Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - 704 Hauser: Cast Photo

704 Hauser aired from April until May 1994 on CBS.

If the address sounded familiar it was for good reason. More than two decades after the premiere of All in the Family this ghostly echo of that trail-blazing show appeared on the CBS schedule. There was now a black family living in Archie Bunker's old home on Hauser Street in Queens, New York. Ernie Cumberbatch ( John Amos), an auto mechanic, was a blustery , outspoken liberal who had been actively involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He had even named his only child, Goodie, after his idol, the first black member of the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall. Much to Ernie's chagrin, college student Goodie (T.E. Russell) had turned out to be a politically active conservative. Not only that, but his girlfriend, Cherlyn ( Maura Tierney), was idealistic, outspoken, white, and Jewish. Ernie and Goodie disagreed about political and social issues as well as Goodie's inability to find a black girlfriend. Rose (Lynnie Godfrey), Ernie's religious wife, was forever trying to keep them from coming to blows. Sound familiar? Joey Stivic (played by Casey Siemaszko ), son of Gloria and Meathead, even showed up in the premiere episode.

For executive producer Norman Lear this was a return to his series roots. He took out ads in newspapers imploring viewers to watch the series and write CBS to keep it on the air, but low ratings resulted in cancellation after a five-week spring tryout. It would prove to be Norman Lear's final TV series.

A Review from The New York Times

Review/Television; In Archie Bunker's Old House, a New Family Spins Jokes

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: April 11, 1994

Norman Lear loves to be provocative. Back in 1971, he turned a lovable bigot named Archie Bunker and his shrewdly dizzy wife, Edith, into enduring pop-culture icons. Now he's giving the "All in the Family" format an updated spin in "704 Hauser," making its debut tonight on CBS. The family currently living in Archie's old house, 704 Hauser Street in Queens, is black. Bigotry, it seems, has no color boundaries, at least as far as ingrained sitcom shtick is concerned.

The head of the house in this instance is Ernie Cumberbatch, an auto mechanic played by John Amos, the actor whose father character in Mr. Lear's "Good Times" was summarily dispatched in a 1976 auto accident. Ernie's wife is Rose (Lynnie Godfrey) who, when not working for an upscale catering service, spends much of her time warning Ernie to have more respect for their church minister.

Ernie's 20-something son is Goodie (T. E. Russell), named for Thurgood Marshall but, much to liberal Ernie's consternation, bearing a stronger ideological resemblance to Clarence Thomas. Goodie's white Jewish girlfriend, Cherlyn Markowitz (Maura Tierney), is a kind of visiting anthropologist, listening to the family arguing in one-line-joke bites and then gushing over their ability to express feelings. "It's terrific," says Cherlyn.

Dropping in occasionally for a free meal is teen-aged Joey Stivic (Casey Siemaszko), Archie's grandson who, for some reason, is still curious about the site of his childhood. And so, the characters are in place, all too predictably.

Conservative Goodie gets to appear on "Face the Nation" so that he can preach abstinence to teens. Neither Ernie nor Rose is too happy about their son's relationship with a white woman, but then Cherlyn's parents aren't too happy about Goodie because, we're told, they can't stand his politics.

The series wanders widely but rather confusingly over the political landscape. The Jewish and black routines are especially queasy. When Goodie tells him he's going to synagogue with Cheryln to experience "a part of her life I don't know anything about," liberal Ernie responds: "Here's two bucks, go see 'Yentl.' " The underlying concept is out of kilter.

Next week's episode edges into more promising territory when Ernie and Goodie go shopping for clothes in a local store, only to have the store detective follow blue-collar Ernie around as if he were a thief. Worse, Goodie ends up apologizing for his father. "How are you going to reconcile all your theories with that?" the justifiably aggrieved Ernie asks his son; "704 Hauser" needs to do more of that kind of connecting with 1990's realities and attitudes. Jokey zingers are no longer enough, especially when they are not terribly funny. "All in the Family" invariably produced belly laughs. Two episodes of "704 Hauser" barely merit a smirk. 704 Hauser CBS, tonight at 8:30 (Channel 2 in New York) Created by Norman Lear and Mark E. Pollack; director of photography, Dan Kuleto; editor, Vince Humphrey; production designer, Bob Breen; produced by Patricia Fass Palmer for Act III Television in association with Castle Rock Entertainment and Columbia Pictures Television; co-producer, Walter Allen Bennett Jr.; co-executive producers, John Baskin and Roger Schulman; executive producers, Mr. Lear and Mr. Pollack. Ernest Cumberbatch . . . John Amos Rose Cumberbatch . . . Lynnie Godfrey Thurgood (Goodie) Marshall Cumberbatch . . . T. E. Russell Maura Tierney . . . Cherlyn Markowitz Joey Stivic . . . Casey Siemaszko

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on April 15, 1994

Television News
Old Hat?
Norman Lear's new sitcom ''704 Hauser'' -- Set in the Archie Bunker House, just like ''All in the Family,'' Lear's newest sitcom still has a message of its own

By Benjamin Svetkey

I knew when I created this show that someday a journalist would come in here and accuse me or repeating myself, of stealing from my past, of reversing the All in the Family formula.'' Norman Lear slumps into the arms of his office chair. ''And here you are.''

Sorry about that, Norm. But the similarities between Lear's old Archie Bunker show and his latest sitcom, 704 Hauser, are kinda tough to ignore. For starters, the new series takes place in the same tacky tract house-704 Hauser Street in Queens, N.Y.-where Archie Bunker resided from 1971-1983. And while the show isn't about a loveable bigot and his left-wing, meathead son-in-law, it does feature a '60s-liberal African- American dad (John Amos) who's locked in ideological combat with his ultraconservative, Clarence Thomas-loving son (T.E. Russell). It also has a feisty, anti-Edith mom and a hot-to-trot potential daughter-in-law who happens to be-Socially Relevant Plot Point!-white and Jewish.

For Lear, 71, moving a black family into Archie's old abode is more than a gimmicky stroll down memory lane-it's a return to the territory that turned him into a TV legend. The success of All in the Family, the first sitcom to take on such TV taboos as racial prejudice and anti-Vietnam War protest, started a string of groundbreaking spin-offs that made Lear one of the most ace-high producers in TV history. Edith's cousin got her own show, Maude, in 1972. Maude's maid got a series, Good Times, in 1974. The Bunkers' neighbors moved on up to The Jeffersons in 1975. At one point in the mid-'70s, Lear was juggling seven series at the same time (including Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, and Mary Hartman, Mary Harman).But that was then. These days Lear is better known for his lefty advocacy organizations (People for the American Way,) The Business Enterprise Trust) and his reported $100 million 1987 divorce form his wife, Frances. His recent TV offerings-a.k.a. Pablo (1984), Sunday Dinner (1991), The Powers That Be (1992)-have all tanked. Question is, will his latest All in the Family riff recapture that old Bunker magic?

'' I'll tell you how the show came about,'' Lear offers while fielding phone calls in his sparsely furnished Hollywood office. ''I've been keeping the sets for All in The Family in storage since it went off the air. Every year my accountant calls and yells at me for spending money on storage bills. The last time he called, I happened to be reading Thomas Sowell, who is perhaps the most listened-to voice of black conservatism in the country. A true scholar. And the next day it just hit me-there's a show in a black liberal father and his conservative son living in Archie Bunker's old place.''

Being neither black nor conservative didn't daunt Lear in the least. To give 704 Hauser a dose of political verisimilitude, he hired right-wing black radio host Armstrong Williams as a creative consultant (''I make sure Lear's liberal writers don't turn the characters into conservative stereotypes,'' Williams says). Lear also cast Amos, who years earlier had left Good Times because of conflicts with him over creative and racial issues.

''At Good Times, I thought we should've had more black writers on staff,'' Amos recalls. ''I felt I should've been more involved in the development of scripts. But we don't have those fights on 704 Hauser. Lear is more willing to listen nowadays. He's mellowed. We've both mellowed. We actually enjoy working together.''

What they're working on, Lear makes a point of stressing, should not be construed as All in the Family: The Next Generation. ''I chose to set it in the Bunkers' house because I couldn't resist the theatricality of it,'' he says. ''But I could have set it anywhere. Its characters are totally different from All in the Family. Archie and Mike were fools-wonderful and delicious, but fools. The people in 704 Hauser are much more responsible. They know what they're talking about when they argue. That's one of the show's biggest differences.''

It may also turn out to be one of its biggest weaknesses. Some reviewers are already complaining that the show is too earnest for its own good, with its characters delivering more speeches than punch lines. Nevertheless, CBS is clearly putting its muscle behind Lear's project: The network has given the show a prime time slot, leading into Murphy Brown.

"I want the series to be entertaining, above all else," says Lear. "But I also want the show to have meaning. I'm a grown man. I don't play with toys. I'm a serious person. Everything I've ever done has been serious. This is a serious show."

Maybe so, but it would be a shame if Lear dusted off the formula for his most enduring masterpiece only to leave out a crucial ingredient-laughs.

An Article from USA TODAY
Published on April 25, 1994

John Amos' reverse Bunker mentality

By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY

The last time John Amos starred in a TV series, his character was killed off after the actor got into an argument with his boss.

The show was Good Times ( 1974-79) and the employer was producer Norman Lear, who axed Amos' character ( James Evans) in 1976 when he and Amos couldn't come to terms on a new contract.

Here it is 18 years later, and Lear and Amos are back in business. Amos stars in Lear's new 704 Hauser sitcom, the quasi-sequel to All in the Family, in which a black family now lives in Archie Bunker's old house.

" That time is almost like another life," says Amos of Good Times. " I wasn't the most tactful person in the world when it came to getting my points across, and he wasn't the most receptive person to imput. In the interim, we've both changed, obviously for the better. We have a great relationship now."

Good Times was spun off of Maude, which came from All in the Family-all part of Lear's mid-70s TV empire. ( Edith Bunker's cousin, Maude, employed a maid named Florida Evans; we met her family in Good Times).

After Good Times, Amos ( also known for playing Gordy, the weatherman , on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) had a key role in Roots, worked a lot in theater, and appeared in several films, most notably Coming to America with Eddie Murphy and Die Hard 2 with Bruce Willis.

The setup for 704 Hauser, airing Mondays at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on CBS, has been described as almost a reverse image of All in the Family. Ernie ( Amos) is a liberal with a conservative son, as opposed to the right-wing Archie and left-leaning Meathead. Ernie is as stubburn and headstrong as Archie was, but Amos doesn't feel he's playing the black Archie.

" Comparrisons are inevitable," he says. " But there's no way an African-American liberal will have the same thought processes as an Archie Bunker. His feelings are predicated on a totally different experience."

Unlike Good Times, which had mostly white writers penning stories about inner-city life, 704 has several black writers; Amos believes that makes a difference.

For the past several years, Amos, who gives his age as " older than Eddie Murphy and younger than Robert Redford," has been touring with a one-man show he wrote called Halley's Comet, about an 87-year-old man who has lived long enough to see the comet twice. Amos will spend the summer doing the show, while waiting to hear whether CBS wants to bring 704 back for the fall.

" We refused to pander to the lowest common denominator," he says. " I think we have a cutting edge sitcom for the '90s. Its just too thought-provoking to just disappear."

And here's one promise: Unlike Amos' last series, you'll never hear his TV son say " Dyn-o-Mite!"

" He may say hydrogen bomb or nitroglycerin, but not Dyn-o-Mite." Amos says, " I promise."

For a Page dedicated to 704 Hauser go to http://maxpages.com/tvgraveyard/704_Hauser

For a look at the connection between All in the Family and 704 Hauser go to http://poobala.com/alland704.html

For a Website dedicated to Lynnie Godfrey go to http://www.lynniegodfrey.com/

For a Website dedicated to Maura Tierney go to http://www.mauratierney.com/

For more on 704 Hauser go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/704_Hauser