Harvey Fierstein

Daddy’s Girls is an American sitcom that aired on CBS in the fall of 1994. The series followed Dudley Walker, the owner of a New York fashion house who loses his wife and his business partner when, after a years-long secret affair, they run off together leaving him as the primary caretaker to his three daughters.

The series is notable as the first in which a gay principal character was played by an openly gay actor. Harvey Fierstein played Dennis Sinclair, a high-strung designer at Walker’s firm.

Although Fierstein earned praise for his performance, Daddy’s Girls was hated by critics. New York magazine called the series “Despised, reviled.” Entertainment Weekly, somewhat prophetically, found Moore to be “wan and confused.” The Dallas Morning News could only say that “Daddy’s Girls isn’t horrendously bad” but predicted that it would not last until Christmas. Indeed, the series was placed “on hiatus” after only three episodes aired.

This was Moore’s penultimate on-screen job and his last regular television series. He later attributed his difficulties during the production of the show to the early stages of progressive supranuclear palsy, the disease that ultimately led to his death in 2002.