The playwright who created

Bernard Slade was hunting for a new sitcom idea when he caught a mom and her six singing children performing on The Tonight Show. The group, The Cowsills, inspired Slade to write The Partridge Family, about a musical clan that finds success as a pop band. The show debuted on ABC in 1970, spawned hit songs, including “I Think I Love You,” and made a teen idol out of David Cassidy. But after four seasons, Slade tired of arguing with TV executives and returned to his first love: theater. He quickly found success with the 1975 play Same Time, Next Year, which follows an adulterous couple who reunite for one weekend each year at the same bed-and-breakfast. The show ran for 1,453 performances on Broadway and became one of the world’s most-produced plays. “I wrote television for the money. I wrote the play for myself,” Slade said. “Yet it’s the play that’s made me the most money. There’s a lesson in that somewhere.” Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Slade moved with his parents to their native England in 1935, said HollywoodReporter.com. He “spent World War II as a child evacuee, moving constantly and attending 13 schools in seven years.” Always the “new boy,” Slade said, he evolved the “personality of the class wit.” After returning to Canada at age 18, Slade took up acting, and in the late 1950s began writing for the stage, radio, and TV. He moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and was soon writing for sitcoms, including Bewitched. Slade, to his embarrassment, also helped develop ABC’s The Flying Nun, about a novice nun (Sally Field) who could catch the breeze and go airborne. “I was ducking into doorways when I’d see friends,” Slade said. “I did not want as an epitaph ‘He Created the Flying Nun.’” Critical acclaim finally came his way with Same Time, Next Year, which was nominated for a Tony for Best Play, said The Washington Post. Slade wrote two more Broadway hits: 1978’s Tribute, starring Jack Lemmon as a terminally ill press agent, and the following year’s Romantic Comedy, which cast Mia Farrow and Anthony Perkins as playwrights who slowly fall in love. Some critics found his plays too frivolous, not that Slade cared. “I’ve always believed that laughter is the perfume of life,” he said. “It makes life bearable. Please...send in the clowns.”