Earl Barret, ‘Too Close for Comfort’ Writer and Producer, Dies at 94

Earl Barret, the veteran comedy writer who co-developed the Ted Knight-starring Too Close for Comfort and worked on more than 30 other series, including Bewitched, Get Smart, Batman and The Andy Griffith Show, has died. He was 94.

Barret died Oct. 22 of natural causes at his home in Sherman Oaks, his daughter, J.K. Barret, announced. He was a “lifelong learner with a keen, curious mind and a gift for impeccable comic timing,” she said.

The Ohio native also wrote for My Favorite Martian, My Three Sons, My Mother the Car, I Spy, The Wild Wild West, Julia, The Bob Newhart Show, Sanford and Son and Welcome Back, Kotter.

He and longtime writing partner Arne Sultan developed, wrote and produced Too Close for Comfort, which was based on the British sitcom Keep It in the Family, created by Brian Cooke.

The American adaptation, which ran for six seasons (1980-87) on ABC and in syndication, revolved around Knight’s Henry Rush, a cartoonist who works out of the San Francisco home he shares with his wife (Nancy Dussault) and adult daughters (Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Lydia Cornell).

Barret and Sultan first worked together on the 1969-70 CBS comedy The Governor & J.J., starring Dan Dailey and Julie Sommars. They continued with NBC’s The Partners (Don Adams’ first series after Get Smart), CBS’ The Sandy Duncan Show, ABC’s Holmes and Yoyo and The New Odd Couple and the CTV’s Check It Out (Adams starred on that one, too).

The pair also were among the credited writers on the 1989 feature See No Evil, Hear No Evil, directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.

An only child, Barret was born on Oct. 17, 1932, in Canton, Ohio. His parents, Aurel and Mary, who owned a confectionery store, got him tap dancing and violin lessons as a youngster before the family came west, and he graduated from Hollywood High School and Los Angeles City College.

He originally pursued a career as an actor but changed direction after taking a free TV-writing class taught by Robert C. Dennis, a scribe on shows including Perry Mason and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

“No matter how busy he was, no matter what show he was working on, he gave a free class every Wednesday night,” Barret noted. (His mom was the first in the family to take the class.)

Barret wrote on 1961 episodes of Sea Hunt, Hawaiian Eye and Ripcord, and he and Dennis would later partner on scripts for Get Smart, My Mother the Car, The Andy Griffith Show and The Wild Wild West.

For Batman, he and Dennis came up with the character of King Tut (portrayed by Victor Buono) when producers wanted new villains for the series (the actors playing Joker, Riddler and Penguin apparently were demanding too much money). The duo then wrote the episodes “The Curse of Tut”/“The Pharaoh’s in a Rut” and “The Spell of Tut”/“Tut’s Case Is Shut.”

Barret landed a gig as a story editor on The Governor and J.J., created by Sultan and Get Smart writer Leonard Stern, and before long, he and Sultan were writing for the political comedy. (Barret also directed an episode of the show; later, he would helm 13 installments of Too Close for Comfort.)

Barret and Sultan also wrote the comedy Wife Begins at 40 for the stage, later a 1988 BBC telefilm.

In addition to daughter J.K., survivors include his wife, Barbara; his son, John; and five grandsons. He was preceded in death by another daughter, Lisa.

Barret’s memoir, Eden Was on a Hollywood Hill, was published in 2010. It “tells how a Romanian chauffeur and Hungarian American waitress marry after a one-week courtship and spend the next 50 years pursuing the American Dream through the Great Depression, World War II and finally to the enchanted hills of Hollywood, where they hope their tap-dancing, violin-playing son will break into the movies. And why shouldn’t he? Wasn’t anything possible in America?”