Tribute: Pat Harrington of “One Day at a Time”

We mourn the loss of Pat Harrington, best remembered as “One Day at a Time’s” Dwayne Schneider, the building superintendent who thought of himself as a ladies man, but had a genuine affection for the single mom played by Bonnie Franklin and her two rambunctious daughters.

The Washington Post’s Adam Bernstein has a warm appreciation for Harrington, reporting that he urged that the original idea for the character, a lecherous married man, be shifted to something more likeable. “On Mr. Harrington’s insistence, Schneider was recast as a bachelor with a comically grandiose sense of his appeal to the opposite sex.”

Norman Lear talks about casting him in the show.

Here’s the opening:

May his memory be a blessing.