Pat Harrington, Golden Globe Winner - 1929-2016

arrives at TV Land’s “Hot In Cleveland” And “Retired At 35” Premiere Party on January 10, 2011 in West Hollywood, California.

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Pat Harrington, Golden Globe Winner – 1929-2016

January 27, 2016

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Pat Harrington Jr., four-time nominee and Golden Globe winner in 1982 as Best Supporting Actor in a TV Comedy has died at age 86, in Los Angeles. A true show-business trooper, the popular comedian won the statuette for his most famous role – building superintendent Schneider on the CBS sitcom One Day at a Time (1975-1984).

Harrington was born in Manhattan,where his father was a song and dance man who appeared in vaudeville, sang in cafes and acted on Broadway. Pat Sr. did not want Pat Jr. to follow him in show business, and the son earned a master's in political philosophy, enlisted and served in Korea as an Intelligence officer with the US Air Force.

When he was discharged in his late twenties the young lieutenant returned to New York, went to work for NBC as a salesman, but thanks to a lucky break ended up following his father into show business. Family lore has it that he was goofing around at a bar, when comedian Jonathan Winters saw him, urged him to try out – at the very top: The Tonight Show with Jack Paar,then the most popular nighttime hour on TV. He walked on as a complete unknown and was a knockout Harrington left his sales job for a life in entertainment and a six decades' career as a character actor, mostly in comedy.

More national exposure came when he joined Steve Allen's zany comedy Show Man on the Street , in whichhe acted alongside comedians Don Knotts, Louis Nye and Tom Poston. Harrington created a comedy persona, not as the Irishman he was, but as an Italian immigrant named Guido Panzini.

As the 1960s rolled by, Harrington as Panzini became a familiar face on TV. He played a recurring role as the future son-in-law on Danny Thomas's eponymous show, followed by guest appearances on other TV shows of the 1970s, both comedy and drama.

Hollywood came next, calling on his talents as an actor and a voice for animated shows. But his most known and enduring role was the one that won him the Golden Globe as well as an Emmy, for portraying another comedic persona he created on the long running sitcom One Day at a Time : Dwayne F. Schneider, the wisecracking building super in a T shirt and a vest,a Clark Gable mustache, a pack of cigarettes in his rolled up sleeve, and a tool belt (which Harrington, the master improviser, bought on the spur of a moment from a crew electrician).

The show followed a recently divorced mother played by Bonnie Franklin, (who earned her two Globe nominations) and her two teenage daughters played by Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli (who was nominated three times for the Golden Globes as Best Supporting Actress in TV, and won twice). Mother and daughters start a new life together in Indianapolis, where they are befriended by their building's super,who treats them like family, as they face life's challenges together. A Norman Lear show, One Day was pioneering for its time, when single mothers were rare on television. It
was warmly received, and ran for nine seasons.

When the show ended, Harrington parlayed his Schneider persona into commercials, and, well into his eighties, continued to appear on TV comedies, as recently as 2012 – in Hot in Cleveland, where he worked once again with Bertinelli.

In a One Day reunion special, Harrington explained the attraction of his character: "You had a middle-aged, single man who was lonesome. Look what landed in his lap: a ready-made family! A gorgeous woman I figured I could hit on and two kids who needed to be straightened out, and then it became the story of a divorced woman with two young teenage girls being raised by a handyman."

Harrington's Schneider contributed some of the show's best lines. Asked in one episode whether he thinks he's hot stuff, Schneider replies, "Let me put it this way. The ladies in this building don't call me 'super' for nothing."

Yoram Kahana