Pat Harrington Jr., a hit sitcom’s cocky handyman, dies

NEW YORK – Pat Harrington Jr., an actor and comedian who in the 1950s got attention as a member of Steve Allen’s fabled TV comic troupe but secured lasting fame decades later as Dwayne Schneider, the cocky handyman on the long-running sitcom “One Day at a Time,” has died.

Harrington died Wednesday at age 86 in Los Angeles of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

“One Day at a Time” starred Bonnie Franklin as a divorced mother of two teenage daughters (played by Valerie Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips) who returns to her hometown of Indianapolis to begin life anew as a single woman.

In their apartment building, they encountered superintendent Dwayne Schneider, a comically self-styled ladies’ man who boasted a trim mustache, a tool belt and a gut pressed against his white T-shirt (enabled by a large intake of water by Harrington before each episode taping to give himself the necessary paunch, he once disclosed).

With his strong support, the series, from prolific producer Norman Lear, was a hit, airing on CBS from 1975 to 1984. The role brought him an Emmy award in 1984.

Harrington was born in 1929 in New York, the son of Pat Harrington Sr., a song-and-dance man in vaudeville and on Broadway.

The son displayed a show-biz bent of his own, but more comedy-inclined. In the 1950s, he landed various roles in TV comedy, including a recurring part on the Danny Thomas sitcom, “Make Room for Daddy,” and as a sketch comic on “The Steve Allen Plymouth Show.”

But his decade on “One Day at a Time” sealed his legacy.