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Ted Danson has 18 Emmy nominations to his name, 14 of which are in Best Comedy Actor. If that sounds like a lot, it is. He holds the record for the most nominations in the category — a record he could extend if he scores his 15th bid this year with A Man on the Inside.

Danson, who won Best Comedy Actor for Cheers in 1990 and 1993, previously shared the record at 11 nominations with Alan Alda and Kelsey Grammer for 14 years before nabbing his 12th nomination in 2018 for The Good Place. He racked up two more in 2019 and 2020 for the NBC comedy to put more distance between them.

Alda was the first person bag 11 Best Comedy Actor nominations, all for M*A*S*H, winning in 1974 and 1982. Danson was also nominated for all 11 seasons of Cheers. After debuting Dr. Frasier Crane on Cheers, for which he earned two supporting actor bids, Grammer starred on Frasier for 11 years,...

We will update this article throughout the season, along with all our predictions, so make sure to keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2025 Emmys race. The nomination round of voting takes place from June 12 to June 23, with the official Emmy nominations announced Tuesday, July 15. Afterwards, final voting commences on August 18 and ends the night of August 27. The 77th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards are set to take place on Sunday, September 14, and air live on CBS at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt.

The State of the Race

There are a couple categories that are brutal this year because they lost one nomination slot, and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series is one of them. Funny enough, the whole reason the category had six nomination slots last year was because there was a tie. That is not something contenders can count on, though it is...

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On July 4th, 1976, the United States of America celebrated its Bicentennial. 200 years of existence bred public, country-spanning events and jamborees. But underneath this pomp and circumstance bred a curdling, unsettled need for self-examination, criticism, and change. All of that came, in large part, because of television.

This appliance, now firmly a part of an average household's daily life, became increasingly capable of global transmissions, presenting and reflecting perspectives heretofore unseen. In the real world, government corruption, complicated conflicts, and demands of racial and gender equality rocked and rolled, often in live broadcasts in full color.

So, in the TV world, programs started to follow suit. Thus, not unlike the best movies of the 1970s, shows became exponentially more complex, compelling, and incendiary. Throughout the '70s, the art form expanded more and more, in lockstep with the public's appetite for change and investigation,...

James McEachin, who wrote and produced songs for Otis Redding before turning to acting to portray cops on his own NBC Mystery Movie series and in 18 of the popular Perry Mason telefilms, has died. He was 94.

McEachin died Jan. 11 and was interred last month at Los Angeles National Cemetery.

The familiar character actor also appeared in four films opposite Clint Eastwood: Coogan’s Bluff (1968), Play Misty for Me (1971) — as the deejay Sweet Al Monte — Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Sudden Impact (1983).

All in the Family aficionados know him for his turns as the IRS tax examiner who won’t be bribed on the 1972 episode “Archie’s Fraud” and as Solomon Jackson, a Black Jew whom Carroll O’Connor’s character invites into his lodge to check off some diversity boxes, on the 1977 installment “Archie the Liberal.”

A onetime contract player at Universal, McEachin starred as family man Harry Tenafly, a...

Charles Strouse, the musical composer for such Broadway hits as Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie, films including Bonnie and Clyde (1967) The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968) and All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989) and for the TV series All In The Family, died at his home in New York City on May 15. He was 96.

His death was announced by his children Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria, and William Strouse., and was nominated for Golden Boy, Charlie & Algernon, Rags, and Nick & Nora.

Strouse was born on June 7, 1928 in New York City, the son of Ethel (Newman) and Ira Strouse. After graduating from the Eastman School of Music in 1947, he received two scholarships to Tanglewood, where he studied under composer Aaron Copland. Subsequently, Copland arranged for Strouse to get a scholarship with legendary teacher, Nadia Boulanger, in Paris.

Strouse met songwriting partner, lyricist Adams, at a party in 1949, and the duo began a longtime collaboration starting with writing songs for summer resorts in the Adirondacks. Strouse and Adams contributed material to numerous Off-Broadway musical revues, including Catch a Star, Shoestring Revue, The Littlest Revue and Kaleidoscope, and wrote specialty material for Kaye Ballard, Carol Burnett, Jane Morgan and Dick Shawn.

In 1958, Strouse and lyricist, Fred Tobias wrote the chart-topping pop song “Born Too Late” (recorded by The Poni-Tails), and it was in that same year that Strouse and Adams had their Broadway breakthrough. They were hired by producer Edward Padula to write a satirical musical about rock and roll and teen idol culture. The show, Bye Bye Birdie, became their first Tony Award-winning hit. The production starred Chita Rivera and Dick Van Dyke and won four 1961 Tony Awards including Best Musical, earning Strouse the first of his three Tony Awards.

The show introduced the world to such songs as “Put On A Happy Face,” and “A Lot of Livin’ to Do.” A 1962 movie version, starring Ann-Margret, was one of the top-grossing films of the year, and featured Margret’s now iconic performance of the film’s newly added title song, “Bye Bye Birdie.” Strouse would later win a 1996 Emmy Award for the new song, “Let’s Settle Down,” written with Adams and added for the musical’s 1995 TV adaptation, starring Jason Alexander and Vanessa Williams.

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Additional collaborations with Adams include the Mel Brooks musical All American (1962) starring Ray Bolger. Though the show was not a commercial success, it featured what would become the popular American standard “Once Upon a Time”. Golden Boy (1963), a musical adaptation of the play by Clifford Odets starred Sammy Davis Jr., garnered Strouse his second Tony Award nomination. It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane… It’s Superman! gave audiences another popular Strouse & Adams song, “You’ve Got Possibilities” (first recorded by Linda Lavin). And in 1970, when the team wrote the score for Applause (based on the film All About Eve and Mary Orr’s The Wisdom of Eve and starring Lauren Bacall), Strouse would win his second Tony Award.

Strouse’s biggest Broadway success was with collaborators Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan on Annie (1977), based on the comic strip, “Little Orphan Annie,” by Harold Gray. The Depression-era musical about a plucky red-headed orphan girl who wins the heart of billionaire Oliver Warbucks, was one of Broadway’s biggest hits of the 1970s, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and garnering Strouse his third Tony Award and a Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album. Strouse’s score included “Tomorrow,” “It’s the Hard–Knock Life,” “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” and “I Don’t Need Anything But You.” Annie ran for over 2,300 performances on Broadway, where it has been revived twice and has inspired hundreds of worldwide productions. It has also been adapted for two film and two television productions.

Strouse was passionate about collaboration and would earn Tony Award nominations for his scores with lyricists: David Rogers, Charlie & Algernon (1980), based on the novel Flowers for Algernon, Steven Schwartz, for Rags (1986), with book writer Joseph Stein starring Teresa Stratas, and Nick and Nora (1991), a musical based on Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man characters, written with Richard Maltby, Jr.

Strouse’s film scores include Bonnie and Clyde (1967) starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, There Was a Crooked Man (1970), with Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas, Sidney Lumet’s Just Tell Me What You Want, and the animated feature All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989).

In addition to his awards, Strouse was the recipient of several honorary doctorates. He was a longtime member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, inducted in 1985, and the Theatre Hall of Fame.

Strouse also composed orchestral works, chamber music, piano concertos, and an opera. His original piano work, Concerto America, was composed in 2002 to commemorate 9/11 and premiered at The Boston Pops in 2004. His opera Nightingale (1982), starring Sarah Brightman, had a successful run in London, followed by many subsequent productions.

In 1977, Strouse founded the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, through which many young composers and lyricists honed their craft and developed their work. Strouse authored the autobiography Put on a Happy Face: A Broadway Memoir, published by Union Square Press in July 2008.

In addition to his four children, Strouse is survived by eight grandchildren, Sam and Arthur Strouse, Navah Strouse, Vivian, Weston and Ever Brush, and Owen and Theodore Strouse.

A private ceremony will be held at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in New York City.

Joe Don Baker, the broad-shouldered Texas tough guy who portrayed characters on both sides of the law, most notably Sheriff Buford Pusser in the unexpected box-office hit Walking Tall, died May 7, his family announced. He was 89.

Baker first attracted mainstream attention in 1972 when he starred as the younger, business-minded brother of an aging Arizona rodeo rider (Steve McQueen) in Sam Peckinpah’s Junior Bonner (1972), then portrayed a sadistic mob hitman named Molly in Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick (1973), starring Walter Matthau.

In James Bond films, the 6-foot-3 Baker played a villain, the megalomaniacal arms dealer Brad Whitaker, in The Living Daylights (1987), starring Timothy Dalton as 007, then returned as a good guy, CIA agent Jack Wade, opposite Pierce Brosnan in the 1995 and ’97 movies GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, respectively.

As former professional wrestler Pusser — based on a real-life sheriff who cleaned up crime in his Tennessee town — Baker survives a series...

Nowadays, there are plenty of sitcoms on cable and streamers known for pushing the boundaries of comedy. From South Park to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to Big Mouth to The Righteous Gemstones, edgy sitcoms have cemented their own place in the TV landscape with their sometimes salacious, sometimes contentiously pioneering jokes. But in the 20th century, the standards for decency were set on network television. Religious groups, parental organizations and even sitting presidents took issue with TV humor and weighed in on what was or wasn’t suitable for prime time.

Here are five shows that were considered to be very controversial in their time, all for different reasons…

1 All in the Family

In the 1950s and ‘60s, sitcoms were generally good, clean fun for the whole family, but the landscape changed considerably in 1971 with the debut of All in the Family. Unlike any other sitcom before it, All in the Family...

One of the most obnoxious sitcom tropes is when a show becomes popular enough that celebrities begin appearing on it as themselves. Now, some shows have made it work. Insane guest stars are The Simpsons thing, for example. And Curb Your Enthusiasm is about a guy in show business, so celebrities playing themselves makes total sense. But when a show is about ordinary people yet gigantic household names keep showing up on their doorstep the reality of that world is blown apart.

There have, however, been a handful of times when a celebrity played themselves on a sitcom and actually pulled it off. These are the top five…

5 Marisa Tomei on ‘Seinfeld’

Tomei’s appearance on Seinfeld worked out of sheer absurdity alone. The very idea that the pathetic George Costanza (Jason Alexander) would be exactly her type is funny on its own, but when George and Marisa meet, the comedy is sublime.

The "All in the Family" episode "Archie's Brief Encounter" initially aired as a one-hour special, as it dealt with some pretty heavy subject matter. Notably, it was the episode wherein it looked like Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) was going to leave her husband Archie (Carroll O'Connor) once and for all. Archie loves Edith, of course, but he has a selfish streak a mile wide, along with many, many other character flaws that require a lot of patience to withstand (although O'Connor himself was a stalwart union man). After its first airing, "Brief Encounter" was presented in two parts.

In the episode, Archie is feeling neglected by Edith, as she is putting in a lot of hours at Sunshine Home, the retirement home where she works. Then, one evening, Archie receives romantic attention from a waitress named Denise (Janis Paige). When Edith catches Archie flirting with Denise, she is incensed and heartbroken.

Have you ever experienced this before? You're watching one of your comfort shows from decades ago, something you remember fondly watching when you were younger and want to relive that same magic. All of a sudden, you come face-to-face with a horrific joke that no longer passes the vibe check. Everything from "Friends" to "The Simpsons" have jokes that aged terribly, but there's a different kind of realization you might come to with certain programs. While some shows have singular episodes that no longer work, some series have central premises that no network or streamer would take a chance on today.

Making a list of TV shows that would never be made today is pretty common, but many of these other lists have entries that just don't make sense. Like how can you say that "South Park" couldn't be made today when new episodes are currently getting made? There are...

Rob Reiner is the multi-hyphenate who has excelled both in front of and behind the camera for over 50 years, starting as an actor before moving into directing. Let's take a look back at 12 of his greatest films as a director, ranked worst to best.

Reiner was born into the business as the son of performer Estelle Reiner and comedian Carl Reiner, creator of "The Dick Van Dyke Show." He shot to fame on television with his role as Mike "Meathead" Stivic, the liberal son-in-law to buffoonish bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) on "All in the Family." The series brought him two Emmys as Best Comedy Supporting Actor (1974 and 1978). His victory, in fact, made the show the first to ever win acting prizes for all four of its leads, with O'Connor and Jean Stapleton prevailing in lead and Sally Struthers in supporting.

He transitioned into filmmaking with the rock mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap...

The classic sitcomAll in the Family, considered by many to be ahead of its time when it aired from 1971 to 1979, as it pushed boundaries regarding social issues like racism and sexism, is heading to a free streaming service soon. The comedy series, which won 22 Emmy Awards during its run, will come to Tubi on March 1.

All in the Family was created by sitcom legend Norman Lear, who was behind other classics like Maude, Sanford and Son, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Lear died in 2023 at the age of 101.All in the Family starred Carroll O’Connor as the cranky Archie Bunker and Jean Stapelton as his wife, Edith Bunker. Sally Struthers portrayed the Bunker’s daughter, Gloria, and actor-turned-director Rob Reiner played her husband Michael, who was better known as “Meathead” on the show.

Related10 Best '70s Sitcoms (That Everyone Forgot About)

The 70s is a decade chock full of innovative and hilarious sitcoms,...

Archie Bunker, as played by Carroll O'Connor, is a fascinating cultural pivot point for American television. He was a lout, a bigot, and perpetually angry, baffled by the social progress being made in the United States in the 1970s. He looked to the past frequently, and reminisced about how life used to be simpler; it's no wonder that the theme song to his show, "All in the Family," was called "Those Were the Days." Bunker was not a good person ... and yet continuously showed vulnerability and heart. Nostalgia is all well and good, but one might not want to vaunt the past; it wasn't always better for everyone. It's no wonder that "Family Guy" regularly lampoons "All in the Family" with such verve.

As "All in the Family" progressed, Bunker proved again and again that he was capable of compassion, and could — if he was determined — rise above his prejudices.

Super Bowl Lix on Sunday will bring in the biggest TV audience of the year — and, following the game, the biggest audience ever for Fox’s game show The Floor.

Those are pretty much immutable facts in the TV landscape. The Super Bowl is, by enormous margins, the most-watched single telecast of any given year. And the show that airs after it gets a big audience as well, typically placing among the top five entertainment telecasts on network or cable TV that season.

The post-game slot has been a showcase for decades, but it wasn’t always that way. In the early years of the Super Bowl, whichever network aired the game (CBS and NBC shared NFL rights back then) went to its regular Sunday night programming afterward — in three of the Super Bowl’s first four years, that meant an episode of Lassie on CBS.

Eventually, though, broadcasters figured...

America’s Senior Sweetheart wasn’t as nice as everyone thought, according to All in the Family and Man on the Inside star Sally Struthers. At least Struthers waited until Betty White passed away before she put the Golden Girls star on blast.

“I have to say, now that she’s gone, I want to talk about Betty White for just a moment,” Struthers said on the Let's Talk About That! podcast. “I know everybody loves her. They loved her so much they signed petitions to get her to guest-host Saturday Night Live. I know all that. I didn’t have such a great experience with her.”

What happened? Years ago, Struthers was invited to White’s home to discuss a pilot for a new game show. A group working on the show discussed what was working and what wasn’t when White asked her housekeeper to bring in a...

All in the Family's Sally Struthers is recalling a not-so-fond memory of beloved Golden Girl Betty White. During the January 13 episode of the Let's Talk About That! With Larry Saperstein and Jacob Bellotti podcast, Struthers recalled an incident where White "fat-shamed her." Noting that she knows precisely how beloved White was (as is), she shared what happened when the two were collaborating on the pilot for a game show.

"I have to say, now that she's gone, I wanna talk about Betty White for just a moment. And I know everybody loves her. They loved her so much. They signed petitions to get her to guest host 'Saturday Night Live.' I know all that. I didn't have such a great experience with her—very passive-aggressive woman.

She asked her housekeeper to bring in a plate of whatever to us while we were all sitting and talking about what...

While Norman Lear produced many of the most successful sitcoms of the 1970s and 1980s, including All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Sanford and Son, the behind-the-scenes squabbling rivaled the fights between Archie Bunker and his meathead son-in-law. Tripp Whetsall, author of the new biography Norman Lear: His Life and Times, recently talked to me about the comedy stars who got into it with Lear.

Comedy stars such as…

Carroll O’Connor

The All in the Family lead and Lear “had a very difficult, contemptuous relationship,” says Whetsell. “It was much more Carroll than Norman. Carroll was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders with Archie Bunker.”

Lear’s “idea of comedy, I think, is at variance with mine,” O’Connor once said. “We’ve disagreed over material from the very beginning of the show over what made naturalistic comedy. I had one idea, and he had another.

Even if you've never seen "All in the Family," there's a high probability that you're at least somewhat familiar with the character of Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), his well-meaning albeit shrill wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), and his constant conflict as a conservative patriarch against a progressively evolving world. If that sounds like the set-up for every family sitcom ever made, it's because, well, it is. "All in the Family" is one of the most influential TV shows in history, and that's not even factoring in the web of spin-offs it inspired like "The Jeffersons," "Maude," "Gloria, "704 Hauser,' "Good Times," and "Archie Bunker's Place."

The latter was a direct continuation of "All in the Family," set primarily in the neighborhood tavern purchased by Archie in the eighth season of the flagship sitcom. "Archie Bunker's Place" starts when he takes in a Jewish business partner named Murray Klein after co-owner...

The longest-running sitcoms in television history come from several different decades and have different styles of humor but have all left a lasting legacy. Sitcoms have always been a staple of television, as even classic golden age TV was known for shows like Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver gave way to even more groundbreaking sitcoms like All in the Family and The Jeffersons. However, when it came to sitcoms, lasting for 15 or 20 seasons was never easy as humor is subjective and changes over time. Yet some have shown incredible lasting power over the years.

Though audiences tune into sitcoms for laughs, the longest-running sitcoms show the different ways the genre can connect with audiences. There are the classic easy-going sitcoms like The Love Boat, some that mix in drama, like M*A*S*H, animated classics like The Simpsons, and darker sitcoms like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Doc Severinsen was a snitch.

After a night off, Johnny Carson was back in his Tonight Show chair, and it didn’t take him long to notice something was off. A cigarette box that had been a mainstay on his desk for years was broken. “What the hell happened to this?” Carson asked the bandleader. “You know how long I’ve had this cigarette box? I brought this out from New York. What on earth?”

“Rickles!” came the shouts from offstage, either from the audience, stagehands or both. “Don Rickles,” Doc clarified in case Carson thought some other Rickles was the perpetrator.

Carson wasn’t happy. “What the hell did he do with it?” he wondered. “The wood is broken! That’s an heirloom!”

It was an easy explanation. He was screwing around with guest host Bob Newhart, banging Johnny’s desk and accidentally busting Carson’s box.

This indignity would not stand.

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Legendary actor Donald Sutherland passed away on June 20, 2024, at the age of 88. Widely considered one of the greatest actors to have never won a competitive Academy Award for acting, Sutherland was a prolific movie star who amassed nearly 200 credits between 1962 and 2023. Sutherland got his big break in 1967 when he landed a supporting role in The Dirty Dozen. By the early 1970s, Sutherland emerged as one of Hollywood's most prominent stars following performances in movies such as M*A*S*H, Kelly's Heroes, and Klute.

Although Sutherland was never even nominated for an Academy Award, he received an Honorary Award at the 90th Oscars for his lifetime achievements in cinema. Throughout his career, Sutherland did manage to win two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. One of the most well-respected actors to hail from Canada, Sutherland was made both an Officer...

All in the Family is one of the most iconic sitcoms of the 1970s, and was so popular that it spawned a grand total of 7 spinoffs, fleshing out the on-screen lives of many minor and supporting characters with shows of their own. Produced by Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin, the working-class sitcom was set in Queens, New York and was based on a British sitcom called Till Death Do Us Part. All in the Family is famous for its prejudiced patriarch, Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), who was used as a device for commentary on social issues in the 1970s.

The Bunkers and their neighbors, the Jeffersons, developed relationships with other characters throughout All in the Family, many of whom got spin-offs of their own. With the series' cultural relevance and fandom, it's no surprise All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times were also revived for a live performance...

Patt Shea, the Norman Lear regular who co-wrote the 1979 series finale of All in the Family and co-created and worked on two spinoffs of the fabled sitcom, Archie Bunker’s Place and Gloria, has died. She was 93.

Shea died April 12 of natural causes on her birthday at her home in Sherman Oaks, her son Michael Shea, a director and assistant director, told The Hollywood Reporter. The family chose to wait until this week to publicly announce her death.

“Patt Shea was a trailblazer in comedy writing,” Michael noted. “Her success as a writer in groundbreaking sitcoms was only matched by her generosity and compassion for people.”

Jack Shea, her husband of 59 years, died in 2013. He directed dozens of episodes of such Lear-connected sitcoms as The Jeffersons, Silver Spoons and Sanford and Son and served as president of the DGA from 1997-2002, part of a half-century of dedicated service to the guild.

August 9

Q: On this day exactly 50 years ago, August 9 1974, Richard Nixon became the first and only President to resign his office. Nixon also significantly brought Best Actor nominations to two actors who played him on screen. Who are they?

A: Anthony Hopkins was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for 1995’s Nixon. Frank Langella was nominated in the same category for 2008’s Frost/Nixon. Langella had previously won a Tony Award for the play on which that movie was based. Only one actor has ever won a Best Actor Oscar for playing a real life U.S. President. Daniel Day Lewis took his third Lead Actor Academy Award in 2012’s Lincoln. Raymond Massey was also previously nominated as Lincoln for Best Actor in 1940’s Abe Lincoln In Illinois. Nixon and Lincoln are the only real life U.S. Presidents to be responsible for multiple Oscar nominations for those who played them.

One of Rob Reiner’s greatest filmmaking credits is the classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. But he became the maker of an actual documentary – not a faux one – with Albert Brooks: Defending My Life. This morning (while working on the sequel to Spinal Tap in New Orleans) he learned he’s become an Emmy nominee for the HBO film about his lifelong buddy, Brooks.

“It’s a total surprise,” he said of the Emmy recognition for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and for his direction of the film. “Especially because I’ve never made a real documentary. The only one I made was a fake one – Spinal Tap. It’s so funny to get recognized in this way.”

Related: Emmy Nominations Analysis: Fresh Blood Livens Up The Race For TV Gold

Rob Reiner speaks at the HBO Documentary Films screening of ‘Albert Brooks: Defending My Life’ at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

In 2024, Donald Glover earned his fifth acting Emmy nomination for his dramatic star turn on “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” Since most of his earlier bids came for his work on the comedy series “Atlanta,” he was welcomed into a group of 17 other actors with lead or supporting bids for both program genres. Scroll through our photo gallery to find out who preceded him in joining this club.

To date, the only actors who have won Emmys as both comedy and drama series regulars are Ed Asner (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show”; “Lou Grant”), Carroll O’Connor (“All in the Family”; “In the Heat of the Night”), Alan Alda (“M*A*S*H”; “The West Wing”), and John Lithgow (“3rd Rock from the Sun”; “The Crown”). Another five men on this roster only won for their dramatic roles, while three more only succeeded on their comedy bids.

Every actor included in this gallery was nominated...

In 2024, Donald Glover earned his fifth acting Emmy nomination for his dramatic star turn on “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” Since most of his earlier bids came for his work on the comedy series “Atlanta,” he was welcomed into a group of 17 other actors with lead or supporting bids for both program genres. Scroll through our photo gallery to find out who preceded him in joining this club.

To date, the only actors who have won Emmys as both comedy and drama series regulars are Ed Asner (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show”; “Lou Grant”), Carroll O’Connor (“All in the Family”; “In the Heat of the Night”), Alan Alda (“M*A*S*H”; “The West Wing”), and John Lithgow (“3rd Rock from the Sun”; “The Crown”). Another five men on this roster only won for their dramatic roles, while three more only succeeded on their comedy bids.

Every actor included in this gallery was nominated...

One needn't recount the premise of "Gilligan's Island." One only needs to listen to the theme song.

When Sherwood Schwartz was first casting his sitcom "Gilligan's Island" back in 1964, he knew that finding the right actor to play the Skipper -- Jonas Grumby, the captain of the S.S. Minnow -- was going to be a challenge. He had envisioned the title character as a shrimpy, thin man, and he knew that he wanted Bob Denver, previously the star of "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," in the role. To provide a physical contrast, Shwartz wanted the Skipper to be large, imposing, and capable of yelling in rage. But, and this was key, the Skipper also had to be lovable. In an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Schwartz was explicit in saying he wanted a teddy bear of a man. Someone who was big and round, but also imminently cuddly.

When it comes to groundbreaking television, there are few shows that match the ambition and success of All in the Family. The Norman Lear-created sitcom tackled nearly every social issue of the time, from racial tensions and antisemitism to queer rights. The Bunker house, led by kindhearted Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) and her politically incorrect Archie (Carroll O'Connor), was filled with constant change and a slew of innovative characters (many of whom were spun-off into their own series).

Television has been full of memorable moments over the years, some more so than others.

Yet, there's a difference between just memorable and monumental.

The nine television episodes below made history in various ways and, in some cases, permanently changed the TV landscape.

All in the Family Season 2 Episode 21: Sammy's Visit

The late writer and producer Norman Lear, who passed away in 2023, created several beloved classic sitcoms that pushed the boundaries of American television at the time.

None more so than All in the Family (1971-1979), a show about a bigoted working-class man and his struggles with family and society during the changing 1970s.

Related: Classic TV is the Perfect Binge Watch For So Many Reasons

The show covered many exciting and often controversial topics over its nine seasons.

From draft dodging to sexual assault, the show never avoided complex subjects of the time.

One of the most difficult...

At 5' 1'' tall, TV legend Sally Struthers is quite petite. Her showrunners took advantage of this, surrounding the diminutive actor with performers that towered above her for comedic effect. Even on the '90s Disney Afternoon cartoon "TaleSpin," Struthers voiced Rebecca Cunningham, a brown bear entrepreneur who was about half the size of her lackadaisical employee, the sloth bear pilot Baloo, yet twice as intimidating. Indeed, what Struthers' characters lacked in stature, they made up for in outsized personality.

On Norman Lear's classic '70s sitcom "All in the Family," Struthers was a whole (meat)head shorter than her onscreen husband, the 6' 2'' Rob Reiner. She also stood well below her costars Carroll O'Connor (5' 11'') and Jean Stapleton (5' 8''). The show got a lot of mileage out of this sight gag, with Reiner's hippie Michael "Mike" Stivic and O'Connor as the right-wing Archie Bunker frequently...

They lined up early on Sunday morning – many adorned in 1950s-style garb – to take in a screening and panel event of the acclaimed eight-part Apple TV+ limited series “Lessons in Chemistry.” The streamer was promoting the Emmy Awards candidacy at the TV Academy’s Wolf Theater in North Hollywood. A capacity crowd of 600 people took in an episode before witnessing a panel talk moderated by Jessica Radloff of Glamour magazine and populated by star Brie Larson (a 2016 Oscar winner for “Room” and a Golden Globe and SAG Award nominee for “Lessons”); co-stars Lewis Pullman and Aja Naomi King; executive producer/showrunner Lee Eisenberg (a seven-time Emmy nominee); and director Sarah Adina Smith (a DGA Award winner for the series earlier this year).

SEEEmmy race update: ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ catching up to ‘Fargo’

Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Bonnie Garmus (a co-exec producer on the series...

"In the Heat of the Night" TV show was a sequel to the movie and dealt with themes of racism and police brutality. Lead actor Carroll O'Connor won Emmy Awards for his roles in the show and "All in the Family." Several cast members, including Howard Rollins and Hugh O'Connor, tragically passed away after the show.

The In the Heat of the Night TV show featured a large ensemble cast of characters, though sadly, as the years have gone by there have been a number of deaths in the cast. A TV adaptation of the 1967 movie starring Sidney Poitier in a career-best performance, which itself is based on the 1965 book of the same name by John Ball, In the Heat of the Night premiered in 1988 on NBC and moved to CBS after season 5, airing on the network from season 6 until its final season 8.

The show serves as a sequel to...

Who is the best male TV star of all time? Our photo gallery above takes on the tough task of ranking the 50 greatest actors and performers. Agree or disagree with our choices?

With over 70 years of television to consider, we had to provide ourselves with a few rules to help simplify things. One of those was that every man in our gallery must have been an ongoing leading star at some point, preferably more often than not. That’s why you will not see such classic supporting actors as Art Carney, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Peter Dinklage and more. We also do not include any news/sports anchors or journalists such as Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Peter Jennings, Howard Cosell since they are not performers.

In order to place them in the rankings, we were looking at a combination of quality (top rated shows with the public or critics...

Janis Paige, who racked up more than 100 film, TV and stage credits over six decades including The Pajama Game, Silk Stockings and Santa Barbara, died June 2 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 101.

Her friend Stuart Lambert told The Associated Press about Paige’s death.

During her long career, Paige toured with Bob Hope and danced onscreen with Fred Astaire, along with originating the Babe Williams role in The Pajama Game on Broadway in 1954. That same year she headlined It’s Always Jan, a CBS sitcom about the problems of single-parenthood during which she usually sang a song. It lasted a single season.

Born Donna Mae Tjaden on September 16, 1922, in Tacoma, Wa, she began singing in talent shows at a tender age and moved to Los Angeles after graduating high school.

Paige made her Broadway debut in 1951 opposite Jackie Cooper in the mystery comedy Remains to Be Seen but...

Janis Paige, the ebullient redhead who starred in the original Broadway production of The Pajama Game and in such Hollywood musicals as Silk Stockings and Romance on the High Seas, has died. She was 101.

Paige, who was discovered in the 1940s while performing at the legendary Hollywood Canteen, died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, her friend Stuart Lampert announced.

Paige starred on her own network sitcom, playing a widowed nightclub singer struggling to raise her 10-year-old daughter, on the 1955-56 CBS series It’s Always Jan, and she had recurring roles as Dick van Patten’s free-spirited sister on ABC’s Eight Is Enough and as a hospital administrator on CBS’ Trapper John, M.D.

The actress also turned in two memorable guest-starring stints in 1976, playing an attractive diner waitress named Denise who tempts Archie (Carroll O’Connor) to cheat on Edith (Jean Stapleton) on All in the Family...

Before she was one of America's most famous sitcom daughters, actor Sally Struthers made her primetime debut dancing on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," the variety show that's now best-remembered for featuring performances from some of the best musical acts of the '70s. The gig wasn't the flashiest thing in show biz, but it was enough to get Struthers on the radar of Norman Lear, the up and coming writer-producer who would soon take the nation by storm with "All in the Family."

In a retrospective interview with Closer Weekly in 2021, Struthers spoke about the fortuitous circumstances that eventually led to her casting in "All in the Family." As with many big breaks, it came hot on the heels of a rejection that stung. "I had just come off 'The Tim Conway Comedy Hour.' I should have been on all 13 weeks of it, but after the fifth show,...

"Gilmore Girls" is known as one of the most rewatchable comfort shows of the aughts. It's beloved for its mile-a-minute dialogue, surreally perfect small-town setting, and a warm central relationship that's held together via the power of mom-daughter love and a shared fondness for junk food and pop culture. It's that last part that makes one of the show's own pop culture connections especially ironic: Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) love classic TV, but they're blissfully unaware that they're living with two stars of one of the most talked-about early sitcoms.

The pair live next door to a woman named Babette, a true eccentric who's as adorable as she is overbearing. Babette often says whatever comes to mind in her signature raspy voice, and she brings a sort of benevolent chaos to the series that counters some of Stars Hollows' more genuinely annoying characters. In a bit of great casting,...

Sitcom romances capture the essence of great love stories through humor, trust, and support in the face of life's challenges. Enduring sitcom couples remind viewers that the best relationships are built on shared joy, personal growth, and weathering storms together. Iconic pairings from sitcoms teach valuable lessons about love, companionship, and unbreakable bonds formed on the small screen.

While sitcoms have many great qualities, the romantic relationships they depict are among the best, combining humor and love in a compelling way. These on-screen partnerships capture the essence of what makes a great love story, showcasing the power of laughter, trust, and support in the face of life's challenges. From friends-to-lovers arcs to opposites-attract dynamics, sitcom romances offer a diverse range of relatable and inspiring examples of what it means to find and maintain a meaningful connection.

The couples featured in some of the best sitcoms of all time serve as...

Third time may not always be the charm, but it was for "All in the Family." Following a pair of failed pilots, Norman Lear's pioneering sitcom hit the airwaves on January 12, 1971. Fittingly titled "Meet the Bunkers," the show's first episode is a pretty typical outing for Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) and his kin. It's basically plotless; Archie and his son-in-law Michael/Mike (Rob Reiner) squabble over religion and politics like it's their personal hobby; Archie's daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) is equally irritated and on the verge of tears as she tries to keep the peace between the stubborn men in her life; Archie is deservedly (and hilariously) made to look like a clown for his bigotry; and the whole thing wraps up with some unguarded earnestness, illustrating why his loved ones even put up with Archie in the first place.

Like any TV pilot, the characters aren't done cooking yet.

There would be no "All in the Family" without the late Carroll O'Connor. The actor spent nine seasons endearing audiences to his character Archie Bunker, a middle-aged, blue-collared, conservative working stiff who wouldn't think twice about referring to someone by a derogatory term. Year in and year out, viewers delighted in watching Archie make his liberal, self-righteous son-in-law Mike's (Rob Reiner), aka "The Meathead," blood boil. (Just listen to that live studio audience cackling at Archie's unbothered response here.) Even if you disagreed with just about every single thing that came out of Archie's mouth (which you absolutely should), O'Connor had a way of winning you over.

Perhaps that's why the actor was keen to keep the good times rollin' along, even when everyone else around him was ready to pack it in. While season 8 was clearly intended to serve as the show's swan song, O'Connor succeeded in keeping "All in the Family...

The line between reality and fiction in television hasn't always been obvious to people. Be it "Gilligan's Island" viewers badgering the Coast Guard to rescue the S.S. Minnow's poor shipwrecked crew or grown-up "Sesame Street" fans believing that Sonia Manzano and Emilio Delgado (who played married couple Maria and Luis for four decades) were actually hitched, history is littered with anecdotes of audiences assuming what they're seeing on their TV screen is actually happening. Despite the leaps and gains in the masses' media literacy over time, folks still need help understanding how even docuseries and so-called reality shows can easily manipulate the truth (as creators Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie satirized with "The Curse").

When Sally Struthers was cast as Gloria Stivic (née Bunker) in "All in the Family," she was, for all intents and purposes, a nobody. Save for her stint on "The Tim Conway Comedy Hour" the...

Norman Lear knew what he was getting into with "All in the Family." The late TV giant was warned from the outset that Americans would revolt against a sitcom that talked about the hot political topics of the day and didn't try to sugarcoat the country's history of racism and using religion to justify its bigotry and hatreds towards those deemed "the other." Nor, for that matter, did his doubters buy into the concept that audiences wanted to see an honest reflection of how families behave in the comfort of their homes.

Hindsight being 20/20, it's worth noting that Lear's skeptics had valid reasons for believing what they did. Despite being based on the British comedy series "Till Death Us Do Part," there was nothing quite like "All in the Family" on the U.S. airwaves when it premiered in 1971 on CBS. American sitcom dads were upstanding, tolerant members of their...

Audiences loved "All in the Family," Norman Lear's hit sitcom about lovable bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), his long-suffering wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), their daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers), and Gloria's husband, Michael "Meathead" Stivic (Rob Reiner), all living under the same roof in disharmonyy. I know that when I was a kid, I loved watching "All in the Family" re-runs on Nick at Nite, and the show has a large legacy that endures to this day, thanks to its lengthy run: it lasted for 9 seasons, and then continued on as the spin-off sitcom "Archie Bunker's Place."

But "Archie Bunker's Place" was a different beast altogether, and it happened as the result of one of the cast members deciding to leave the main series. While this could've spelled the end for Archie Bunker, that's not how things shook out. Instead, the story continued, albeit in a different incarnation. But that...

Before I knew her as Archie Bunker's little girl Gloria on "All in the Family," I knew Sally Struthers as Rebecca Cunningham on "TaleSpin." A loving single mom and ambitious businesswoman whose outspoken personality belied her petite build, Rebecca -- aka "Becky," "Beckers," and the many other nicknames her responsibility-skirting, party-loving employee Baloo would use to refer to her -- was but one of many reasons to love the "Jungle Book"-inspired animated pulp period adventure series and Disney Afternoon staple. After years of trying (and failing) to keep the peace between her stubbornly conservative dad and her liberal, holier-than-thou husband Michael as Gloria in "All in the Family," Struthers was an expert in the art of sounding flustered, a talent that served her well on "TalepSpin."

Struthers' distinct, gently raspy vocals would allow her to carve out a career for herself as a voice actor, resulting in roles on...

There's a fine art to ending a great TV series. Agonizing as it was when "The Good Place" and "Succession" recently packed it in after four seasons, it allowed them to go out with an emotional wallop rather than coasting on fumes past their expiration date. Admittedly, with less story-driven shows, it gets trickier. At what point should a comparatively episodic sitcom call it a day? It often comes down to the people involved in making it.

With "All in the Family," the writing was clearly on the wall at the end of season 8. With yet another impressive batch of episodes in the bag (including all-timers like the emotionally explosive "Edith's 50th Birthday"), creator Norman Lear and his team were ready to wind things down. The last two episodes of the season, "The Dinner Guest" and "The Stivics Go West," saw lifelong East Coasters Archie (Carroll O'Connor) and his wife...

Lynn Loring, who appeared as a young actress on Search for Tomorrow, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and The F.B.I. before becoming one of the highest-ranking female executives in Hollywood at the time, has died. She was 80.

Loring died Dec. 23 at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center after a series of chronic illnesses, her son, Chris Thinnes, told The Hollywood Reporter. Her family chose not to make public her death until now.

Loring also acted in a few movies, including Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass (1961), Pressure Point (1962) and, alongside then-husband Roy Thinnes, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969).

When she was 7, Loring joined the new CBS soap opera Search for Tomorrow in September 1951 for the first of its 35 seasons. She would portray Patti Barron, daughter of Mary Stuart’s Joanne Gardner, for a decade until she graduated from the Calhoun School for Girls and entered Barnard College...

Michael/Mike "Meathead" Stivic (Rob Reiner) called for a very particular type of performance. Archie and Edith Bunker's son-in-law on "All in the Family" was the progressive foil to the Bunkers' bigoted paterfamilias, a member of the Baby Boomer counterculture (back when that was a thing) who rallied against the conservative Greatest Generation beliefs championed by Archie. But at the same time, Mike was one of those well-educated liberal white guys who still struggled to recognize his own ingrained prejudices -- particularly when it came to the women in his life -- and was often guilty of being more concerned with feeling morally superior than figuring out how to actually bring about the social change he professed to want.

Reiner would eventually prove himself capable of handling this knot of contradictions, but it took him a couple of tries, much like "All in the Family" itself. As he once recalled...

Note: this article contains detailed discussions of sexual assault.

Norman Lear's seminal sitcom "All in the Family" was known for bringing laughs and thought-provoking discussions, but a 1977 episode entitled "Edith's 50th Birthday" was an outlier. Instead of a comedy, the two-parter felt like a horror show, one with a gravely serious topic: rape. In it, family matriarch Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) survives a harrowing, extended assault attempt by a stranger and is forced to muddle through the aftermath of intense trauma. It's a dark point for the series, but it's one that show creator Lear said elicited the strongest live-action response of any moment in the show's nine-season run.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Lear (who died at the age of 101 in 2023) was asked to recall the biggest audience uproar in the show's history. "I never heard a bigger sound on television than when Edith got...

In the "All in the Family" episode "Gloria Sings the Blues", Archie (Carroll O'Connor) wakes up Michael (Rob Reiner) so that they may leave for a fishing trip. In his usual cantankerous fashion, Archie berates Michael for sleeping in and begins to explain the importance of leaving on time. Michael idly puts on his shoes ... but something is awry. Archie stops Michael, noticing that he has put a sock and a shoe on his left foot before putting a sock on his right foot. Archie is perturbed. This faux pas will not stand. "Don't you know," he says, "the whole world puts on a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe?" Defensively, Michael says "I like to take care of one foot at a time!"

They then have a whole conversation as to whether or not "sock-sock-shoe-shoe" is "correct," or if "sock-shoe-sock-shoe" is correct. It's a nitpicking...