The character Archie Bunker in All In The Family was originally offered to Mickey Rooney, who declined. Carroll O’Connor lived in Europe, and accepted the role only because he thought the show would fail and he could go home, so much so that part of his contract with Norman Lear included a return plane ticket to Rome so that he could fly back when it failed
edit2: format, spacing
I remember seeing the chair video(02:00) going around on the webs 1-2yrs back, nice!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066626/
All In The Family | Archie’s Top 10 Funniest Moments [15:02 | Aug 02 2022 | The Norman Lear Effect]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCINzhzAWAo
In video description: