Sally Struthers rose to prominence with her role as Gloria Stivic in the 1970s sitcom All In the Family. The show was a big success, with millions of people watching as it attacked societal concerns and taboos, making them either tragic or humorous, and occasionally both. Struthers appeared with other stars who went on to have successful careers as a result of their roles on the show. Among them were Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Danielle Brisebois.
Throughout its tenure, the show won 42 awards and had an incredible 73 nominations. Even now, many of us return to it when we want a reminder of the good old days of television. In 1973, Struthers told the Longview Daily News about the character she played: “At first, I acted like a fool on set. I felt that was the way to make people like me. I’ve been informed about the set. I have learned to be myself. “And now they respect me.”
The story of how she wound up on a show is fascinating. Struthers was dancing on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour when she was spotted by producer Norman Lear, whom the actress refers to as a “father of us all.” The show was so popular that then-22-year-old Struthers couldn’t leave her house without being pursued by admirers eager to see her.Struthers requested that her character become more dramatic as the series progressed through its seasons.
“When we go on hiatus, I want to do something different,” she told me. “There are various ways to represent a lady. I’d like to play a murderess, an unmarried mother, a nun, and an elderly Jewish mother. At the end of my career, I hope to be remembered as funny as Judy Holliday and revered as Ruth Gordon.Struthers found herself typecast when the program ended, making it difficult for her to secure roles she wanted to portray.
In the 1990s, she was a semi-regular panelist on the panel game show Match Game; others may recall her as Babette Dell from Gilmore Girls.Since the 2000s, she has been a regular at Maine’s Ogunquit Playhouse. “I am here. I am a Los Angeles resident. I’ve been available. I’m not sure why I am never approached to audition. I was never offered a job here. But give me Texas, Maine, Virginia, New York, and Connecticut, and there will always be a job for me.
“They want me back the next year in something else,” she says. Struthers, a long-time advocate for the Christian Children’s Fund, has one daughter. She was once persuaded that she would never be a mother since she did not want a child, but that changed when she met her now-ex-husband, famed psychiatrist William C. Rader.
“Before meeting Bill, I never wanted a baby. I was always the first to state that it wouldn’t satisfy me and that I didn’t require a carbon replica of myself. “Then you fall in love with somebody,” she told People in 1981.”And you want to be the mother of a child that is part of that man, the result of your loving each other.”Samantha Struthers Rader, her daughter, is a professional psychologist who has her own practice.
Struthers is 75 years old, but she continues to be an active member of the teather. “From the time I could walk and say a few words, my entire goal in life was to make people laugh,” she told Spectrum News in 2022.”And when I hear other people laugh and know that whatever silly look I’ve made or a sentence I’ve read has caused them to double over, I feel transported to heaven. That’s my thing. Laughter.”