Bridget Fitzgerald: Last News

David Birney, an actor who found early success on Broadway before landing the co-starring role on "Bridget Loves Bernie," a 1972 sitcom that would be one of the most controversial TV shows of its era, died Friday of Alzheimer’s disease at his home in Santa Monica. He was 83.

David Birney - an actor best known for his work onSt Elsewhere and Bridget Loves Bernie - has died at 83 after a battle withAlzheimer's.The longtime thespian passed away at his home in Santa Monica on Friday his lifer partner Michele Roberge told the New York Times.He had battled Alzheimer's for five years before succumbing aged 83 on April 29. Sad news:David Birney - an actor best known for his work on St Elsewhere and Bridget Loves Bernie - has died at 83 after a battle with Alzheimer's Big gig: He starred on St Elsewhere in 1982 with Cynthia Sykes (bottom left), William Daniels (top left), and Ed Flanders (right)After finding early success on Broadway, he landed a starring role on sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie in 1972 which was considered one of the most controversial television shows of the time.

David Birney, an actor who found early success on Broadway before landing the co-starring role on a 1972 sitcom, Bridget Loves Bernie, that would be one of the most controversial TV shows of its era, died of Alzheimer’s disease Friday, April 29, at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.

New York Times reported.Birney first gained mainstream fame in 1972 opposite his future wife Meredith Baxter in the CBS sitcom “Bridget Loves Bernie.” The show was popular — slotted between ratings juggernauts “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “All in the Family — but short-lived thanks to controversial protests by Jewish groups who disagreed with the “intermarriage” of Birney’s Jewish cabbie character, Bernie Steinberg, and Baxter’s Bridget Fitzgerald, a Catholic grade school teacher from a wealthy family.Both divorced at the time, Birney and the futxure “Family Ties” matriarch, who had two children from her first marriage, got hitched for real in 1974. The pair had three kids of their own before getting divorced in 1989.Baxter later claimed that Birney was emotionally and physically abusive in her bombshell 2011 book “Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame, and Floundering.” He vehemently denied her claims, deeming them an “appalling abuse of the truth.”The son of an FBI agent, Birney was born on April 23, 1939, and raised in Cleveland, Ohio.