David Lloyd, who wrote scores of scripts for some of the most popular television sitcoms of the 1970s, '80s and '90s -- including the memorable Chuckles the Clown episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was revered by comedy connoisseurs for wringing belly laughs from a funeral -- died Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 75.

The cause was prostate cancer, which was diagnosed 21 years ago, his son Christopher said.

Lloyd was an astonishingly productive writer by series television standards, not only generating scripts on his own but also working with other writers to doctor scripts in trouble. In addition to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for which he had credits on more than 30 episodes between 1973 and 1977, Lloyd wrote for, among other shows, The Bob Newhart Show, Lou Grant, Rhoda, Phyllis, The Tony Randall Show, The Associates, Taxi, Dear John, Amen, Wings, Cheers and Frasier.

He was also the creator of Brothers, which ran for several seasons in the 1980s on the cable network Showtime after being rejected by broadcast networks because a main character was gay.

LEGENDARY EPISODE

His enduring reputation was made relatively early in his career, two years into his tenure at The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in 1975, when ``Chuckles Bites the Dust'' was broadcast. The series, which was set in a television newsroom in Minneapolis, starred Moore as Mary Richards, an earnest news producer; Edward Asner as her boss, Lou Grant; Ted Knight as the self-admiring nitwit of a news anchor, Ted Baxter; and Gavin MacLeod as the news writer, Murray Slaughter.

In the episode, Ted is invited to be the grand marshal of a circus parade, but Lou forbids it as undignified. Ted's replacement is Chuckles the Clown, the host of a children's show on the same television station. But on the day of the parade, Lou rushes into the newsroom, stunned, and explains that Chuckles, who attended the parade dressed as one of his characters, Peter Peanut, had been crushed to death. As Lou explains it, ``a rogue elephant tried to shell him.''

For the remainder of the episode, the newsroom deals with the shock of the death by joking about it. Mary finds this distasteful, but at the funeral, when the priest leading the service lists Chuckles' silly-sounding characters and recites his catchphrase, ``A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants,'' Mary can't keep herself from guffawing.

The priest tells her to let it all out, that Chuckles would have approved of her laughter. At that point Mary bursts into tears.

WRITER'S POWER

The power of the episode was Lloyd's exploration of how people deal with shock over a death, by deflecting it with humor or stifling it with somberness.

The episode won Lloyd an Emmy Award, became legendary among Hollywood script writers and was named by TV Guide this year as the third-best episode of any show in television history.

Lloyd is survived by his wife, Arline; a sister, Sally; two daughters, Julie and Amy; three sons, Douglas, Christopher and Stephen, the last two of whom are television writers.