Archie Bunker’s creator Norman Lear reappears at age 92,getting a haircut at Gower Gulch (Sunset Boulevard), on barberFred Allen’s radar, decades after “All in the family” orchestrated the moral underpinnings of Archie’ s prejudices and shrinking violet short mindedness with his son in la, daughter wife….Edith bearing the brunt of maintaining the Bunker facade on aseven day tee vee nee hospitality tour by the Nation’s viewers..
II
Fred Allen brushing off Norman Lear’s gray locks:” Retired now, bet Jack Benny that we could still do an honest days work in Hollywood. Norman you used the Jack Benny character without the violin with Archie.?
“Jack’s stinginess, pawning his Strat0 violin. The Mary Livingstone wife: as resounding echo of Benny’s thrift, his character saving a penny to pawn his violin with Mr. RappaportDid you and your colleagues resurrect ….The pawn broker meeting Archie Bunker?
III
Norman Lear: Unconsciously Fred Archie goes back to Charles Dickens “ Scrooge” to some extent and depending on the audience identifying with “Faga”n of the Oliver Twist gang.Holding up Archie as a model rascal, his leadership in a free fallevery 7 days, Edith holding Archie up to his prejudices.
Fred Allen: A 360 degree turn from Arthur Miller’s “Death of aSalesman”….a tragedy where the father figure wrestled with the hobgoblins of his yesterdays, slipping into self destructiveness…chaos, bankrupting himself. Selling out his support system: wifeand son Biff when he flunked out in school, college beyond his finger tipped dream..
Norman Lear: All he wanted was attention, Fred. He begs for a comeback. To be wanted..Isn’t that the modus operandi for Archie Bunker, hiding out beyond his bias .and stagger.......
Fred Allen: A grown man crying. But your Archie Bunker is razor sharp. His neurons are capable of navigating cyber space web sites and their configurations. Archie is master of his interior dialogue., .never diminishing his role as Archie Bunker, the headmaster of the Bunker stagger.. He could never identify with Wily Loman... Traveling in different orbits .passing without any recognition.
Norman Lear: Wily takes his illusions seriously. Archie resources are absurdity and humor in grabbling with the contradictions inherent in the “storm an drung” of the Bunker stagger middle class.”
Fred Allen: Lee J Cobb as Wily. Your Archie Bunker stagger,Carol O’Connor.
IV
Norman Lear: Flying the aerial dog fighters against the Nazis,,the German pilots s the Baron von crams, Blue Maxes you get toknow bliss and tragedy. The enemy is just like us so in war, you’re like Audie Murphy, the fabled soldier,. You survive by destroying a part of yourself…. The enemy is within your own shadow Fred.
Fred: It sounds like Johnny Weismulller’s (Tarzan) jungle, Norman.
Norman Lear: Isn’t hat the reality y, Fred. The war zone is our wasteland. Our protectors here gunned down, ambushed…guns an issue Archie never made a stagger, a boo boo about. t. Godbless him if would do his swanger as the leadership freaks out,rewriting the scenario . In the meantime the Wily Lomans self destroy while the Archie Bunkers flourish, no worse the wear for their hankerings and opinions. No worse the daily grind and wear and tear.
IV
Fred Allen unlike the Barber of Seville, put the full size mirror to Norman Lear’s 92 year old locks. “Beautiful, Norman. No one would recognize you for your ageless locks of hair.”.”
Brushing off his hair unto the floor. Norman Lear handing Fred Allen a C note. “Keep the change, Fred. You earned it.”, his feetside stepping those 92 year old lumps of hair, cluttering the floor of the six chair barber shop on Hollywood’s Gower Gulch.
New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2014. A healthy New Year to all….
