Sunday Dinner: Robert Loggia - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

Sunday Dinner aired from June until July 1991 on CBS.

Set in New York's Long Island, Sunday Dinner chronicled the family conflicts caused by the engagement of the 56-year-old widowed owner of a printing business, Ben Benedict ( Robert Loggia) to an environmental activist attorney, TT Fagori ( Teri Hatcher), 26 years his junior. His family thought he was crazy and kept referring to TT-behind her back-as "the bimbo." The squabbling Benedict clan consisted of Vicky ( Martha Gehman), age 32, a twice-divorced athiest who had returned to college to get a Ph.D in microbiology; Diana ( Kari Lizer), age 30, an often incomprehensible airhead who had tried every fad religion and was still trying to find herself; Kenneth ( Patrick Breen), age 25, a real estate salesman and aspiring yuppie forever on the lookout for ways to make a quick killing; Martha ( Marian Mercer), Ben's conservative sister who ran his household; and Rachel ( Sheri Appleby), Vicky's younger daughter. TT, who deeply loved Ben was a spiritual woman who talked regularly to God-addressing the deity as "chief"-when trying to sort out her emotions or find ways to deal with problems she was having with Ben's family.

This series was semi-autobiographical for producer Norman Lear, whose third wife was considerably younger than he; it also marked Lear's return to series television after an absence of many years. In an effort to attract an audience, CBS paired Sunday Dinner with selected reruns of his classic All in the Family on Sunday evenings. Unfortunately the reruns did better than the new series.

An Article from The New York Times

TELEVISION; Is TV Ready for Norman Lear? Was It Ever?

By LARRY ROHTER
Published: May 26, 1991

He was the king of the sitcom when he walked away from prime time in 1978. Now Norman Lear is returning to television with the first of four series he has in the works, hoping there is still a place on the tube for his distinctive blend of humor and social commentary, and intent on letting America know what's been on his mind.

Exactly 20 years have passed since Mr. Lear's "All in the Family" introduced Archie Bunker to American viewers, proving that prime-time comedy could explore subjects like bigotry, sexism, politics, menopause and impotence and opening the door for series like "Roseanne" and "Married . . . With Children."

But "Sunday Dinner," which will have its premiere next Sunday on CBS, has a new twist. In it Mr. Lear tackles what he views as the last frontier in television: spirituality.

"The one thing that hasn't been discussed a lot in entertainment television are the What's-It-All-About-Alfie questions," he said one recent afternoon during a break from the rehearsals and meetings that once again dominate his working hours. "With all these thousands of hours and half hours, nobody's really talked much about God and faith and the inner life. 'Sunday Dinner' intends to evoke that conversation."

In the Lear tradition, the conversation has already started, and it is reminiscent of the shouting matches on "All in the Family," with the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon and his American Family Association firing salvos at the program and more progressive theologians rushing to its defense.

In the wings are two more offbeat situation comedies that, like "Sunday Dinner," revolve around family life. In "Love Child," a patrician New England senator, played by John Forsythe, discovers that he has an illegitimate 46-year-old daughter; "Ball$," set in the 1890's, will focus on the shenanigans within a wealthy Manhattan clan that owns a sporting-goods company. The fourth series is a variety program for children to be called "The 8 O'Clock Show," for which NBC has ordered a pilot. None of these is yet assured of a prime-time slot, but a pilot for "Love Child" has already been shot. And there are others on the drawing board.

At his peak in the mid-1970's, he and his associates had up to seven hit sitcoms on the air at a time, ranging from "All in the Family" and its spinoffs "Maude" and "The Jeffersons" to "Sanford and Son" (which, like "All in the Family" was based on a successful British series) and "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman."

This time out, he says his goals are more modest, at least initially. "It's not that I want to dive back in or come back big," he said. "There is no master plan or grand design, just certain subjects that I care about. I'm doing 'Sunday Dinner' because I love the idea and want to see it work, and I think the other two are tremendous opportunities to deal with the same subjects."

"Sunday Dinner" focuses on Ben Benedict, a 56-year-old widower who runs a printing business and is worried about how his three grown children will cope with his impending marriage to T. T. Fagori, a 30-year-old environmental attorney with a lot of vague, eclectic notions about spirituality. The Fagori character, played by Teri Hatcher, likes to talk to God, whom she refers to as "Chief." Her spouse-to-be is portrayed by Robert Loggia, and his children are a skeptical microbiologist, a fad-minded designer and a Reagan-era yuppie who worships only wealth and power. "The idea is to get as many attitudes about religion as we can," Mr. Lear said.

The parallels between "Sunday Dinner" and Mr. Lear's own life are obvious. During his dozen years away from television, Mr. Lear, who is 68 years old and the father of three grown daughters, divorced his wife, Frances (who used some of the money from her settlement to launch the women's magazine Lear's) and married Lyn Davis, a psychologist. Ms. Davis is 25 years younger than he; the couple have a 3-year-old son.

"The framework of 'Sunday Dinner' comes directly out of my own experience," Mr. Lear readily acknowledged. "I've always scraped the barrel of my own experience to write about, whether it's what I'm reading, what I'm feeling or what my kids or wife are experiencing. In this case, I remarried, to a younger woman with enormous spirituality, who has a doctorate in religion and philosophy, who was raised in a church-going fundamentalist family but has gone another way."

As for Mr. Lear's own religious beliefs, "someone else would have to describe me," he said. Raised a Jew during a childhood spent in Connecticut and New York, he keeps a copy of the Chinese philosopher Lao-tze's "Tao Te Ching" in his office. He bought the rights to "Dream of the Earth," by a Passionist priest named Thomas Berry, after reading the book and concluding that its pantheistic creed was something both he and T. T. Fagori could accept. He goes to temple "now and again," he said, "but not as a matter of ritual. I don't support a particular church, or synagogue in my case, and I think one's relationship with a higher being or a higher meaning, two terms that are interchangeable with me, is terribly personal. It comes out of one's personal history and sense of devotion, not from edifices and raiments."

When Mr. Lear stepped away from producing network series in 1978, it was largely, he said, because he felt he had fallen into a comfortable rut and had a yearning to undertake something new. "I'm somebody who gets restless," he said. "It seems to me that every 7 or 10 years in my life I want to stretch in another direction." Originally, his plans were simply to return to making movies, which he had done with some success in the 60's, with, among other films, "Come Blow Your Horn," which he adapted from a Neil Simon play and produced, and "Divorce American Style," which he wrote and produced. His company, Act III Communications (started in 1985 and named for what he regards as the third act of his life), has produced a pair of hit movies: "Stand by Me" and "The Princess Bride," both directed by Rob Reiner, the former "meathead" Michael Stivic of "All in the Family."

But much of his energy throughout the 1980's was directed to politics. Alarmed at the rise of television evangelists like Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Robertson, he organized People for the American Way, the liberal advocacy group that helped defeat the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork and has been critical of the religious right. More recently, Mr. Lear has helped found and finance the Business Enterprise Trust, an organization that attempts to focus attention on "acts of courage, integrity and social vision in business," and the Environmental Media Association, whose aim is to encourage ecological consciousness through movies and television.

Along the way, Mr. Lear became a very wealthy man and a media magnate. Thanks to the hunger of the television rerun market, he and his partner were able to sell their entertainment company for a reported $485 million in 1985. Forbes magazine listed him as one of America's 400 richest men a year later, estimating his personal fortune at $225 million, but Mr. Lear's Act III Communications has more recently experienced some rough sailing. Though the ownership of eight television stations affiliated with the Fox network and 437 movie theaters has proven a sound investment, Mr. Lear last year shut down the company's magazine division. Embittered former employees have since suggested that Mr. Lear is a hypocrite, preaching compassion and humanism while practicing the same bottom-line philosophy he decries in others.

"It's not so," he said evenly. "We closed a money-losing publishing company as decorously, generously, sweetly and nicely as we could." His response to accusations that he enjoys a lavish life style at odds with his beliefs, criticisms that stem mostly from his construction of a $15 million mansion here and his passion for collecting fine art, is also direct. "I never claimed to be Mother Teresa, only Norman Lear," he replied.

Mr. Lear's wealth and activism have made him one of Hollywood's most prominent liberals and an important liaison between the entertainment industry and the Democratic Party. Over the years, he has held dinners and fund-raisers at his home to introduce candidates like Michael Dukakis to Hollywood, though he said he envisions no such role for himself in next year's Presidential race. "No, I see myself getting deeply involved in the campaign of William Hamilton, who I suspect is thinking even now about announcing," he said, referring to the senator who is the protagonist of "Love Child."

The world of network television to which Mr. Lear returns is both meaner and dumber than what he knew in his heyday. Ratings have been dropping steadily for nearly a decade, as viewers flee to alternatives like cable or film videocassettes, and the four networks have responded with programs that seem ever more violent and salacious. Mr. Lear argues, however, that the collapse of the established order has also created an opening for the type of funny but uplifting television he prefers.

"There's a little bit more freedom to compete, a little more excessively perhaps," he said. "Maybe that's why I am enjoying the freedom to appeal to something else. Maybe I couldn't have gotten arrested with this idea 10 years ago. Let's put a good face on it, and say it's a reflection of their desire to be different, to innovate."

Despite Mr. Lear's track record, CBS, the network for which he made his biggest hits, is hedging its bets and waiting to see how the first six episodes of "Sunday Dinner" fare before guaranteeing the series a spot in its prime-time lineup for next season. The program is already the target of a campaign organized by Mr. Wildmon to try to keep the show off the air, who argues that Mr. Lear intends to use the program to "promote his New Age/ Secular Humanist religion" and denigrate Christians who uphold traditional values.

With so much at stake, Mr. Lear has adopted a notably hands-on approach to all three prime-time series. He ended up as the director as well as the producer of the pilot episode of "Love Child," doing his best to sharpen the humor and cut some flaws of logic. At the taping of the pilot (which was attended by the CBS president, Jeff Sagansky, and the head of Columbia Pictures Television, Gary Lieberthal), the audience laughed at all the right places, including a scene in which the befuddled Senator Hamilton and his scheming wife show a marked resemblance to Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Afterward, as a relaxed and obviously pleased Mr. Lear acknowledged applause and prepared to introduce the cast, a tape began to play "Happy Days Are Here Again."

"Don't start the music," he said. "I'm not finished yet."

An Article from Time Magazine

God Comes to Dinner
Monday, Jun. 03, 1991
By RICHARD ZOGLIN

A 56-year-old widower (Robert Loggia) comes home from vacation with a surprise for his three grown children: a 30-year-old fiance. Since this is TV sitcomland, the May-September romance sends his kids into a wisecracking snit. Before dinner one evening, their barbs get so harsh that the fiance, known as TT, scurries into the hallway, casts her eyes skyward and asks for help: "Chief -- Code Blue, Code Blue! I knew they'd be upset, but this is ridiculous."

And whom, pray tell, is she talking to? There's no easy way to put this. It's God. Sunday Dinner, a new CBS series from TV trailblazer Norman Lear (All in the Family, Maude), bills itself as the first sitcom to deal explicitly with religious faith. Lear says the series, his first in seven years, reflects a turn toward spiritual values in his own life. It also marks TV's effort to jump on Hollywood's spirituality bandwagon.

Much of Sunday Dinner, to be sure, goes for familiar secular laughs. Loggia and his fiance make jokes about their age difference; the kids pester Dad with nutty problems; middle-aged friends do double takes at Dad's young bride-to- be. This laugh-track world, however, is interrupted by TT's private chats with the Almighty. "How does anyone wake up on a morning like this and not believe in some version of you?!" she exclaims at the start of one episode. Loggia is wary but tolerant of her chirpy spirituality; the kids are overtly & skeptical. At one family dinner, TT describes her woozy mix of religion and environmentalism ("The natural world is the largest sacred community to which we all belong"). Comments one daughter: "She just turned left at Pluto."

Some conservatives have already objected to Lear's politically correct God. The Rev. Donald Wildmon, the Fundamentalist media watchdog, has attacked CBS for allowing Lear to "promote his New Age/secular humanist religion." (Idle thought: Is Wildmon now on the payroll of liberal TV producers, who use him to attract controversy -- and viewers -- to their shows?) It's hard to imagine many others being offended by the sappy sermonizing. Sunday Dinner doesn't engage the issue of religious faith so much as gawk at it: belief in God has become a character quirk, like having a funny job or being a witch. Lear has made a valiant effort to break one of TV comedy's last remaining taboos. But God has always been a better straight man.

A Review from The New York Times

Review/Television; Norman Lear's Sitcoms, Past and Present, on CBS

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: June 6, 1991

Norman Lear's past and present are bumping up against each other on CBS these Sunday evenings and the past is winning hands down.

Mr. Lear's new series, being shown at 8, is "Sunday Dinner" and, with autobiographical overtones, it's all about a successful businessman and father who marries a successful professional woman considerably younger than himself. Mr. Lear's old series, at 8:30, is "All in the Family" and it's all about . . . well, no need to go into that. Everybody knows the Bunkers. And despite years of multiple reruns for "All in the Family" in syndication, the episode shown last Sunday on network prime time -- the show's very first episode -- ended up among the week's Top 10 ratings. And that series just gets better.

"Sunday Dinner" doesn't, and it is unlikely to retain the respectable No. 20 showing it notched in the ratings its first time out. Oddly enough for Mr. Lear, one of the shrewdest producers in the business, "Sunday Dinner" adds up to a series of staggering miscalculations. Apparently it is meant to be a somewhat lyrical endorsement of May-September romances, sprinkled with new-age spirituality and environmental concepts of "cosmic piety." What emerges, however, is a decidedly silly and mean-spirited poke at young people.

While the Bunkers live in working-class Queens, the Benedicts reside in upscale Great Neck, L.I. Ben (Robert Loggia) is a 56-year-old widower who returns from an African trip engaged to T. T. (it stands for Thelma Todd) Fagori (Teri Hatcher), an environmental lawyer.

T. T. is a cosmic-piety advocate who periodically raises her eyes heavenward and has a conversation with the Supreme Being, alternately referred to as He, She, It or The Chief. She prays to be a lovable person when preparing to meet Ben's family and offers unending thanks for having been given the gift of Ben. In large part, "Sunday Dinner" is the somewhat pompous fantasy of an aging male, whose gorgeous new mate keeps saying things like, "Who do you thank when you're whole body is feeling so good inside?"

The children are not thrilled with what one of them calls Dad's new fling. But Mr. Lear, who wrote the premiere episode, has his revenge. The "kids" are turned into blithering idiots. Vicki (Martha Gehman), 32, is a rather distraught atheist scientist working for her doctorate and raising a precocious daughter named Rachel (Shiri Appleby); Diana (Kari Lizer), 30, is moving back home after leaving her husband and taking his bird cage, sans bird, and Kenneth (Patrick Breen), 25, is a hyperkinetic buffoon constantly pushing harebrained get-rich schemes. Puttering around in the kitchen, and muttering about how her church is empty nowadays, is resigned Aunt Martha; it is a role in which the gifted Marian Mercer is thoroughly wasted.

That, then, is the basic situation. T. T. gazes lovingly at Ben, finding his every little quirk adorable and absolutely melting over a gloppy little poem he wrote in childhood ("You ain't got no heart at all, almost hardly"). And the children are predictably ridiculous. Finding out that T. T. is 30, Diana shrieks at Dad: "That's my age! How could you want her when you have me?" This Sunday's episode features a fabulously successful businessman whose obnoxiousness ("What is it you do, little lady?") makes the Benedict children look almost sweet. That's one way of solving a problem, but the overall abrasiveness is nearly unbearable.

Meanwhile, back with the Bunkers in the early 1970's, Archie, played brilliantly by Carroll O'Connor, is positioning himself securely to take on the role of lovable bigot. He's already grumping about all races and religions different from his own, all the while berating his "meathead" son-in-law (Rob Reiner), looking askance at the hot pants of his daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers), and warning the dizzily wonderful Edith (Jean Stapleton) to "stifle." Dragged to Sunday church services for the fourth time in 22 years, Archie dismisses the sermon as "Socialist propaganda."

Early on in "All in the Family," it is obvious that Archie will, more often than not, be the butt of the jokes, his ignorance and parochialism serving as the vehicle to convey Mr. Lear's essentially liberal agenda. The concept was inspired, the execution superb.

Archie Bunker is firmly ensconced in pop-culture mythology. In fact, he might singlehandedly trigger a revival of "best of television" reruns on prime time television. Network executives are already rushing back to the drawing boards. As for Ben Benedict, however, Mr. Lear might well ponder the character's early and merciful retirement.

For a Website dedicated to Teri Hatcher go to http://terihatcheronline.com/

For a Website dedicated to Teri Hatcher go to http://www.teri-hatcher.com/home.htm

For a Website dedicated to Teri Hatcher go to http://www.terihatcher.net/

For more on Sunday Dinner go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Dinner_(TV_series)