Set Design Drawing from All in the Family
name: label: maker
content: Roberts, Don
label: maker
content: T. A. T. Productions
label: maker
content: Roberts, Don
label: maker
content: T. A. T. Productions
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Drawing of the set design for the television sitcom All in the Family. The pencil on vellum sketch is one of six drawings of the Bunker house set in the museum's collection.
label: Description (Brief)
content: All in the Family was a sitcom that aired on the CBS television network from 1971-1979. The series, created and produced by Norman Lear and Alan David “Bud” Yorkin, was one of the most popular and influential television programs of the twentieth century. It was the top-rated show on American television for five of its nine seasons, earned 22 Emmy awards, produced five direct spinoff series, and became a cultural touchstone for an entire generation. Before the series' premiere, most sitcoms had only lightly discussed political issues and social change, focusing instead on family matters and character foibles. Lear and Yorkin thought television should do more, depicting "real people dealing with real issues," and developed All in the Family to explore how American families were experiencing and debating contemporary issues and events. The duo was inspired by the British series Till Death Do Us Part, which focused on a family grappling with the social changes and political tumult of the 1960s, representing the “generation gap” of values and viewpoints between the baby boomers and their parents.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Set in Queens, New York, All in the Family followed the working-class Bunker family: Archie (played by Carroll O'Connor), a blue-collar World War II veteran and outspoken conservative, kindhearted wife and mother Edith (played by Jean Stapleton), college-aged liberal feminist daughter Gloria (played by Sally Struthers), and her husband, progressive graduate student Michael "Meathead" Stivic (played by Rob Reiner). Archie frequently butted heads with Meathead and Gloria, demonstrating his intolerance and ignorance on issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and civil, women’s, and LGBTQ rights. Supporting characters introduced as foils to Archie including black neighbors the Jeffersons (Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford) and Edith’s cousin Maude (Bea Arthur) proved popular enough to warrant their own spinoff series. The show’s theme song, “Those Were the Days,” was a nostalgic pean to the 1930s and Lear had the show’s set designers dress the Bunker house set in drab, sepia-toned furniture, props, and textiles to make viewers feel as if they were looking at an old family photo album.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: California, Los Angeles
label: place made
content: United States: California, Los Angeles
topic: label: general subject association
content: Television
label: Subject
content: Comedy
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Entertainment
label: See more items in
content: Popular Entertainment
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Tandem/TAT Productions
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1978.2146.10
label: accession number
content: 1978.2146
label: catalog number
content: 1978.2146.10
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Drawing
label: Object Name
content: drawing
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: vellum (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: graphite (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 34 in x 22 in; 86.36 cm x 55.88 cm