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Unlike his ''Leave It to Beaver'' character, Ken Osmond was actually a nerd
"If someone had taken dork lessons and graduated at the head of the class, Kenny was it."
Crafty, mischievous, and sly, there was no better antagonist than Leave It to Beaver's Eddie Haskell. Eddie served as the devil on Wally's, and sometimes the Beaver's, shoulders, offering the Cleaver boys a less than-advisable route out of a situation. Even still, he was able to mimic the picture of innocence in front of adults like Mrs. Cleaver, and while we're sure June didn't buy the act for a second, it didn't paint a very good picture of Mr. Haskell.
However, Eddie Haskell was simply a facade put on by Ken Osmond. While Osmond played the role of a bully so effortlessly that it seemed it almost came naturally to him, the real personality of Ken Osmond couldn't have been further from that of Eddie Haskell.
According to Frank Bank's book, Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It To Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life, Eddie wasn't a bad guy; quite the opposite. Bank, best known for playing Lumpy Rutherford, a fellow bully, wrote, "Now if you ever in life could have known a more consummate nerd, it was Kenny."
Don't be confused. This doesn't mean that there was any bad blood between the castmates. Rather, the entire cast of Leave It to Beaver seemed to be very close. Bank acknowledged, "We loved him. We used to tease him to no end...But we all loved him."
He explained, "Kenny was a good guy. But Kenny could not figure out 'cool.' Kenny was great because when Kenny did it, you didn't want to do it. If someone had taken dork lessons and graduated at the head of the class, Kenny was it."
Nerdiness aside, Jerry Mathers, also known as the Beaver, once said that actors like Bank and Osmond had the more difficult roles to play in the series. Osmond responded, "It's very flattering to hear Jerry say that. I thank him for it. It's more the type of characters Jerry and Tony had. The characters of Wally and the Beaver don't lend themselves to raw energy and playing with the characters."
He also said, "I'd been to every acting class available before Beaver came along. So I had a lot of professional training prior to that. Before they turned the cameras on, I'd really try and be Eddie."
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6 Comments
Such a great show!
The Eddie Haskell character is not what I’d consider a bully.
