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Actress Jean Stapleton, who starred as Edith Bunker on 'All in the Family,' dies
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CNN
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Actress Jean Stapleton, best known for her role as Archie Bunker's wife in the groundbreaking 1970s sitcom "All in the Family," has died, her son said Saturday.
She was 90 years old.
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Her son John Putch told CNN about her passing and, along with his sister Pamela Putch, wrote an obituary saying that she "passed away peacefully of natural causes" on Friday at her New York City home "surrounded by friends and her immediate family."
Stapleton was an accomplished stage actress who had many television roles during her career, including appearances on shows such as "Philco TV Playhouse" and "Dr. Kildare."
Yet her breakout role was as Edith Bunker, the kind-hearted foil to husband Archie, played by the late Carroll O'Connor.
"I just loved doing it from the very beginning," Stapleton told CNN in 2001, shortly after O'Connor's death.
She won three Emmy awards -- in 1971, 1972 and 1978, in addition to five other nominations in which he she fell short -- for her performance in that Norman Lear-helmed show.
Stapleton kept busy after the show went off in the air in 1979 and kept on racking up more accomplishments. Those include Emmy nominations in 1982 for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in the CBS miniseries "Eleanor, First Lady of the World" and in 1995 as Aunt Vivian in a guest spot on the ABC comedy "Grace Under Fire."
In 2002 she was chosen for the Television Academy Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Tim Conway and Bob Mackie in that organization's 15th induction class.
Her most recent on-screen credits, according to the IMDB website, are from 2001 when she appeared in the film "Pursuit of Happiness" and the TV movie "Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Klimes" along with Mary Tyler Moore.
"RIP Jean Stapleton," tweeted fellow TV comedy veteran Roseanne Barr, "a great actor whose range was unbelievable, deep and majestic."
And after "All in the Family," she continued working in theater, including a nationwide tour as Roosevelt in her one-woman show "Eleanor: Her Secret Journey," the Broadway revival of "Arsenic and Lace" and Obie Award performances in Harold Pinter's "Mountain Language" and "The Birthday Party." Her final stage appearance was in "The Carpetbagger's Children" a few blocks from her home in New York, to which she returned permanently in 2002.
Calling her "our collective Mother, with a capital M," John and Pamela Putch -- Stapleton's two children with her husband William Putch, whom she married in 1957 and who died in 1983 -- said "her devotion to her craft and her family taught us all great lessons."
"In her own words, she was an 'actress,' not a celebrity," they wrote in her obituary. "The play always came first."
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CNN's KJ Matthews contributed to this report.
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Added 06/01/13 by: Stavro Arrgolus
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