Ken Osmond, who died Monday at the age of 76, never escaped the indelible character of Eddie Haskell, the trouble-making, smooth-talking teenager he played on the 1950s and ‘60s hit television sitcom “Leave it to Beaver.”
In fact, Osmond was so synonymously linked to the portrayal of the schmoozer suck-up that he decided to leave television and forge a new identity, signing on with the Los Angeles Police Department in 1970.
“I’m not complaining, because Eddie’s been too good to me, but I found work hard to come by,” he once told an interviewer.
“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 L.A.P.D.”
UNITED STATES - AUGUST 19: LEAVE IT TO BEAVER - "Misc." 1957-1963 Jerry Mathers, Ken Osmond (Photo by Walt Disney Television via Getty Images Photo Archives/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images)
As a motorcycle officer, Osmond grew a mustache to become less identifiable and survived a shooting in a dramatic 1980 car chase. Fired on three times, one of the bullets deflected off his belt buckle and another off his protective vest.
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Jerry Mathers, who played the Beaver alongside Osmond’s two-faced teenage character on television, paid tribute to his longtime friend in a Tweet.
“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 wrote.
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As a fan of “Leave it to Beaver,” Osmond’s Eddie Haskell was the character I loved to hate.
Well-mannered to the extreme in front of adults (“My, that’s a lovely dress you’re wearing Mrs. Cleaver. By chance is Wallace available?”) and insulting to every one his own age or younger (“Hey, Duncan Hines, get your little grubby paws off the food!”), the Haskell persona was predictably disingenuous and self-centered.
There was only one Eddie Haskell on television, but there are a lot of Eddie Haskells everywhere else.
If I’m honest, there’s probably a little Eddie in me, too, those painful and regrettable times when I’ve said one thing and thought or done the other.
FILE - This Dec. 10, 1982 file photo shows members of the original cast of the "Leave It To Beaver," from left, Ken Osmond, Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley and Jerry Mathers during the filming of their TV special, "Still The Beaver," in Los Angeles. Osmond, who played the two-faced teenage scoundrel Eddie Haskell on TV’s “Leave it to Beaver,” has died. Osmond's family says he died Monday, May 18, 2020, in Los Angeles. He was 76. (AP Photo/Wally Fong, File) (Wally Fong/AP)
Like Eddie, too many folks love to tell you what they think you want to hear – serving up heaps of patronizing praise and flattering compliments – all while running a scam behind your back.
It’s always a little silly to psychoanalyze a fictional sitcom character, but one gets the impression that Eddie Haskell was, not unlike many of us in real life, somehow wounded early in childhood.
In the fourth season, in a rare moment of self-introspection, we learn that Eddie was embarrassed in kindergarten when he was sent to school with a horrifically bad home permanent hair style. Rather than empathizing with him, his father joined in the mockery. Eddie said that was the last time he ever confided anything to his dad.
I think it’s safe to say that many of the people who lash out in our society were once lashed at – wounded in some form or fashion. Often, they’re longing to be loved, heard or simply understood.
"If you can make the other guy feel like a goon first, then you don't feel so much like a goon," he explained to Wally.
I remember my mom telling me very much the same thing, explaining that too many people try to make themselves tall by cutting down the metaphorical legs of others.
“The best way to get even with people like that is to ignore them,” she would say.
I’m no psychologist and I don’t pretend to play one, but I think it’s safe to say that many of the people who lash out in our society were once lashed at – wounded in some form or fashion. Often, they’re longing to be loved, heard or simply understood.
We’re all the product of the influences of other people – good and bad.
Actor Ken Osmond arrives at the Paley Center for Media's PaleyFest: Rewind - "Leave It To Beaver" at The Paley Center for Media on June 21, 2010 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic)
The “Eddies” of the world are always been with us. From dictators to pompous blowhards of all kinds, hypocrites and narcissists are a timeless slice of humanity. How we navigate them often spells the difference between a happy life or one marked by chronic misery.
Which is why it’s so refreshing when we come across sincere straight-talkers of genuine good character – people who are the same in person as they are in private – what you see is what you get.
When you find a friend of such standing, never let him or her go.
Psychologists have coined a phrase in a nod to the Eddies among us – the “Eddie Haskell Effect” – to explains why the wrong people often get promoted. They are the employees who talk down to those below and kiss up to those above, thereby enraging subordinates but somehow endearing themselves to the decision-makers.
But that’s no way to live and no way to win. In the end, Eddie’s insecurity ultimately seeped through. Despite all his bluster, it was Haskell the bully who admired Wally – the good guy friend played by Tony Dow who did things the right way and put up each week with his conniving buddy.
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The Eddie Haskell character will live on in rerun infamy – and so will the type, probably for as long as men and women walk the earth.
Rest in peace, Ken Osmond.