The Captain of the Love Boat Could Have Been Archie Bunker
In today’s edition of Sitcom Sliding Doors, imagine a world in which Archie Bunker, the bigoted patriarch of All in the Family, was played not by Carroll O’Connor but… Captain Stubing from The Love Boat?
It coulda, woulda happened, according to MeTV. In an interview with The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Love Boat and The Mary Tyler Moore Show star Gavin MacLeod revealed that he auditioned to play Archie. No word on how well he did, but MacLeod sounded like he would have turned down the role had Norman Lear offered it.
“It was so defaming. You need a special guy to play that,” explained MacLeod. “I abhor bigotry in every shape and form. I come from a place of love and compassion. It wouldn’t have been a good fit.”
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By all accounts, O’Connor also wasn’t a fan of racial prejudice. He figured out how to play the part anyway.
But neither O’Connor nor MacLeod was Lear’s first choice. If the legendary sitcom producer had his way, a former child star would have played Archie. “One of our ideas for Archie was the only star on the list, Mickey Rooney,” Lear wrote in his memoir, Even This I Get to Experience. Rooney would have been an inspired choice, he believed, “if you didn’t have Carroll O’Connor so fixed in your head.”
Rooney flatly turned down the show, according to Norman Lear: His Life & Times.
So O’Connor got the job, though Lear likely never would have had the option of casting him if the actor had been more successful in some of his earlier auditions. The man who would become Archie Bunker had also been considered for the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island and the panicked Dr. Smith on Lost in Space.
As for MacLeod? He rebounded from his failed Archie Bunker audition to earn a tryout on Mary Tyler Moore’s new sitcom. The part he was brought in to read for was newsroom chief Lou Grant.
“I never believed me as Mary’s boss,” admitted MacLeod. “It was a physical thing and an age thing. But I wasn’t going to say no to the audition. So I read for Lou, got my laughs, and had my hand on the doorknob when I said, ‘Look, guys. Lou is a sensational role, but I really like Murray.’ So I read a few lines.”
MacLeod got the smaller part, which was a lucky thing for Ed Asner. He won three Emmy Awards as Mary’s irascible boss, Lou Grant, and was nominated for four more. That’s a lot of hardware, but MacLeod got all the ladies when he set a course for adventure as captain of The Love Boat.
