All in the Family "And Justice For All" & "Those Were The Days" (found pilots of sitcom TV series; 1968-1969)
All in the Family was a sitcom created by Norman Lear starring Carroll O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally Struthers. Running on CBS for nine years, it was the top-rated network television show for five of them, and it has since been regarded as one of the most groundbreaking comedies of all time, as well as one of the greatest. What many casual fans don't know is that two separate pilots (both using the same script) were shot for and rejected by ABC.
And Justice For All (1968)
After buying the American rights for the British sitcom Til' Death Do Us Part from CBS, the first pilot, named And Justice For All, was taped in October 1968 in New York City. In it, the Bunker family has a different last name, "Justice", and instead of Struthers, Kelly Jean Peters played Gloria Stivic, while Tim Mclntire played her husband, Richard.
Those Were the Days (1969)
Following the screening of the first pilot, Lear had tried again in February 1969, giving the producers more money to film the second pilot, Those Were the Days (named after the final show's theme song), in Hollywood, California. For this pilot, O'Connor and Stapleton kept their respective roles as Archie and Edith while Peters and Mclntire were respectively replaced with Candice Azzara and Chip Olivier. Unfortunately, due to the then-recent controversy caused by Turn-On, ABC turned down both pilots because they didn't want to air a show where the lead character (Archie Bunker) was "foul-mouthed" and "bigoted".[1]
Both pilots were later released on the "Norman Lear Collection" DVD.