LOS ANGELES — Tom Bosley, a Tony Award-winning actor best known for playing Howard Cunningham, the amiable father on the hit TV series “Happy Days,” died Tuesday of lung cancer. He was 83.
In an acting career that began on stage in Chicago in the late 1940s, Bosley won a Tony Award for best featured actor in 1960 for his breakthrough role as New York City’s legendary Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the long-running Broadway musical “Fiorello!”
He made his movie debut as Natalie Wood’s chubby potential suitor in the 1963 movie “Love With the Proper Stranger” and appeared in 1960s films such as “The World of Henry Orient,” “Divorce American Style,” “The Secret War of Harry Frigg” and “Yours, Mine and Ours.”
But it was television that gave him his greatest fame. His role as the dad to Ron Howard’s Richie and Erin Moran’s Joanie on “Happy Days,” the 1950s-set ABC series that debuted in 1974, earned him an Emmy nomination and the No. 9 spot in TV Guide’s list of the “50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time.”
“He was my (TV) husband for 11 years,” actress Marion Ross, who played Marion Cunningham, said in a statement. “We made a perfect couple, and he was the father of the company in many ways. He was so smart, he could make up or fix a joke for a better end scene at the drop of a hat.”
Of his role as “Mr. C,” Bosley told The Orange County Register in 1989 that he knew he’d “always be Howard Cunningham to most people, but I’m proud of that character and don’t mind being identified with it.”
After “Happy Days” ended, Bosley played Cabot Cove Sheriff Amos Tupper on “Murder, She Wrote” for four years.
He then starred as a crime-solving priest on “Father Dowling Mysteries,” the 1989-91 TV series.
Although the show was set in Chicago, it was filmed in Denver the first season. Church of the Annunciation at 3621 Humboldt St. was among the filming locations.
Born in Chicago on Oct. 1, 1927, Bosley served in the Navy during World War II. After the war, he attended DePaul University in Chicago and the Radio Institute of Chicago before moving to New York City, where he studied with Lee Strasberg.
He continued to work on stage over the years, including a return to Broadway in 1994, starring as Belle’s father in “Beauty and the Beast.”
He is survived by his wife, Patricia; a daughter; two stepdaughters; his brother; and seven grandchildren.
