Chair used by Edith Bunker in All in the Family
date: label: date made
content: around 1940s
name: label: user
content: Stapleton, Jean
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Upholstered armchair used by Edith Bunker (portrayed by Jean Stapleton) in the television series All in the Family. The Martha Washington style chair has its back and seat upholstered in velour fabric with a thistle motif on white satin-weave ground. The chair has a wooden frame with wooden arms and legs. The chair was likely made in the 1940s, but its exact date of manufacture and maker are unknown; the chair was purchased for the show’s production from a thrift store in Southern California and used until the final season, when a reproduction was made after this chair was donated to the Smithsonian.
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 Caroll 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.
topic: label: related object association proper name
content: All in the Family {Television Program}
label: general subject association
content: Television
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Entertainment
label: See more items in
content: Popular Entertainment
label: See more items in
content: Highlights from the Culture and the Arts Collection
label: Exhibition
content: Entertainment Nation
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
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: 1978.2146.02
label: accession number
content: 1978.2146
label: catalog number
content: 1978.2146.02
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Chair
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: fabric (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 35 in x 25 in x 26 in; 88.9 cm x 63.5 cm x 66.04 cm