Tony-nominated playwright whose hit sitcoms included The Partridge Family
B‘‘I’ve always believed that laughter is the perfume of life – it makes life bearable.’’
ernard Sladewas a Canadianwriter for the stage and screen who created The Partridge Family and earned Tony and Oscar nominations for
Same Time, Next Year, an adulterous romantic comedy that became one of Broadway’s most popular two-handers.
Slade, who has died aged 89 in Beverly Hills, was initially an actor who performed in more than 200 Canadian radio, television and stage productions before turning to writing at age 27, penning witty, romantic teleplays that landed him a job with the production company Screen
Gems. He soon dashed off 17 episodes of Bewitched, starring
Elizabeth
Montgomery as a married witch in the suburbs.
Based in Los Angeles, hewent on to develop or create a slew of 1960s and 70s sitcoms, including Love on a Rooftop, about newlyweds in San Francisco, and The Flying Nun, which starred Sally Field as Sister Bertrille, a novice nun who – through the grace of God and, somehow, the laws of physics – could catch a breeze and fly. As she explained it, ‘‘When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly.’’
Slade had considered developing a new sitcom using music when he saw six singing siblings and theirmother perform on The Tonight Show hosted by Johnny Carson. The group, called the Cowsills, inspired The Partridge Family, which premiered on ABC in 1970 and ran for four seasons.
Like The Monkees, a popular 1960s series about a manufactured pop band, The Partridge Family mixed typical sitcom plots with original musical numbers, including I Think I Love You and Doesn’t Somebody Want to be Wanted, largely recorded by professional musicians.
Slade returned to theatrical work after he grew tired of battling with television executives; after one spat, he decided to seek refuge in Hawaii and began writing a play during his flight to Honolulu. By the time he landed, he had drafted the first act of Same Time, Next Year, which premiered on Broadway in 1975 and ran for 1453 performances.
The play followed a California housewife and married New Jersey accountant who have a one-night stand, then return to renew their affair one weekend each year for two decades. ‘‘It is a delicious and very moral kind of immoral play,’’ wrote New York Times reviewer Clive Barnes. ‘‘It has wit, compassion, a sense of humour and a feel for nostalgia – who could ask for anything more?’’
The subsequent 1978 film earned Slade an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay.
Slade quickly returned to Broadway with twomore plays: Tribute (1978), which starred Jack Lemmon as a terminally ill press agent and former scriptwriter, and Romantic Comedy (1979), featuring Mia Farrow and Anthony Perkins as playwright collaborators who slowly fall in love.
Both were adapted into films and, although they were considered commercial successes, received mixed reviews on Broadway. Not that it mattered to Slade, who said he was satisfied as long as the audience was laughing.
‘‘Comedy, when done well, looks easy and seems light and frivolous,’’ he wrote in a 2000 memoir, Shared Laughter. ‘‘Well, what’s wrong with frivolous? I’ve always believed that laughter is the perfume of life – it makes life bearable. Please . . . send in the clowns.’’
Bernard Slade Newbound was born in St Catharines, Ontario, in 1930. He was 5when he moved with his parents to their native England, where his father worked as an aircraft mechanic. Moving frequently during World War II, Bernard attended 13 schools in seven years, primarily in south London.
‘‘Always the ‘new boy’, both extremely shy and gregarious, I evolved a personality of the class wit,’’ he wrote in his memoir. He returned to Canada at 18 and began acting, supporting himselfwith odd jobs.
‘‘I had no intentions of writing then, nor am I at all sure of how good an actor I was,’’ he told The Times in 1975. ‘‘I realise now that acting is the best training you could possibly have for playwriting. You can relate to the actors’ problems, the realities of staging, the practicality of a scene.’’
After turning to television, Slade created Bridget Loves Bernie (1972-73), a CBS sitcom about the marriage between a Catholic woman and Jewish man. Theywere played by Meredith Baxter and David Birney, who married in real life after the show was cancelled, reportedly amid a stream of hate mail to the network protesting its depiction of an interreligious marriage.
His last play on Broadway was Special Occasions, which closed after one night in 1982 and tracked a divorced couple through a decade of weddings, funerals and other ‘‘special occasions’’.
His wife of 64 years, Canadian actress Jill Foster, died in 2017. Survivors include two children, Laurie and Chris Newbound.
Slade said he owned about 25 per cent of The Partridge Family’s profits but never saw money from the series, even as it aired in syndication long after being cancelled in 1974.