Bridget Loves Bernie is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from September 16, 1972, to March 3, 1973. The series, created by Bernard Slade, depicted an interfaith marriage between a Catholic woman and a Jewish man. It stars Meredith Baxter and David Birney as the title characters. CBS canceled the show after only one season despite very high ratings.
Baxter and Birney later married in real life in 1974 after the program had left the air and Baxter was known in her professional career for several years as Meredith Baxter Birney.
Contents
Overview
The series depicts an interfaith marriage between an Irish Catholic teacher (Bridget Fitzgerald) from a wealthy family and a Jewish cab driver who aspires to be a playwright (Bernie Steinberg), whom she had met at a bus stop. With a primetime slot between All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Saturday nights, the situation comedy was No. 5 in the ratings among all shows for the 1972-73 television season and obtained a 24.2 rating, tying The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. However, CBS executives canceled the show in response to negative reactions to the characters' marriage, the show thus being the highest-rated television program to be canceled after only one season.
Supporting cast members included Audra Lindley, David Doyle, Harold J. Stone, Ned Glass and Bibi Osterwald. Lindley and Doyle played Bridget's wealthy parents, Walter and Amy Fitzgerald, and Stone and Osterwald played Bernie's lower-class parents, Sam and Sophie Steinberg. The Steinbergs owned a delicatessen above which Bridget and Bernie lived. Glass played Bernie's uncle, Moe Plotnik. Robert Sampson played Bridget's brother, Catholic priest Father Michael Fitzgerald; he was more sympathetic than others to his sister's marriage. Bill Elliott played Otis, Bernie's best friend and fellow cab driver. Nancy Walker was cast as Bernie's religious Jewish Aunt Ruthie and Nora Marlowe was cast as Bridget's nun Aunt Agnes in the 1972 episode "The Little White Lie That Grew and Grew".
Cast
David Birney as Bernie Steinberg
Meredith Baxter as Bridget Fitzgerald Steinberg
Bibi Osterwald as Sophie Steinberg
Harold J. Stone as Sam Steinberg
Audra Lindley as Amy Fitzgerald
David Doyle as Walter Fitzgerald
Ned Glass as Moe Plotnik
Robert Sampson as Father Michael Fitzgerald
Bill Elliott as Otis Foster
Controversy
The series was controversial because of the differing faiths of the married characters. Some Jewish groups charged that the series "mocked the teachings of Judaism". Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive vice-president of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, called the show "an insult to some of the most sacred values of both the Jewish and Catholic religions". Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote an essay on the series. Orthodox rabbis met with CBS officials several times. A Conservative rabbi organized a boycott by advertisers, and Reform rabbis met with CBS staff in secret to have the show canceled. Rabbi Abraham Gross, president of the Rabbinical Alliance of Orthodox Rabbis and Educators, described the show as a "flagrant insult" to Jews, protesting that intermarriage was strictly forbidden under Jewish law. Threats followed; Meredith Baxter said, "We had bomb threats on the show. Some guys from the Jewish Defense League came to my house to say they wanted to talk with me about changing the show." Threatening phone calls made to the home of producer Ralph Riskin resulted in the arrest of Robert S. Manning, described as a member of the Jewish Defense League.
Home media
On December 4, 2012, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the complete series as a manufacture-on-demand DVD set in Region 1, available in the U.S. exclusively through Amazon.com and WBShop.com. The complete series is set for a Blu-ray release on September 22, 2026.
In popular culture
Bridget Loves Bernie was referenced to in the MAD Magazine article "M*A*S*Huga" (its first satire of the M*A*S*H TV series) which appeared in Issue # 166 (April 1974). The Surgeon General stated to "Cockeye Piercer" and "Crapper John" that they were put in-between The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family only because religious groups objected to Bridget Loves Bernie, which was a reference to the fact that M*A*S*H was put in the time slot in between those two shows in the 1973–74 TV season after the cancellation of Bridget Loves Bernie.