Actress Jean Stapleton dies at 90
Jean Stapleton, the character actress whose portrayal of a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive housewife on the groundbreaking series All in the Family made her one of the foremost women in television comedy in the 1970s but a symbol of emergent feminism in American popular culture, died at her home in New York. She was 90.
Jean Stapleton
1923-2013
Jean Stapleton, the character actress whose portrayal of a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive housewife on the groundbreaking series All in the Family made her one of the foremost women in television comedy in the 1970s but a symbol of emergent feminism in American popular culture, died at her home in New York. She was 90.
The actress won three Emmys for her role as Edith, the long-suffering, unsophisticated, but understanding wife of the reactionary and often racist Archie Bunker, played by the late Carroll O'Connor, in the hit TV sitcom.
All In The Family, inspired by the British programme Till Death Us Do Part, was a success with audiences even as it helped usher in a new era for United States television by confronting contentious topics such as racism, the Vietnam war and the feminist movement.
Stapleton appeared in All In The Family from 1971 to 1979, and continued her role for a time in the 1979 spin-off Archie Bunker's Place.
Stapleton was born Jeanne Murray in New York in 1923 to an opera singer mother and a businessman father. She would later adopt her mother's maiden name, Stapleton, as her stage name.