In the May 25, 1971, New York Times, George Gent wrote:
------------------------- "All in the Family," which stars Carroll O'Connor as Archie and Jean Stapleton as his long suffering wife, opened to a mixed critical reception,
...with some of the East Coast reviewers dismissing the program as unfunny and as a potential contributor to the bigotry it was allegedly spoofing.
Many of these same critics later had second thoughts.
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Listening to a video on You Tube about a charismatic preacher, where he groomed and had affairs with a number of young girls in his various congregations....
The narrative mentions that, with one of his girlfriends, he would meet her in several different locations, sometimes the local cemetery.
These cults.
They always end in some hang-wringing craziness.
Do people never learn?
Well, maybe the answer is, there are always new people coming along who haven't heard about the last 75 "train-wrecks" of this type, and they want to participate in some spirituality, and they get sucked in.
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Rob Reiner had an interesting career in films and television - as a director, and an actor.
Usually a person in "the business" is one or the other; Rob Reiner's body of work was kind of unique, in that way.
Before he directed any movies, he played roles as an actor in several TV-series on a one-time basis, and then in the hit show All In The Family, as one of the regular characters, seen there every week.
We can experience his acting on there by watching a You Tube video titled
The Bunkers and The Swingers
uploader / channel: All In The Family
Rue McClanahan appears in this episode - if you have watched "The Golden Girls" (in the '80s) you will remember her as Blanche Devereaux.
Isabel Sanford is in it, too. She is the one who finally has to tell Edith, "Those people are here to change partners, but - not for dancing. ..."
Another older-couple interview in When Harry Met Sally... - the husband and wife in this interview, telling their story of how they met, they overlap, and talk over each other - it's so funny, and typical....
** husband: We were both born in the same hospital...
wife: In 1921...
husband: Seven days apart!
wife: In the same hospital.
husband: We both grew up - one block away from each other...!
wife: We lived in tenements -
husband: ...On the Lower East Side...
wife: On Delancey Street.
husband: My family moved to the Bronx
wife: He lived on Fordham Road...
husband: Hers moved when she was eleven.
wife: I lived on 183rd Street.
husband: For six years, she worked - on the fifth floor, as a nurse...
wife: I worked for a very prominent neurologist...
husband: ...Where I had a practice, on the fourteenth floor, the very same building...
wife: (in a hushed tone) - "We - never - met."
husband: ...(same hushed tone) - Never (nev-ah) met.
wife: Can you imagine that?
husband: You know where we met? In an elevator...
wife: I was visiting ...
husband: In the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago.
wife: He was on the third floor, I was on the twelfth.
husband: I rode up nine extra floors, just to keep talking to her. ...(!)
wife (in a tone of dreamy wonderment) - - - "Nine extra floors."
In the movie When Harry Met Sally... there are these brief little interview scenes where an older married couple are speaking to an interviewer. You don't see the person doing the interview, only the couple.
** wife: We fell in love in high school.
husband: Yeah, we were high-school sweethearts.
wife: But then after our junior year, his parents moved away.
husband: But I never forgot her.
wife: He never forgot me.
husband: Naa-ah, her face was burned on my brain. - And - it was thirty-four years later, that I was walking down Broadway, and I saw her come out of Toffenetti's.
wife: We both looked at each other. And it was just as though not a single day had gone by.
husband: She was just as beautiful as she was at sixteen.
wife:
(she puts her hand affectionately on his arm) - He was just the same. -- He looked exactly the same!
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When I saw When Harry Met Sally... in 1989, when it came out, I noticed a lot of Woody Allen influence in the movie.
If you're making a movie and you're going to be influenced, and inspired, by another filmmaker, it might as well be one of the best.
There's the scene right before the end of the movie where Harry (played by Billy Crystal) runs across the streets of New York City, to get to the woman he has realized he loves. It's similar to a scene at the end of Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan.
There's a scene in a book-store - Sally and Marie are browsing, and Marie notices there's a guy looking at Sally; "Someone is staring at you in 'Personal Growth'" - it's Harry.
In Annie Hall, a book-store is a backdrop for the early part of Alvy and Annie's relationship. They're shopping. Alvy (played by Woody Allen) says, "I'm going to buy you this book on death and dying - instead of that cat book."
And then later, when Alvy and Annie are breaking up (while noting, "we can always come back together"...), they're going through their books and Annie says, "All the books about death and dying are yours. All the poetry books are mine."
Alvy: "Well - you - put your name in all my books...."
In When Harry Met Sally, there's a scene where Marie and Jess are setting up house together and Harry (still in pain from his divorce) warns them, "put your name in your books right now, before they get mixed up, and you don't know whose is whose..."
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Also in When Harry Met Sally they discuss and reference the 1942 American film, Casablanca. Casablanca is a major presence in the 1972 Woody Allen movie, Play It Again, Sam.
