Cliff Osmond

Cliff Osmond
Osmond in The Fortune Cookie in 1966
Born	February 26, 1937 Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	December 22, 2012(2012-12-22) (aged 75) Pacific Palisades, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Pancreatic cancer
Alma mater	Dartmouth College University of California, Los Angeles
Years active	1962–1996
Spouse(s)	Gretchen Ebrahim (1962-2012) (his death) (2 children)
Children	Margaret Ebrahim Eric Ebrahim

Cliff Osmond (born Clifford Osman Ebrahim; February 26, 1937 – December 22, 2012) was an American character actor and television screenwriter best known for appearing in films directed by Billy Wilder. A parallel career as an acting teacher coincided with his other activities.

Osmond was born in the Margaret Hague Medical Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, and reared in Union City, New Jersey. He was a graduate of Thomas A. Edison grammar school, Emerson High School, and Dartmouth College (Bachelor of Arts in English). He received his master's degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles and advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in the field of Theater History at UCLA.

He appeared in four of Billy Wilder's comedies, beginning with Irma la Douce (1963) as the police sergeant. He played the songwriter Barney Millsap in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), which used new comedic song lyrics by Ira Gershwin set to unused tunes composed by his brother George. Osmond also appeared in two later Wilder films a co-starring role as Purkey opposite Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie (1966), and The Front Page (1974). Osmond was also seen in menacing roles as Pap in the 1981 TV adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Osmond made more than 100 appearances in TV shows or movies between 1962 and 1996. During that period he guest-starred at least half a dozen times on Gunsmoke and in the 1965 episode "Yahoo" of NBC's Laredo. He was cast in "The Gift", (1962) of the original The Twilight Zone. He played a hippie in Ironside (1968) and appeared as well on Here's Lucy (1974), The New Land (1974), as a plumber's apprentice on work release from prison in All in the Family (1975), The Bob Newhart Show (1975), and Kojak (1976).