Peter Bonerz

Peter Roman Bonerz, born August 6, 1938, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is an American actor and director. He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended Marquette University High School and first gained theatrical experience performing with the school's Prep Players. He continued his involvement in theater at Marquette University through the Marquette University Players, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1960. Following graduation, Bonerz pursued a career in theater, beginning in New York City with an improvisational troupe called The Premise. After completing compulsory service as a draftee in the United States Army, he joined a San Francisco-based improv group known as The Committee, whose membership included Rob Reiner, David Ogden Stiers, Howard Hesseman, and Hamilton Camp.

Bonerz made his first network television appearance in 1965 on The Addams Family, in the season-two episode "Morticia, The Writer," playing Mr. Boswell. Through the late 1960s he accumulated additional television credits and appeared in a number of films, among them Funnyman (1967), Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969), Medium Cool (1969), and Catch-22 (1970), the last of which featured his future colleague Bob Newhart. Further film roles followed with Jennifer on My Mind (1971) and Fuzz (1972).

In 1970, Bonerz appeared on Broadway in Paul Sills' Story Theatre. The following year he was part of the ensemble cast of the short-lived improvisational television adaptation Story Theatre (1971), which also featured Alan Alda and Valerie Harper. In 1972, he was cast in the supporting role of Dr. Jerry Robinson, an eccentric orthodontist on The Bob Newhart Show, a character whose most frequent comic foil was Marcia Wallace as Carol, the receptionist. The series ran for six seasons, ranking among the top twenty in ratings during its first three seasons. Bonerz directed 29 episodes of the show beginning in 1974 and later reprised the role of Dr. Robinson in a cameo in the final, unaired episode of Bob Newhart's third series, Bob. He became the last surviving main cast member of The Bob Newhart Show following Bob Newhart's death in 2024.

His later acting credits included the television miniseries The Bastard (1978), the film Serial (1980) in which he played a psychiatrist, and a 1979 appearance on Password Plus alongside his Bob Newhart Show costar Marcia Wallace. In 1986, he co-starred with Tuesday Weld and River Phoenix in the television movie Circle of Violence: A Family Drama. He played Ed. Weinberger in the 1999 film Man on the Moon, voiced the character Sal in an episode of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, and appeared as Doug Demarco in the "Anniversaries" episode of Parks and Recreation in 2014.

As a director, Bonerz built an extensive body of work in television between 1974 and 2011, encompassing more than 350 episodes across numerous series. His directing credits include 93 episodes of Murphy Brown, 29 episodes of Home Improvement, 22 episodes of E/R, 12 episodes of Friends, and 3 episodes of Joey, along with work on Wings, NewsRadio, Archie Bunker's Place, and ALF, among others. He also directed the theatrical films Nobody's Perfekt (1981) and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989). In his personal life, Bonerz married Rosalind DiTrapani in 1963; the couple have two sons, Eli and Eric.