Golly Wally! Eddie's Dead!

RIP Eddie Haskell, the Unctuous, Obnoxious Teenager on "Leave It to Beaver."

Child Actor Ken Osmond Dies at Age 76

I interviewed actor Ken Osmond back in 1983 for a book I was writing about the show "Leave It to Beaver." The book was titled Golly Wally!

Years later I would share a table with him at the Jack Daniel's World Series of Barbecue Championship.  That's the picture below. And true to his Eddie Haskell character, Osmond was trying to sneak his cigarette out of the photo. 

Here is a story I wrote about Ken Osmond way back in 1983. 

Eddie Haskell turns 40 in 1984, hard as it is to believe. The “loud brash wise guy” as Ward Cleaver once described him, was the boy you didn't want next door.

Writer Dick Conway says Eddie was harmless, just a teenager in search of himself. In that respect he was television's answer to Holden Caulfield. Eddie meant well even if he lacked the social awareness to carry through on his plans.

When Eddie first showed up on the show, seven episodes into the first season, he seemed to be a normal 13 year old boy. In his first scene he called Beaver a shrimp, warned both boys about their new neighbors and suggested he and Wally skip out the back way instead of answering June’s call.

Just your normal obnoxious 13 year old. The hint of what he really was came a few seconds later. He bounded down the Cleaver stairs, pulled up short and turned toward June Cleaver. “Good morning, Mrs. Cleaver. That's a very pretty dress.” And then he smiled that Cheshire cat grin, a smile that may someday be known as the Eddie Haskell grin. Six years and 200 or so episodes later Eddie was part of Americana, an anti-hero for a rock and roll generation which thrived on anti-heroes. An issue of Mad magazine had a character wearing an Eddie Haskell Fan Club sweatshirt. And today, 20 years after the cancelation of the show. Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie, is still getting letters from college kids who belong to an Eddie Haskell Fan Club.

“Still the Beaver,” the TV movie reunion of the Leave It to Beaver cast, put the 40-year-old Eddie Haskell, still in Mayfield, still making wisecracks and working as a contractor. Osmond said he was surprised when he got the script for the movie and found he was a contractor. “I always thought Eddie would end up a used car salesman or a politician.”

“Leave It to Beaver” was not Ken Osmond’s first acting job nor was it his last. But it is the one he will always be remembered for. In his teenage years he did what so many actors struggle years to do: create a unique enduring, endearing character. Osmond so carefully etched his character that in later seasons Eddie Haskell could be part of the story without Ken Osmond ever setting foot on the soundstage. Wally could say, “You know what that Eddie Haskell says….” And he wouldn't even have to finish his sentence; we knew what that Eddie Haskell would say.

Ken Osmond was a 13-year-old acting veteran when he auditioned for the part. His mother had sent him out on his 1st audition at age four. “I had done a little bit of everything. ‘My Friend Irma,’ ‘Wagon Train,’ even ‘Father Knows Best.’ All bit parts. Between my brother and me we probably worked on every show you could name.

Osmond had no idea what the character Eddie Haskell was supposed to be until he got to the audition. “It was what is known as a cattle call. Every agent in town sends 27 kids over to audition.” Osmond says he won through a process of elimination. But anyone who's seen that first episode knows he won it through talent. Unlike a Lumpy Rutherford, who began as a bully and later became a marshmallow, Ken Osmond’s role was a well-defined character from the moment he first appeared. Osmond says Eddie Haskell was based on a navy buddy of show creator Joe Connelly. “This guy apparently had an attitude.:

Connelly created the basic character but Osmond credits director Norman Tokar with helping him give Eddie Haskell the proper shadings. Tokar knew troublemaking teenagers. He had played Henry Aldrich in the long running radio series “The Aldridge Family.”

Despite national celebrity Osmond says he never had any difficulty at the public school he attended when he wasn't working on Beaver. He was in only one-third of the episodes. It only seemed like more. The kids treated him just like any other guy.

After Beaver ended, Osmond continued acting for a while. “I did a few bits and pieces and shows, a couple years worth.”

His bits and pieces included an episode of the Munsters and a couple of feature films including the forgotten “Come On, Let's Live A Little.” “It was the second feature at the drive-in 32 miles out of town,”  he says, But the roles being offered to him dwindled to the point where acting was not a career.

So Ken Osmond drifted through a series of jobs: construction work, operating a helicopter service. Then in 1969 with the pressures of a family to support he joined the Los Angeles Police Department and Ken Osmond found his niche. He became a training officer like Reed and Malloy on “Adam 12.”  Eight years later he was promoted to motor officer, riding the freeways in much the same way that Ponch and John did on CHIPS. Osmond works the afternoon-evening shift, a schedule that conflicts with his family life. “I have two boys, 8 and 11, but my hours are so messed up I don't get to see them as much as I would like.”

Jerry Mathers, who played Beaver, has three children, a stepdaughter, a stepson and a baby girl. Tony Dow, who played Wally, has one son. But it’s Ken Osmond who's the one with the two boys.

But Eddie Haskell didn't grow up to be Ward Cleaver who had the two sons on the show and neither did Ken Osmond. Osmond grew up to be Ken Osmond. "I don't think I am any different from the typical father. I try to be a good father. My boys are typical boys."

As Eddie Haskell approaches 40 so too does Ken Osmond. But Osmond won't be a 40-year-old Eddie Haskell because he was never Eddie Haskell in the first place. He was an actor playing Eddie Haskell.

Jerry Mathers told me Osmond was the best actor in the show because off-camera he was so much different from the part he played. Osmond says his on-camera persona Eddie Haskell was the easiest role he ever played. “I could just slip in to Eddie. I can just turn him on. Everyone knows an Eddie. He’s a guy who never grew up, he just got bigger.”

Ken Osmond did grow up. And became a policeman.

The book Golly Wally had a short section of Eddie Haskell Insults:

Eddie Haskell's Favorite Insults

Eddie was the master of the smart comeback but he preferred to get in the first punch. Here are eight of his favorites, a few of which he loaned to Beaver.

“I've seen better faces on iodine bottles.”

“Hey, I remember you. You're the cover girl from Mad magazine.”

“She started to have her face lifted but once they saw what was underneath, they put it back down.”

“Hi, ugly. Is that your face or are you breaking it in for a monkey?”

“Is that your nose or are you eating a banana?”

“Halloween's over. Why don't you take off your mask?”

“Hey, ugly. The last time I saw a face like that it was on a clock and a cuckoo came out ...”

“Why don't you do your family a favor and get lost?”