Actor Ed Williams (Police Squad!), 98, died on Oct. 2. For most of his professional life, Williams taught broadcasting and speech at Los Angeles City College and at the The Don Martin School of Radio and Television Arts and Sciences (where I guess he taught students how to go “Shtoink!” when they walked). He also acted in L.A. stage productions, and in the 1980s abandoned “teaching” for “doing.” His first role was his best: as kindly but kinky and sadistic Dr. Ted Olsen on Police Squad! (he later reprised that role in the Naked Gun movies). Williams was also seen in MacGyver, Infidelity, Matlock, L.A. Law, Father of the Bride, Sisters, and House, among others. Of sequeing from teaching to acting, he said, “I felt like the guy who’s been trained to be a surgeon, but he didn’t quite get in the operating room. I wanted to get in the operating room.”
