The sitcom, about an interfaith marriage, drew criticism from Jewish groups and was canceled after one season. He fared better onstage than in television.

David Birney, a classically trained theater actor who found success on the stage, including on Broadway, but who was best known for his role in ''Bridget Loves Bernie'' -- a short-lived sitcom about an interfaith marriage in which he starred opposite his future wife, Meredith Baxter -- died on Wednesday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.

The cause was Alzheimer's disease, said Michele Roberge, his life partner.

Mr. Birney had been in a handful of television series and movies when he was cast in 1972 as Bernie Steinberg, a Jewish taxicab driver and struggling writer. Ms. Baxter played Bridget Fitzgerald, a schoolteacher from a wealthy Roman Catholic family.

''This is not a message show,'' Mr. Birney, who was Irish American, said during an interview with The Kansas City Star before the series's debut. ''It's not even an idea show.''

CBS gave it a plum time slot between ''All in the Family'' and ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' on Saturday night; it consistently finished among the top 10 programs in prime time and was the highest rated new series of the 1972-73 season.

But it attracted criticism from a broad spectrum of Jewish groups, which objected chiefly to its treatment of intermarriage between Jews and Christians as a positive outcome and complained that it used Jewish stereotypes. CBS publicly played down the criticism but, without an explanation, canceled ''Bridget Loves Bernie'' after...