Profile
Carroll O'Connor
Actor
Male
Born
Aug 2, 1924
Hometown
Manhattan
Died
Jun 21, 2001
Death Place
Culver City, Cali...
Alma Mater
University of Mon...
Other Names
John Carroll O'Co...
Carroll O'Connor was an American actor, producer and director whose television career spanned four decades. Known at first for playing the role of Major General Colt in the 1970 movie Kelly's Heroes, he later found fame as the bigoted working man Archie… Read More
Photos
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Romance
Check out the latest love interests for Carroll O'Connor.
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Nancy Fields O'ConnorMarried 1951 - 2001
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Nancy O`ConnorMarried 1951 - 2001
Family
Discover the family history of Carroll O'Connor.
Carroll O'Connor
d.2001
parents
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Edward Joseph O'ConnorFather
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Elise Patricia O'ConnorMother
siblings
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Hugh O'ConnorBrother
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Robert O'ConnorBrother
children
News + Updates
Browse recent news and stories about Carroll O'Connor.
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Xaque Gruber: Rob Reiner Shares Wit And Wisdom With Hollywood's Next GenerationHuffington Post - Mar 27, 2013
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Steve Karras: Groucho Gave Secretary High Marx: Author Steve Stoliar Recalls His Days As Groucho Marx's SecretaryHuffington Post - Feb 05, 2013
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'In The Heat Of The Night': 25 Things You Didn't Know About The Sidney Poitier ClassicMoviefone Blog - Aug 07, 2012 -
Bob Schulman: A Treasure Of The Sierra MadreHuffington Post - Jul 30, 2012
Timeline
Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Carroll O'Connor.
CHILDHOOD
1924
Birth
Born on August 2, 1924.
TEENAGE
1941
16 Years Old
In 1941, Carroll O'Connor enrolled at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, but dropped out when the United States entered World War II.
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TWENTIES
1951
26 Years Old
After he graduated from the University of Montana in 1951 with degrees in drama and English, O'Connor's fiancée, Nancy, sailed to Ireland to meet Carroll, who was visiting his brother, Hugh. The couple married in Dublin on July 28, 1951.
THIRTIES
1956
31 Years Old
In 1956, O'Connor returned to Missoula to earn a master's degree in speech.
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1962
37 Years Old
In 1962, while he was in Rome, filming Cleopatra, O'Connor and his wife adopted a six-day-old boy, naming him Hugh after O'Connor's brother who had died a year earlier. 17-year-old Hugh later worked as a courier on the set of Archie Bunker's Place.
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FORTIES
1967
42 Years Old
While coping with his son's drug problem, O'Connor starred as Sparta, Mississippi, Police Chief Bill Gillespie, a tough veteran Mississippi cop on In the Heat of the Night. Based on the 1967 movie of the same name, the series debuted on NBC early in 1988 and performed well.
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1968
43 Years Old
O'Connor was living in Italy in 1968 when producer Norman Lear first asked him to come to New York to star in a pilot he was creating for ABC called Justice For All, with O'Connor playing Archie Justice, a loveable yet controversial bigot.
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1971
46 Years Old
…
They then approached CBS with more success, and accordingly, All in the Family was retooled and debuted early in 1971.
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FIFTIES
1976
51 Years Old
Wanting a well-known actor to tackle the controversial material, Lear had approached Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney to play Archie; both declined. O'Connor accepted, not expecting the show to be a success and believing he would be able to move back to Europe. (In her book Archie & Edith, Mike & Gloria: the Tumultuous History of All in the Family, Donna McCrohan noted that O'Connor requested that Lear provide him with a return airline ticket to Rome as a condition of his accepting the role, so that he could return to Italy when the show failed.) Instead, the show became the highest-rated television program on American television for five consecutive seasons until the 1976-1977 season (the sixth season).
1978
53 Years Old
At the end of the eighth season in 1978, Reiner and Struthers left the series to pursue other projects, but O'Connor and Stapleton still had one year left on their contracts.
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1983
58 Years Old
The show was unceremoniously canceled in 1983, after 97 episodes, and O'Connor was angered about the show's cancellation, maintaining that the show ended with an inappropriate finale.
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LATE ADULTHOOD
1989
64 Years Old
In 1989, while working on the set, O'Connor was hospitalized and had to undergo open heart surgery, which caused him to miss four episodes at the end of the second season (actor Joe Don Baker took his place in those episodes as an acting police chief.) The series was transferred from NBC to CBS in 1992 and cancelled two years later, after its seventh season.
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While on the series, O'Connor recorded "Bring A Torch, Jeanette Isabella," for the 1991 "In the Heat of the Night" Christmas CD "Christmas Time's A Comin'."
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In 1995, O'Connor's son Hugh committed suicide after a long battle with drug addiction.
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1997
72 Years Old
In 1997, the O'Connors donated $1 million to their alma mater to help match a challenge grant to the University of Montana from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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1998
73 Years Old
In 1998 O'Connor underwent a second surgery to clear the blockage in a cardiac artery, to reduce his risk of stroke.
2001
77 Years Old
O'Connor died on June 21, 2001 in Culver City, California from a heart attack brought on by complications from diabetes.
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Original Authors of this text are noted on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_O'Connor.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.