His mother was a Puerto Rican Catholic and his father was a German[3] Lutheran immigrant who had arrived in the U.S. as a youth in 1934.

[5] When Prinze was a small child, his mother enrolled him in ballet classes to deal with a weight problem.

Without telling his parents, Prinze successfully auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts, where he was introduced to drama and continued ballet—and where he discovered his gift for comedy while entertaining crowds in the boys' restroom.

Although his mother was in fact Puerto Rican, his father was a German immigrant with Hungarian ancestry.

In 1975, he released a comedy album that was taped live at Mister Kelly's in Chicago entitled Looking Good—his catch phrase from Chico and the Man.

Prinze had a little-known talent for singing, examples of which could be heard in the background of the title song of the Tony Orlando and Dawn album To Be With You, in his appearances on their variety show, and on rare occasions on his own sitcom.

On the night of January 28, 1977, after talking on the telephone with his estranged wife, Prinze received a visit from his business manager, Marvin "Dusty" Snyder.

[17] Prinze made farewell phone calls to numerous family members and friends prior to shooting himself and left a note stating that he had decided to kill himself.

This followed a $1 million out-of-court settlement with his psychiatrist and doctor to end a malpractice suit for allowing him access to a gun and overprescribing him Quaalude (as a tranquilizer).

Prinze is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, near his father, Edward Karl Pruetzel.