I don’t think of Van Patten (pictured at top with his TV sons Grant Goodeve, Adam Rich and Willie Aames) as one of the giant stars of my long-ago youth, but as is often the case these days when I hear of the passing of an actor from a series I never missed (back when broadcast ruled the world), I nevertheless felt a sense of loss this week with the news of his passing.
Van Patten wasn’t in the same league of outsize pop-culture greatness as Henry Winkler, Ron Howard, Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, Jacklyn Smith, Penny Marshall, Cindy Williams, John Ritter, Suzanne Somers, Robin Williams, Lindsay Wagner, Lee Majors, Billy Crystal, Hal Linden, Kristy McNichol, Donnie Osmond and Marie Osmond, but he certainly belonged in the company of those stars and the many others who made ABC the place to be in the mid- to late Seventies. (Geez, just pulling those names from memory and writing them in the same paragraph has me feeling instantly nostalgic for a time when most things in life were far less complicated than they are today, with the exceptions of television and the media, which grow maddeningly more complex with every passing year.)
Maybe his character of Tom Bradford, the loving husband and father of eight on ABC’s “Eight is Enough,” which ran from 1977-81, is not exactly iconic in the way of the Fonz or Richie Cunningham. Van Patten nevertheless played a crucial and unforgettable role in creating and sustaining the dazzling environment that defined ABC during those years, one that fully took shape when the legendary programming executive Fred Silverman moved over from CBS in 1975.
ABC hadn’t exactly been languishing during the first half of that decade, not with such classics in the making as “The Brady Bunch,” “The Partridge Family,” “Room 222,” “The Odd Couple” and “Love, American Style” powering what would be one of the most enduring and unforgettable nightly lineups in the history of television. Those were the shows that gave ABC a formidable Friday, which was formed at the same time as CBS’ legendary Saturday -- “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show.” (Geez, just typing those titles gives me chills, but I guess you had to be there.) Significantly, that splendid Saturday lineup came together under the auspices of Silverman during his tenure at the Tiffany Network, along with so many other strong shows and nightly schedules.
But then ABC’s fortunes began to fade and Silverman moved on over, very quickly turning his new network into one with programs (including the mini-series “Rich Man, Poor Man” and “Roots”) as powerful and popular and influential as his shows had been at CBS. There was a significant difference: Overall, the ABC lineup became essential viewing throughout the week for kids, teens, young adults and families. This lasted for years, and there hasn’t been anything like it since; not even during NBC’s rebirth in the Eighties, built largely around its Thursday night Must-See TV shows.
Those mighty ABC shows included “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Soap,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Family,” “Donnie & Marie,” “Barney Miller,” “Three’s Company,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “The Bionic Woman,” “The Love Boat" and “Fantasy Island,” among others. Van Patten was right there in the middle of it all – literally in the middle, with “Eight is Enough” running on Wednesday night.