the New York Post.
"All in the Family" creator Normal Lear is considering turning his legendary CBS sitcom into a big-screen movie - with Carroll O'Connor reprising his role as lovable Queens bigot Archie Bunker.
And Lear wants to pair Archie with rowdy actress Bette Midler as a substitute for his long-suffering wife, Edith - in a film to be written by tough-guy playwright David Mamet.
Big-screen movies made from 70's sitcoms have proven to be successful box-office fare, with the "Brady Bunch" movies a recent example.
Lear envisions an "All in the Family" movie in which Archie finds himself in a tight situation - and is rescued by his dead wife, Edith, in a heavenly way.
The character of Edith Bunker, played by Jean Stapleton, was killed off in 1980.
"I had this idea once [for the movie] where Edith had died, but Archie is in some terrible trouble and Edith is a heavenly messenger sent down to help him, or she's inveighing on [heaven] to let her go down and help Archie," Lear told The Post. "Only Edith could do that."
Lear and O'Connor have had a falling out in the past over reviving Archie bunker for TV.
"Well, Norman Lear doesn't want me do to" Bunker on TV, a visibly angry O'Connor told Jay Leno during an August 1997 appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show."
"So... there you go," he said.
"There's a feud about this, a disagreement," Lear admitted. The TV producer talked about a possible movie version while promoting the October 19 launch of "All in the Family" on Nick at Nite's TV Land.
"Carroll wanted to do [Archie] on TV... but I didn't want it to happen. I thought eight years [on CBS] was entirely enough. I loved the characters too much."
O'Connor said he envisioned a TV special with Archie now running a car service in Manhattan with a few of his buddies.
"They have four or five [Lincoln] Town Cars and they drive people around and Archie meets all kinds of people from all over the world," O'Connor told Leno.
Said Lear: "I had said to Carroll, if we're going to do a movie we could do it with someone like Bette Midler as a Jewish woman, get David Mamet to direct it and write it and maybe we'd get something different out of it.
"I don't want to do a movie that's going to be an extended sitcom. I had met Mamet in the 70's and he loved the ['All in the Family'] characters, and that's why I said that. I thought the idea was a gift... but [O'Connor] was never interested in that."
Nick at Nite will launch a 40-episode "All in the Family" marathon October 12-16 (9 pm to 1 am each night), leading into the series' premiere on sister station TV Land on Monday, October 19 (10 pm).
TV Land will also screen the rare 1969 "All in the Family" pilot, "Those Were The Days," on Saturday, October 17 (10-11 pm).
The 1969 pilot closely resembles the ground breaking show that later aired on CBS from 1970-1983, with a few exceptions.
For instance, Archie's last name is Justice, not Bunker, and there are different actors (Candace Azzara, Chip Oliver) playing the roles of Gloria and her Irish-American husband Dickie - later changed to Gloria and the Polish-American Mike (Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner).
"Carroll O'Connor gave us Archie Bunker as nobody else could have," Lear said. "He and I never agreed, and we did it my way, but when that moment came... when Carroll stopped being Carroll and started being Archie... I wanted to kneel at his feet and kiss his hands."
Copyright © 1998 The New York Post.