Allan Manings, an award-winning television writer who created the hit situation comedy One Day at a Time, died on May 12 in Los Angeles, Calif. He was 86. The cause was a heart attack while he was undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer, his stepdaughter, the actress Meredith Baxter, told The New York Times last week. Mr. Manings was a seasonal resident of Edgartown and wrote occasional columns for the Vineyard Gazette that poked fun at all things political, from the foibles of the United States government to parochial Island government squabbles. In one recent column he puzzled over a bucket of clams that his caretaker dropped off at his house, a gift from someone whose name he could not work out on the note.

“As best we could we decoded the salutation to read Hi Alan (not my spelling), or Hi Hon, a title I will answer to at the drop of a hat,” he wrote. “The body of the message remained essentially in the twilight zone of calligraphy except for a reference to Stanley. The signature was as easily readable as winning the next Power Ball lottery. I tried to recall the Stanleys I have known from Laurel to Steamer but ended up as mystified as when I began.”

He had a long background in television writing, and wrote scripts for Leave It to Beaver and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, among others. He won an Emmy for his work on Laugh In, but for him the accolade was bittersweet, coming in the 1960s after he had returned to the U.S. from Canada, where he had lived for a time. He moved there when some of his Hollywood friends were blacklisted during the McCarthy era. “The blacklist experience stayed with him,” The New York Times reported in its obituary this week.

Allan Manings was born in Newark, N.J., on March 28, 1924. He grew up in Staten Island and served in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. Following the war, he was among the first group of men to enroll at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., on the G.I. Bill.

He later married the actress Whitney Blake, who starred in the sitcom Hazel. She was divorced with children, and she and Mr. Manings developed One Day at a Time for Norman Lear. Her experience as a single mother was the inspiration for the show, which debuted in 1975 and was considered progressive for its time, about a 38-year-old divorced woman who edited a woman’s magazine and lived with her 18-year-old daughter. The show became a hit and ran until 1984, although Mr. Manings left as producer after the first year.

He and his wife bought property in Boldwater in Edgartown in the early 1990s and built a home there, taking great delight in the Island as a summer haven. His wife died at the Edgartown home 2002, also from cancer, and the loss affected him profoundly.

He was outspoken in his political views and an unabashed champion of the underclass. Before his death Mr. Manings finished a play about an actor who was blacklisted. Titled Goodbye Louie . . . Hello, the play is expected to be produced in Los Angeles by Mr. Manings’s longtime manager, Jerry Goldstein, this fall.

In addition to his stepdaughter, Mr. Manings is survived by two stepsons, Richard and Brian Baxter; a sister, Muriel Manings; nine grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

A column he wrote three years ago for the Gazette is published on the Editorial Page in today’s edition.