page_title: Bridget Loves Bernie
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Bridget Loves Bernie / Overview
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Robert Sampson as Father Mike from the television program Bridget Loves Bernie. In this scene, Father Mike is at Steinberg's deli for the Archbishop's weekly supply of bagels.
context_page_description: Bridget Loves Bernie is an American sitcom created by Bernard Slade. Depicting an interfaith marriage between a Catholic woman and a Jewish man, Bridget Loves Bernie was based loosely on the premise of the 1920s Broadway play and 1940s radio show Abie's Irish Rose. It stars Meredith Baxter and David Birney as the title characters. Despite high ratings, CBS cancelled the show after only one season.
  Baxter and Birney married in real life after the program went off the air.
context_section_description: The series depicted an interfaith marriage between an Irish Catholic teacher (Bridget) from a wealthy family and a Jewish cab driver (Bernie), 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 #5 in the ratings among all shows for the 1972-73 television season and obtained a 24.2 rating, tying with The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. However, CBS executives canceled the show in response to negative reactions to the characters' marriage, giving the show the dubious distinction of 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 working class parents, Sam and Sophie Steinberg. The Steinbergs owned a delicatessen above which Bridget and Bernie lived.  Glass played Bernie's uncle, Moe Plotnik. Actor 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. Nora Marlowe was cast as Aunt Agnes in the 1972 episode "The Little White Lie That Grew and Grew".
caption: Father Mike picking up the Archbishop's weekly bagel supply.
exif: {"Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Express Editor", "Image ExifOffset": "69"}