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. “I have always said that he was the best actor on our show because in real life his personality was so opposite of the character that he so brilliantly portrayed,” Mathers said on Twitter. Mathers said he will greatly miss his friend of 63 years. “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 was the closest thing the wholesome show had to a villain, and viewers of all ages loved to hate him. He constantly kissed up to adults, flattering and flirting with Wally and Beaver’s mother, and kicked down at his peers, usually in the same scene. 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. Osmond died in Los Angeles at age 76, his family said. LOS ANGELES (AP) - Ken Osmond, who on TV’s “Leave It to Beaver,” played two-faced teenage scoundrel Eddie Haskell, a role so memorable it left him typecast and led to a second career as a police officer, died Monday. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
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