The son of actress Jean Stapleton and theatrical director William H. Putch, John Putch made some of his earliest acting appearances with his dad's summer-theatre troupe, the Totem Pole Players. Putch's first recorded TV credit was as a boy scout on All in the Family, which of course co-starred his mom Jean. Mother and son went on to co-star in the tense made-for-TV movie Angel Dusted (1981). On his own, Putch co-starred in Jaws 3-D (1983) as the grown-up son of the Roy Scheider character (who doesn't appear in this sequel), and worked steadily on TV, playing Bob Morton on One Day at a Time (1975-85) and Matt on Room for Two (1992). More recently, John Putch participated in a well-circulated series of cellular-phone TV commercials.