Allan Melvin commercials for fifteen years. In the early 1980s, Melvin appeared as a regular in "Archie Bunker’s Place", a successor to "All in the Family", in which he played the now more important role of Barney Hefner. When this series ended in 1983, Melvin’s work was exclusively devoted to cartoon voice-overs. Allan Melvin died of cancer on January 17, 2008, aged 84, and was buried at Westwood Memorial Cemetery in Southern California. Melvin is buried just yards from his TV best friend Carroll O'Connor, who played 'Archie Bunker' in TV's "All In The Family". Coincidentally, later the same year, famed 1950s
United States in the 1950s show. In "Life of Riley" (1953–1958), blue collar Chester A. Riley (William Bendix) became the prototype for a long line of bumbling television patriarchs that included Fred Flintstone and Archie Bunker. The show's first incarnation for the DuMont Television Network lasted a season (1949–1950) and won an Emmy during the first Emmy Awards in 1949. "The Honeymooners" (1955–1956) followed bus driver Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) and his sewer-working sidekick Ed Norton (Art Carney) while archetypal suburban life was limned in "Leave It to Beaver" (1957–1963), purportedly the first sitcom to be told from a child's point of view and the