Mr. Bernhardt did such good work with new plays鈥攐ften by unknown playwrights who thereafter became famous鈥攖hat he frequently saw them transfer from Off-Broadway to Broadway and there collect honors. This happened with 鈥檚 Southern-flavored comedy of romantic manners, Crimes of the Heart, which began at Stage 73, then the home of the fledgling .
MTC had been disinclined to mount the play, but changed its mind when Bernhardt showed interest in directing. Crimes moved to Broadway and ran for a year and half. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, earned a Tony nomination and established Henley鈥檚 reputation. Mr. Bernhardt also got a Tony nomination.
Da, High Leonard鈥檚 play about a young and Irishman and his relationship with his late father, was also nominated for a Best Play and Best Director of a Play Tony Award, in 1978, and won both. Mr. Bernhardt also won a Drama Desk Award for his work. The play ran nearly two years on Broadway.
The plays he made his name with were largely character-focused, and Mr. Bernhardt was known for having a knack with helped actors create and develop their portrayals.
Mr. Bernhardt, who was born in Buffalo, NY, on Feb. 26, 1931, began his career in the theatre as a stage manager. He hit his stride as a director in the late 鈥�60s and early 鈥�70s, when he directed Cop-Out, a short-lived comedy starring and Ron Liebman, on Broadway, and 鈥檚 tortured memory play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds Off-Broadway. The show, about a strange young girl with a sad home life and rich inner life, starred and a young . It won the Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play and an Obie and ran for two years. He directed Kurtz again in 1976 in Children by , another then-rising playwright. He won an Obie Award for Distinguished Direction, just as he had for Moon.
His other Broadway credits included And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, Hide and Seek and Dancing in the End Zone.
He is survived by his husband, Jeff Woodman.
