Sophia Michaels
Dale McRaven, a sitcom stalwart who co-created Mork and Mindy, as well as the long-running series, Perfect Strangers, died earlier this month. He was 83.
McRaven died at his home on Sept. 5 from complications related to lung cancer. His son, David, confirmed his death to Variety.
McRaven spent three decades in television, largely working as a writer. He got his start in the mid-Sixties when Garry Marshall hired him and his frequent writing partner, Carl Kleinschmidt, to work on The Joey Bishop Show. The pair later worked on the final season of The Dick Van Dyke Show, winning a Writers Guild of America Award for penning the episode, “Br-rooom, Br-rooom.”
McRaven spent the next decade hopping around the television world, working on shows like The Odd Couple, Room 222, The Partridge Family, Laverne and Shirley, and the Betty White Show. In 1974, McRaven created his first show, The Texas Wheelers (which starred Gary Busey and Mark Hamill and featured a theme song by John Prine), but the series lasted just eight episodes. In 1979, he reunited with Marshall to co-create another sitcom, Angie, but that only lasted two seasons.
McRaven, however, scored a major hit next when he Marshall and Joe Glauberg created Mork and Mindy. Starring Robin Williams in a breakthrough role as an alien sent to Earth to study humans, the show ran for four seasons. It earned McRaven an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1979.
Mork and Mindy wrapped in 1982, and four years later, McRaven returned with a show created all by himself: Perfect Strangers. The show featured Bronson Pinchot as a Balki Bartokomous, a man from the fake Mediterranean island of “Mypos,” who shows up in Chicago to live with his distant cousin, Larry (played by Mark-Linn Baker.” Perfect Strangers was a reliable hit, running for eight seasons and airing 150 episodes.
