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Norman Lear's One Day at a Time aired in 1975 and ran for 9 beloved seasons. Today, we're taking a look at the One Day at a Time cast then and now to see how they've changed through the years.
00:00 - Intro
0:19 - Richard Masur as David Kane
1:24 - Micheal Lembeck as Max Horvath
2:29 - Glenn Scarpelli as Alex Handris
3:34 - Boyd Gaines as Mark Royer
4:38 - Pat Harrington Jr. as Dwayne Scheneider
5:43 - Nanette Fabray as Katherine Romano
6:51 - Mackenzie Phillips as Julie Cooper
7:53 - Valerie Bertinelli as Barbara Cooper
8:58 - Bonnie Franklin as Ann Romano
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Actors Bonnie Franklin, Pat Harrington, Jr., and Valerie Bertinelli were the only cast members to remain with the series throughout its entire run. Lead actress Mackenzie Phillips was fired after the fifth season due to growing problems with substance abuse. She later returned in a frequent recurring role. Original cast member Richard Masur was written out early in the second season, but returned as a guest-star in the sixth-season finale.
After Masur's departure, the producers tried going in a different direction: instead of Ann Romano being romantically involved with a man, she should have a comedic foil. For that role, producer Lear chose actress and comedienne Mary Louise Wilson, who had just completed a successful run on Broadway as Tessie Tura in a revival of Gypsy starring Angela Lansbury. Wilson was signed to play Ginny Wroblicki, a cocktail waitress who moves into Schneider's apartment building, and immediately becomes Ann's best friend and confidante. The shows' ratings began to decline soon after Wilson's arrival, as the character of Ginny Wroblicki proved to be unpopular with viewers. According to her memoir, My First Hundred Years in Show Business, prior to being cast as Ginny, Wilson had never seen One Day at a Time and immediately sat down and watched an episode one night in her apartment. She did not find the sitcom funny at all and was not given a script until the first read-through of her first episode. Wilson also did not get along with Franklin, "who took her role as arbiter over moral issues very seriously" and who considered herself "our foremost authority on Broadway". Wilson wrote that "aside from Lear, nobody thought I was funny...To make matters worse, each character, according to the show's formula, had to have a 'serious' moral dilemma at some point, and I was given some problem about an illegitimate child to work out in these increasingly sentimental scenes that made my bowels shrink." At the end of the second season of One Day at a Time, Wilson begged her agent to ask Lear to release her from her contract. After the meeting with her agent, Wilson impulsively changed her mind and agreed to stay with the series, but it was too late. Her agent had already informed Norman Lear of Wilson's unhappiness and she was released from the show after appearing in 14 episodes. The character of Ginny Wroblicki was never seen, referred to, or heard from again.
The One Day at a Time Reunion was a 60-minute CBS retrospective special which aired on Tuesday February 22, 2005, at 9:00 pm ET, reuniting Bonnie Franklin, Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli, and Pat Harrington to reminisce about the series and their characters. Regular cast members Richard Masur, Shelley Fabares, Nanette Fabray, Michael Lembeck and Glenn Scarpelli shared their feelings about their time on the show in separate interviews. The special was included as a bonus on One Day at a Time: The Complete First Season DVD set.
On February 26, 2008, Franklin, Phillips, Bertinelli, and Harrington reunited once again to talk about life on the set, Phillips' drug problems, and the show's theme song on NBC's Today Show as part of a week-long segment titled "Together Again: TV's Greatest Casts Reunited".
Bertinelli, Harrington, and (on tape) Franklin appeared on the September 10, 2008, episode of Rachael Ray to celebrate Ray's 40th birthday.
In 2011, Franklin reunited again with Bertinelli on an episode of Hot in Cleveland which marked one of Franklin's last acting roles before her death in 2013. Mackenzie Phillips and Pat Harrington Jr. also made individual cameos on the series.
One Day at a Time was awarded the Innovation Award on the 2012 TV Land Award show on April 29. Accepting the award were Valerie Bertinelli, Bonnie Franklin, Pat Harrington Jr., Richard Masur, Mackenzie Phillips, and Glenn Scarpelli.
In July 2020, Bertinelli, Phillips, Lembeck and Scarpelli reunited on the Stars in the House video podcast, along with producers Norman Lear and Patricia Fass Palmer.