Dick Van Patten, Father On ‘Eight Is Enough,’ Dead At 86

NEW YORK (AP) — Dick Van Patten, a genial, round-faced comic actor who premiered on Broadway as a child, starred on radio in a decline and then, in center age, found durability celebrity as a primogenitor on TV’s “Eight is Enough,” has died.

Van Patten died Tuesday in Santa Monica, California, of complications from diabetes, pronounced his publicist, Daniel Bernstein. He was 86.

Born in New York, a maestro hostess began his career as a indication and child actor, creation his Broadway entrance in 1935 during a age of seven, billed as “Dickie Van Patten.” He would go on to seem in 27 other Broadway plays, behaving alongside such giants as Melvyn Douglas, Tallulah Bankhead and, for 3 years, as a son of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in “O Mistress Mine.”

In 1949, he began a seven-year run on one of TV’s beginning series, a CBS comedy “Mama,” personification one of a sons of a Norwegian-American family in early 1900s San Francisco.

Van Patten’s biggest TV success was as Tom Bradford, a widower and father of 8 who met and married Abby (played by Betty Buckley), with whom he set adult a amatory if pell-mell household. The ABC comedy-drama aired from 1977-1981.

“Every day on set he was a happy, joyful person, always inexhaustible and prepared to play, provoke and always keep us all laughing,” pronounced Buckley. “He was a unqualified professional, a smashing actor, master of comedy, and a kind and inexhaustible tellurian being.”

“He was truly a gem and will be missed,” tweeted Willie Aames, who, now 54, played a Bradford son Tommy on a series, that launched him as a teen heart-throb. “As Dick always said: Remember a time together gang… Cause these ARE a good ole’ days.”

Van Patten’s many other TV appearances enclosed “Sanford and Son,” ”The Streets of San Francisco,” ”Adam-12,” ”Happy Days,” ”The Love Boat,” ”Touched By An Angel,” ”Arrested Development” and, many recently, “Hot in Cleveland.”

Film projects enclosed “Spaceballs,” ”High Anxiety,” a strange “Freaky Friday” (starring Jodie Foster), “The Santa Trap” and “Soylent Green.”

Van Patten was a critical poker actor and a commentator for a World Poker Tour. It was a healthy appendage for him as an actor trade on what he called a “bluff cause — as an actor, we flower on that, to challenge a odds,” he pronounced in a 2007 interview.

An animal enthusiast, he co-founded Dick Van Patten’s Natural Balance Pet Foods in 1989 as good as initial National Guide Dog Month, that began in 2008 to lift recognition and income for nonprofit beam dog schools in a United States.

In a 2003 talk with The Associated Press, he explained that his adore of animals was innate while flourishing adult in New York:

“If we was good any week, my father would take me to a opposite pet store any Saturday,” he said. “I had a snake, excitable toads, turtles, lizards, rabbits, guinea pigs. … we kept my alligator in a bathtub until it got too big.

“We didn’t take a bath for years,” he joked.

He is survived by his 3 actor sons — Nels, Jimmy and Vincent — as good as Patricia Van Patten, his mother of 62 years (and a former Jun Taylor Dancer) whom he initial met, and fell for, during age 14 when seated subsequent to her in category during their veteran children’s school.

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This story has been corrected to uncover that “Eight Is Enough” aired from 1977-1981.

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