Rant #2,413: Goodbye

With all of this coronavirus mess that we are in, I would be remiss in my duties if I did not at least mention the deaths of two fairly famous people during the past few days.

And yes, both of these performers were linked by being typecast during their careers. One fought against the typecast, and when the pushback was too strong, went into another field, where his bravery came to the fore.

The other kind of relished that typecasting, and made a long career out of it.

The first celebrity I referred to is Ken Osmond, who will indelibly be marked on our consciousnesses as the character of Eddie Haskell, the smarmy kid friend of Wally Cleaver on TV
s "Leave It To Beaver" sitcom.

Osmond, a kid actor who had had only bit parts in movies and commercials before being cast as Eddie, was supposed to be only a one-shot on the show, as Wally's pal and Beaver's nemesis. But he made such an impression on Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, the creators of the show, that he was integrated into the regular cast.

Eddie was one of the great TV creations, a two-faced kid who was friends with the All-American Wally but really couldn't ever live up to his friend's accomplishments. So he covered it all up by being edgy, nasty, and a double-talker to parents, a kid to be pitied rather than applauded.

Viewers loved to hate Eddie, and we all knew an "Eddie Haskell" when we grew up, or maybe we were "Eddie Haskell" to others.

When the show went off the air in 1963, the entire cast was typecast, and Osmond did find a few roles on other shows, including "Petticoat Junction" and most memorably on "The Munsters," Connelly and Mosher's goof on their earlier hit "Leave It To Beaver."

But soon, the roles dried up. Both Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow--who remained good friends with Osmond to his dying day--both said that Osmond was the best actor on their show, because he was the one actor who had to play against type. In real life, he was kind and sincere, just the opposite of the smarmy Eddie. But casting directors only saw Osmond as Eddie, and at age 21 or so, at the crossroads of his life, Osmond made a monumental decision, one that would reverberate and shape the rest of his life.

He went to the police academy in Los Angeles, and soon became a Los Angeles police officer. During his years on the force, he was shot at several times, and actually took a couple of bullets.

So Eddie Haskell, the scourge of Mayfield--the fictional setting for "Leave It To Beaver"--became a law-abiding police officer in Los Angeles.

You can't make this stuff up, you really can't.

Beyond that, Osmond was extremely proud of his character, and he protected it to his last breath, When both singer Alice Cooper and porn star John Holmes proclaimed that they were Eddie Haskell, Osmond sued both of them to protect the dignity of his role.

Mathers, Dow, Osmond and Frank Bank--who played the clueless Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford and later, when his roles dried up, became a business advisor, most notably handing Mathers' affairs--kept up their friendship over the years, with Bank leaving us several years ago.

All of them appeared on the successful "Beaver" reunion movies, and "Still the Beaver" TV show along with Barbara Billingsley, who played Wally and the Beav's mom, June Cleaver. Hugh Beaumont, who played dad Ward Cleaver, died in the 1980s.

"Eddie Haskell" went down for the count the other day, but Osmond's role is one of the greatest ever created for a TV show, and he will not soon be forgotten.

Fred Willard's career actually began in the mid-1960s. He was a character actor whose first screen role was in one of the great exploitation films of the era, called "Teenage Mother," which actually featured footage of a woman giving birth to a child. This film was banned in many areas, and to this day stands as a relic of its time.

his actual career trajectory was cemented in the 1970s, when he appeared on numerous TV shows, most notably "Fernwood Tonight," as the often clueless sidekick of Martin Mull on a fictional TV talk show. To be polite, both characters didn't realize the gravity of what they were saying or doing on the show ... it was way over each characters' head, but it was so funny.

He and Mull actually took a back seat to the major discovery on the show--young Gary Coleman, who would go onto his own pecadillos-filled life and career.

Willard's characters were hilariously inept, but in the characters' eyes, his actions were perfect and right.

Willard appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, including the film "Best In Show," where he played a hilariously inept broadcaster of a dog show, who had no idea what he was covering, and he was a semi-regular on "Everyone Loves Raymond," where he played the father of Raymond's brother Robert's fiancee and later wife.

In that role, he played a religious man who looked down on the Barones, supposedly guided by God but, in fact, guided by his own bloated ego.

Once again, Willard made "cluelessness" into an art form, and he was perfectly cast in that role.

You just knew that when you saw him on the TV or movie screen, you were going to laugh, and laugh some more. He was that funny.

Both Osmond and Willard were never huge stars, but they both created characters that we will never forget.

R.I.P.