Osmond also made a number of guest appearances on other TV shows such as The Munsters and Happy Days, but he was typecast. In 1983, Osmond returned to play an adult Eddie Haskell in an updated Leave It to Beaver. "I just don't trust a 13-year-old boy that's that polite," she told her husband, Ward (Hugh Beaumont). June Cleaver ( Barbara Billingsley) never really bought Eddie's act. In one episode, he taught Beaver unknowingly to say a phrase in Spanish: "Usted tiene una cara como un puerco." In English: "You have a face like a pig." Then he would go upstairs to Wally and Beaver's room and be mean. Cleaver, that's a very pretty dress!" he would say to June, the boy's mother. He was unfailingly polite to the adults: " Good morning, Mrs. Eddie visited the Cleavers' perfect upper-middle-class home in nearly half the series' 234 episodes. Eddie was a friend to Wally Cleaver (Tony Dow), the older brother of Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver (Jerry Mathers). Ken Osmond began playing Eddie Haskell as a 14-year-old in 1957. "He had his family gathered around him when he passed. "He was an incredibly kind and wonderful father," his son said in a statement Monday.
Osmond's son Eric told The Hollywood Reporter that his father died. He played Eddie Haskell on the 1950s and '60s TV sitcom Leave It to Beaver. In 2014 he co-authored the memoir “Eddie: The Life and Times of America’s Preeminent Bad Boy.”ĪP Writer John Rogers contributed to this story.Īctor Ken Osmond attends the 2013 Hollywood Christmas Parade benefiting the Toys For Tots Foundation in Hollywood, California.Ken Osmond was a character actor known, really, for one character. In the 80s he also appeared in “Happy Days,” the series set in the “Leave It to Beaver” era, and the TV movie “High School USA.” He would return to TV in 1983, when “Leave It to Beaver” reruns were having a heyday, appearing in the TV movie “Still the Beaver.”Ī revival series, “The New Leave It to Beaver,” came next, with Osmond reprising the role of Haskell alongside Dow and Mathers from 1983 to 1989. Osmond and wife Sandra Purdy had two sons, Eric and Christian. In 1968, I bought my first house, in ’69 I got married, and we were going to start a family and I needed a job, so I went out and signed up for the LAPD.”ĭow, who was a lifelong friend of Osmond’s said “His motorcycle cop stories are terrific.” It’s a death sentence,” Osmond told radio host Stu Stoshak in a 2008 interview on “Stu’s Show.” “I’m not complaining because Eddie’s been too good to me, but I found work hard to come by. He would give up acting and become a Los Angeles police officer. Osmond returned to making guest appearances on TV shows including “The Munsters” in the late 1960s, but found he was so identified with Eddie Haskell that it was hard to land roles. The role of Eddie in season one of “Leave It to Beaver” was also supposed to be a one-off guest appearance, but the show’s producers and its audience found him so memorable he became a regular, appearing in nearly 100 of the show’s 234 episodes. He got his first role at age 4, working in commercials and as a film extra, and got his first speaking role at 9, appearing mostly in small guest parts on TV series. Osmond was born in Glendale, California, to a carpenter father and a mother who wanted to get him into acting. “He was one of the few guys on the show who really played a character and created it,” Dow added, chuckling as he mimicked the evil laugh Osmond would unleash when his character was launching one nefarious scheme or another and trying to pull Wally and his younger brother Beaver into it. “He was a terrific guy, he was a terrific actor and his character is probably one that will last forever,” Dow told The Associated Press on Monday.
He constantly kissed up to adults and kicked down at his peers, usually in the same scene, and was the closest thing the wholesome show had to a villain. Ken Osmond’s Eddie Haskell stood out among many memorable characters on the classic family sitcom “Leave it to Beaver,” which ran from 1957 to 1963 on CBS and ABC, but had a decades-long life of reruns and revivals.Įddie was the best friend of Tony Dow’s Wally Cleaver, big brother to Jerry Mathers’ Beaver Cleaver. “He had his family gathered around him when he passed. “He was an incredibly kind and wonderful father,” son Eric Osmond said in a statement. LOS ANGELES (AP) - Ken Osmond, who played the two-faced teenage scoundrel Eddie Haskell on TV’s “Leave It to Beaver,” died Monday, his family said.
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