Sally Struthers

By Ken Hall

Sally Struthers is the two-time Emmy Award winning actress who shot to fame playing Gloria Stivic on the enormously popular and groundbreaking television series "All in the Family." She's also an accomplished primitive artist who enjoys working with watercolors and acrylics.

"I'm not adept enough to paint something absolutely real like the Grand Masters," she said. "I could never be a photo-realist. My paintings are more rustic than that. You know what they're supposed to be, but I've stylized them with my own personal imprint."

Art was important enough in Struthers' young life that she considered a career in interior design or commercial art. "But it was my mother who said to me, 'Sally, you've been entertaining the whole family your entire life. There's no reason for you to go into anything but the theatre."

As it turned out, that was fabulous advice. But it was Sally's mother's sister -- "Aunt Ya-Ya," herself a very good artist -- who got her niece interested and involved in art early on. "She taught me to paint using watercolors and oils when I was still a little girl," Struthers said. At age seven, she did a painting that won a National Scholastic Art Award.

Once, when Sally was about eight, teachers at school circulated a three-page set of sheets to all the students. Each page containing random squiggle lines on it. "We were instructed to look at the sheet and, from the squiggles, create something. And we had to do it in ten minutes or less."

Her drawings were impressive enough that she and one other student -- out of the thousands of kids who were given the sheets -- won awards to take art classes at the Portland Art Museum (in Oregon, where she grew up). "There I was, learning charcoal and pen-and-ink technique in a classroom full of grown-ups," Struthers said." They had put me in an adult class. It was surreal."

In high school, Struthers always raised her hand for the art staff and rolled up her sleeves to help produce banners and posters. Her college years were mainly devoted to thespian interests, but she kept creating art in stolen moments, honing what became her primitive, folk art style.

"On movie sets or if I was in a play, I'd often create art for people as a birthday present," she said. Once, while acting in the play "Grease," she purchased a table leg from an antique shop, on which she painted a likeness of the director. The rounded bottom portion was the head." It looked just like him!" she laughed. "He loved it."

She learned early on, though, that giving art as a present can be a risky venture. When her older sister got married, while Sally was still in high school, Struthers painted what she thought was a wonderful Van Gogh-like creation, all done in oil using a palette knife.

"This was a painting based on Van Gogh's work 'Storm Over Wheat Field' and it depicted a sky turning from day to night over a field of wheat," Struthers said. "I was very proud of it. I gave it to my sister and her husband as a wedding present and they never hung it."

About three years went by and Sally, out of sheer frustration and curiosity, finally asked, "Whatever happened to that painting I did for your wedding?" Her sister mumbled something about it must have gotten stolen out of the garage. "So be careful about giving art as a gift," she warned.

That may have been the last oil painting Struthers ever did. "I don't like to work in oil as a rule," she said. "It's so smelly. I can't stand the fumes. It's great if you want to go back and do something over, though. It takes forever to dry, so you can make a change if you want to."

Watercolors (and acrylics, her preferred mediums today) are to her liking because of their permanence. "Once you've committed, that's it," she said. "There's no turning back. It's like casting a net. But that's the excitement of it. It challenges you to be exacting and precise on the first take."

Struthers said the artists she most admires are Vincent Van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec. "I just like their style. Once in high school I did a portrait of Van Gogh in a pointillist style -- the image was created entirely out of hundreds of dots. The teacher loved it. I aced the assignment."

After high school, Struthers moved to California to study drama at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts. There, she won a scholarship as the most promising student. She performed in numerous regional stage productions after college and made her TV debut was as a dancer on "The Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Special."

Sally appeared in TV commercials and was occasionally seen on shows like "The Summer Smothers Brothers Show" and "The Tim Conway Comedy Hour." She was also cast for supporting roles in two major motion pictures: "Five Easy Pieces" (with Jack Nicholson) and "The Getaway" (with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw).

But it was her role as Meathead's wife Gloria on the hit sitcom "All in the Family" (with Carroll O'Conner, Jean Stapleton and Rob Reiner) that launched her to stardom. The show, which used humor to explore sensitive topics like race relations and the war in Vietnam, ran from 1971-78.

Since then, Struthers has been in a string of made-for-TV movies and some feature-length films (although the plum roles she aspired to on the big screen were often denied her because she was so closely identified with her Gloria character).

Today, she appears regularly in national touring productions of plays like "Annie," "Always Patsy Cline" and "Auntie Mame." On TV, she has a recurring role on the WB series "Gilmore Girls" and plays Mark Addy's mother on CBS' "Still Standing."

For years, Sally has been a voice for the disenfranchised, hungry and uneducated children of the world, especially in Africa. She has filmed numerous public service announcements on their behalf. Struthers was married once (she is now divorced). The marriage produced one child, Samantha, who is about to graduate from college and begin a career as a clinical psychologist.

Fans of Sally Struthers may write to the star c/o Sharp & Associates, 8721 Sunset Blvd., Ste. 208, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

Sally won two Emmy Awards playing Gloria Stivic on TV's "All In The Family." She considered a career in interior design and commercial art before deciding on acting.
She grew up in Portland, Oregon.

An early self-portrait? Perhaps.
Sally is a primitive artist who enjoys working with watercolors and acrylics. Oils, she says, are "too smelly."

Today, Struthers appears in national touring company productions of plays like "Always...Patsy Cline."

The "All In The Family" cast, clockwise from top: Carroll O'Connor, Rob Reiner, Sally Struthers and Jean Stapleton. The show ran from 1971-78.

Recently, Sally painted and decorated this ram statue in a charity cause. Cher and Barbara Eden also contributed.

"I'm not adept enough to paint something absolutely real like the Grand Masters," Struthers said. "My paintings are more
rustic than that."