Ed Williams has handed away. Though Williams didn’t seem within the 2025 reboot of The Bare Gun, he performed lab employee Ted Olson in each earlier installment of the comedy franchise. This contains all three entries within the film trilogy that ran from 1988 via 1994 and the unique 1982 parody collection Police Squad!.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Ed Williams’ granddaughter Stephanie Williams has confirmed that the star died at age 98. He’s predeceased by a lot of his former Bare Gun co-stars, together with Leslie Nielsen (who died of pneumonia in 2010), O.J. Simpson (who died of prostate most cancers in 2024), and George Kennedy (who died of outdated age in 2016).
Williams lived many lives earlier than debuting on tv in Police Squad!. The actor, who was born in San Jose in 1926, spent years as a naval man, a KSJO Radio salesman, a KCET Tv sales space announcer, and a broadcasting professor at L.A. Metropolis Faculty earlier than he ever appeared onscreen, although he had already held many roles in stay theater productions.
Moreover, his onscreen profession prolonged far past the realm of the Leslie Nielsen films, although he successfully stop onscreen performing after showing in an episode of Home in 2010. His solely onscreen position after that efficiency was showing as numerous characters in 5 episodes of the Zoom efficiency collection Hollywood Radio Gamers all through 2022 and 2023.
He took on a lot of non-Olson roles between 1982 and 2010. This contains all kinds of visitor appearances on a lot of well-known tv collection, equivalent to MacGyver, Matlock, L.A. Regulation, and The Daring and the Lovely.
On the large display, certainly one of his most notable roles was enjoying the Reverend within the Steve Martin film Father of the Bride. Ed Williams regularly performed reverends and clergymen in titles as broadly various because the biographical TV film I Wish to Dwell, the romantic drama Infidelity, and the Cloris Leachman comedy Going to the Chapel.
Moreover, he performed Dr. Sterling Raven within the 1993 dinosaur horror film Carnosaur, which turned a shock success in theaters because of its proximity to the discharge of Steven Spielberg’s mega-hit Jurassic Park.
Ed Williams is survived by his spouse, Nancy, his sons, Fred and Ian, and his grandchildren, Maureen and Stephanie. He’s additionally survived by his Bare Gun co-star Priscilla Presley, and will probably be remembered by his followers for his lasting contributions to the leisure business.