Bernie Orenstein, the Canadian-born comedy writer and producer whose career spanned nearly half a century and included work on some of television’s most beloved sitcoms, died on Sept. 14, his family announced. He was 95. Orenstein was best known for his contributions to That Girl, Sanford and Son, What’s Happening!!, and Kate & Allie, but his résumé stretched far beyond those hits, encompassing variety shows, short-lived experiments, and a long, fruitful partnership with writer-producer Saul Turteltaub.
Orenstein’s first major success came in the 1960s, during a three-year stint writing for ABC’s The Hollywood Palace, a star-studded variety show that showcased the biggest names in entertainment. Shortly after that, he teamed with Turteltaub for the first time, beginning a collaboration that would last more than three decades. The two became one of the most enduring comedy-writing teams in television history, even though they rarely worked in the same room together. Their method was unconventional. “I would write one act, he would write the other act, and we’d put it together and make sure they fit. Often he would write a whole script and I would write a whole script,” Orenstein recalled in a 2016 interview for the TV Academy Foundation website The Interviews. “But we never wrote together, one of us at the typewriter, the other walking behind him pitching lines, like most sitcoms writers do.”
Orenstein credited Carl Reiner with teaching him a great deal about comedy. Reiner hired Orenstein and Turteltaub to work on The New Dick Van Dyke Show, the 1971-74 CBS sitcom in which Van Dyke played a talk-show host. That experience helped shape their approach to character-driven humor and gave them a foundation for the many series they would go on to create and produce.
In 1967, Orenstein and Turteltaub began writing episodes of That Girl, the groundbreaking ABC comedy starring Marlo Thomas as Ann Marie, an aspiring actress living in New York City. The show was widely seen as a feminist milestone, presenting a single woman who was independent, ambitious, and not defined by marriage. Orenstein and Turteltaub joined as writer-producers for the show’s final two seasons. In hindsight, Orenstein believed they made a significant mistake by having Ann Marie become engaged to her longtime boyfriend, Donald Hollinger, played by Ted Bessell. The engagement, he said, hurt the show’s ratings. The pair would make a similar misstep years later when they joined Kate & Allie in 1988 and gave Susan Saint James’ character a husband. “We made sure it was the final season by getting her married, a lesson we should have learned on That Girl,” Orenstein said with characteristic self-deprecation.
The duo came aboard Sanford and Son in 1974, joining the Redd Foxx-starring sitcom for its fourth season and remaining through the show’s end in 1977. The series, developed by Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear, was an American adaptation of the British sitcom Steptoe and Son, and it became a landmark in Black television comedy. Orenstein and Turteltaub were brought in at the request of Lear, who needed producers who could handle the temperamental Foxx, who was then in the middle of a contract dispute and sitting out the show. “We got along with him famously,” Orenstein said. “He was very protective of us, the two white Jewish guys writing a Black show and coming under criticism from the Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP.” Orenstein recalled one memorable night when he and Turteltaub got into their cars in the middle of the night to help Foxx find his dog, which had gotten loose. They also bought a couple of episodes written by a young Garry Shandling, giving the future comedy legend an early break.
After Yorkin split with Lear, Orenstein and Turteltaub partnered with Yorkin to launch TOY Productions. The new company landed three comedies on ABC at once: What’s Happening!!, a sitcom about Black teenagers growing up in Watts; Carter Country, a comedy about small-town cops played by Victor French and Kene Holliday; and 13 Queens Boulevard, starring Eileen Brennan. For What’s Happening!!, Orenstein spotted Fred Berry and hired him to play the character Rerun, a role that became one of the most memorable on the show. The nickname came from the character having to take classes over and over again. The show was a hit and remains a nostalgic favorite.
Orenstein and Turteltaub also wrote and produced for Love, American Style and Baby Talk, the latter starring Scott Baio, both for ABC. They created CBS’ E/R, a medical comedy featuring Elliott Gould and a young George Clooney. They wrote for NBC’s One of the Boys, which starred Mickey Rooney alongside newcomers Dana Carvey and Nathan Lane. They also worked on NBC’s You Again?, starring Jack Klugman and John Stamos, and CBS’ Cosby, the later sitcom starring Bill Cosby. Their range was remarkable, moving easily between variety shows, family comedies, and edgier material.
One of their most personal projects was Chicken Soup, a 1989 ABC comedy starring Jackie Mason and Lynn Redgrave. The show was canceled after only seven episodes, much to Orenstein’s disappointment, despite having the mega-hit Roseanne as its lead-in. Orenstein had high hopes for the show because it was based on his own life. On the show, Mason’s character was dating a tall, Irish redhead, played by Redgrave. “He was a short, Jewish guy. I’m a short, Jewish guy. My wife is a tall, Irish redhead,” Orenstein explained, referring to his wife, actress Barbara Rhoades. “I said, ‘It’s perfect, I know everything we can do!’” But the premise did not resonate with audiences. “No one could believe that she would be the least bit interested in somebody like Jackie Mason the way he acted on the show. That was its downfall. That was my fault. I was positive that my life would be accepted by America. Apparently, it wasn’t.”
Orenstein was born Bernard Orenstein in Toronto on Feb. 5, 1931. He was the youngest of five boys. He had no middle name, he joked, because “we were too poor for that.” His father sold women’s clothing and struggled with a gambling problem, while his mother was a homemaker. As a youngster, Orenstein acted on CBC radio programs and later appeared on the network’s television variety shows after dropping out of the University of Toronto. He was honest about his early performing abilities. “I was awful, to tell you the truth,” he said. “Nevertheless, it was easy in those days. Nobody knew anything about television. They paid very little, and anybody who had any nerve to get up in front of a camera was accepted. I had nerve as opposed to talent.”
Orenstein acted and wrote for the CBC variety program The Barris Beat, produced by Norman Jewison, the future Oscar-nominated filmmaker. In 1965, he moved to New York and landed a job on the CBS prank show Candid Camera. He carpooled with another young writer, Joan Rivers, until she was fired the day after she appeared on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show and became an instant sensation. Host Allen Funt, Orenstein said, “didn’t want anyone who was a bigger star, possibly, than he was.”
Orenstein later came to Los Angeles to write for ABC’s The Les Crane Show, a late-night talk show that ultimately fell victim to Carson’s dominance. When the show was canceled, Orenstein got producer Nick Vanoff to let him fulfill his contract on The Hollywood Palace. There, he wrote material for legends including Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, and Fred Astaire. In 1967, he was offered the chance to write the pilot for a Pat Boone afternoon talk show and enlisted Turteltaub, whom he had met in New York, to help. Turteltaub worked on the Boone program while Orenstein stayed with Hollywood Palace and also wrote for NBC’s The Monkees. In the evenings, the two got together to write for sitcoms. Their first sold scripts were for the comedies Hey, Landlord at NBC, Good Morning, World at CBS, and That Girl. They also wrote and produced the 1968 NBC variety program The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, hiring an unknown Lorne Michaels to assist them.
In 1971, Orenstein and Turteltaub relocated to Arizona to work on The New Dick Van Dyke Show before returning to Los Angeles two years later to produce Love, American Style. When Foxx left Sanford and Son for a lucrative ABC deal, the pair worked on the spinoffs Grady and Sanford Arms. After Columbia Pictures’ Screen Gems bought TOY Productions, a sale that went through in 1979 on the very day that What’s Happening!!, Carter Country, and 13 Queens Boulevard were all canceled, they continued working for Columbia on One of the Boys and One in a Million, the latter starring Shirley Hemphill from What’s Happening!!. They also helped future Murphy Brown creator Diane English gain a foothold in television by executive producing her 1985-86 CBS comedy, Foley Square.
After spending two years as story consultants on Cosby, Orenstein stepped away from the daily grind of television. He returned to school to earn his college degree, wrote two novels — 2011’s Fender Mason, about horse racing, and 2013’s Black Sheep, about comedy and crime — taught TV history at Long Island University in Brooklyn, and bred thoroughbreds. His later years were filled with creativity and family. In addition to his second wife, whom he married in February 1979, survivors include his children, Lisa, Barbara, Jenny, and Alec; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. “He lived with boundless creativity, humor and love, always keeping family close and finding joy in every moment,” his family noted.
In his TV Academy Foundation interview, Orenstein reflected honestly on the nature of a career in television. He acknowledged that he had many more misses than hits. “If you look at my résumé, it’s really depressing if you ever wanted to be in the business,” he said. “Although I wrote hundreds of scripts and produced, I don’t know, 40 shows, I’d say only four or five of them were really successful. It’s not an easy business. But as a writer, you’re never out of work. You can always sit down in front of a typewriter.” That resilience, along with his wit and willingness to laugh at himself, defined a career that helped shape American television comedy for generations.
