Potsie would like you to know that he's available for any acting job, anywhere, anytime.
Posted on 10/19/2010 11:09:10 AM PDT by Justaham
Tom Bosley the folksy father of Richie Cunningham on the '70s sitcom about the '50s, ABC's Happy Days, died Tuesday in his Palm Springs, Calif., home. On Oct. 1 he had turned 83.
The actor died of a staph infection, according to TMZ, which first reported his death.
Before finding fame on the small screene, Bosley won a Tony for starring as the beloved New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the Puliter-Prize-winning 1959 musical Fiorello!. He also made a memorable mark in the 1964 Peter Sellers cult comedy The World of Henry Orient, as the too-understanding husband of Angela Lansbury's character.
After Happy Days, he would frequently costar with Lansbury on her CBS series, Murder She Wrote.
Reacting to Bosley's death, his Happy Days costar Henry Winkler expressed his sadness, telling Los Angeles's KNX-1070 News Radio, "I'm in shock, I really am. I spoke to him just a few weeks ago and he seemed to be getting his strength back."
Born in Chicago, Bosley was the younger son of a real estate broker father and a former concert pianist mother. "We were fairly wealthy until the stock market crashed," he told PEOPLE in 1979, during the Happy Days craze. "When I was 2, my father lost all his money." His parents divorced nine years later.
Bosley joined the Navy in 1945 at 17 ("I'm the only guy I know who went in as a seaman and came out a seaman"), then enrolled in pre-law at DePaul University. In his first year, he switched to acting.
(Excerpt) Read more at people.com ...
Wow ... first Mrs. Cleaver and now Mr. C! Dang.
RIP
And earlier this year, Dean Wormer. The icons of the past are leaving.
Potsie would like you to know that he's available for any acting job, anywhere, anytime.
I only know him from his role as Richie’s dad, but he seemed like a nice guy.
RIP “Seaman” Bosley.
I hadn't heard about this, so I checked it out. If you're talking about Dean Vernon Wormer (from Animal House), he died in 2005.
IMDB also lists an actual "Dean Wormer", but he also died in 2005.
RIP Mr C thanks for the great TV viewing before you let the Fonz jump the shark
I remember watching Happy Days when I was a kid back in the 1970s. Even then, he (Tom Bosely) seemed like a really old man. Well at least he played an old man on TV. On the other hand, 30-something Henry Winkler looked positively ridiculous trying to pass himself off as a 19-year-old "Fonzie."
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