Mr. C, Actor Tom Bosley Passes At 83

Tom Bosley, the rubber-faced TV veteran who made character acting an art form and was best known as Richie Cunningham's dad on "Happy Days," died Tuesday in Palm Springs, Calif.

He was 83 and had been battling lung cancer and a staph infection.

According to David Hinckley at nydailynews.com, While Bosley began as a theater performer and won a Tony in 1959 for his portrait of Fiorello LaGuardia in "Fiorello!" on Broadway, he carved his television career out of supporting roles.

Over six decades, his easy-going, down-home style made him one of TV's most familiar and reassuring personalities.

On "Happy Days" he played a hardware store owner Howard Cunningham who came home every night to sit in his easy chair and be the kind of calm and fair-minded Middle American Dad that every kid wanted.



After "Happy Days" he had another long run as Sheriff Amos Tupper in Angela Lansbury's "Murder She Wrote." He also played the title role in the popular "Father Dowling Mysteries."

Because of his warm, ingratiating manner, he played a number of priests - even though, he noted with amusement, he was Jewish.

He was also a natural as a pitchman, and later generations of TV viewers knew him from his ads for Glad trash bags.

His "Happy Days" castmate Henry Winkler said yesterday that Bosley was an underrated actor.
"I saw him before I ever got to Hollywood on Broadway, and he was great," Winkler told TMZ. "And then I got to act with him for 10 years and he was great. Tom Bosley was our mentor."

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