Pat Harrington Jr., Emmy-winning super on 'One Day at a Time,' dies

Pat Harrington Jr, who won acclaim as the buttinsky building superintendent who rarely fixed anything on the long-running 1970s sitcom, One Day at a Time, has died, according to his family. He was 86.

His daughters Tresa and Terry posted a message on Facebook Thursday announcing his death on Wednesday evening. It included a picture of him as the swaggering, cluttered keychain-wielding Dwayne Schneider from One Day.

"Dear Friends, it is with the most unimaginable pain and sadness, that I tell you my father, Pat Harrington, Jr. passed away at 11:09 PM this evening," Tresa Harrington wrote. "We were all with him today and tonight: crying, laughing and loving him.

"My heart is broken to pieces and I will cry and cry until I just won't," she concluded. "Love to you all! And as we head into this year, never be afraid to tell the people you love, that you love them."

The sitcom, which ran from 1975-1984 on CBS, was a Norman Lear production about a newly single mom, Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin), who moves back to her hometown of Indianapolis with two teen daughters, Barbara (Valerie Bertinelli), and Julie (MacKenzie Phillips) after her divorce. It was one of the first portrayals of a divorced mom on American TV.

Harrington played  Dwayne Schneider, their building super who thinks he's a ladies man, who swaggers into their lives and becomes part of the family. “The ladies in this building don’t call me ‘super’ for nothing," was one of his lines.

(Franklin died in 2013. Bertinelli and Phillips are still close and still working in Hollywood. Bertinelli paid tribute.

Harrington, in his costume of white T-shirt, blue vest, cigarette pack rolled up in his sleeve, and tool belt that he never seemed to use, regularly stole scenes, Lear once said.  "He turned out to be the comic strength of the show,” Lear said.

The role won Harrington an Emmy and a Golden Globe, plus multiple nominations of each.

Although the show ended in the mid-1980s, there was a reunion special in February 2005, and Harrington took part.

In 2012, Harrington made his final onscreen appearance, appearing as the manager of an apartment building on Bertinelli’s Hot in Cleveland sitcom on TV Land until June 2015.

But his list of TV credits was huge, dating back to 1949 and the Ford Theatre Hour. Make Room for Daddy, The Munsters and The Beverly Hillbillies are only some of the famous series he appeared in. More recently, he appeared in shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm and The King of Queens.

Pat Harrington Jr. was born on August 13, 1929 in New York City, as Daniel Patrick Harrington Jr.