Ed Williams, Naked Gun and Father of the Bride actor, dies aged 98

Ed Williams, the actor who played lab technician Ted Olson in the Naked Gun films and the Reverend in Father of the Bride, has died. He was 98.

Williams, a former broadcasting and speech teacher who enjoyed a second career in film and television, died October 2 in Los Angeles, his granddaughter Stephanie Williams announced to The Hollywood Reporter.

Williams was born in San Jose, California, on November 26, 1926. As a young man he appeared in plays at San Jose State and Stanford and in a number of radio productions.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1955, where he found work at The Don Martin School of Radio and Television Arts and Sciences, He later taught speech at L.A. City College.

He returned to acting towards the end of his teaching career, and in 1982 landed the memorable role of Olson in the police procedural spoof Police Squad!.

The role of Olson utilized Williams’s professorial air to comic effect. The character was often introduced explaining some scientific concept to a child before sometimes drifting into a sexual reverie.

In one early episode, he holds a pitcher containing ice and water in front of a small boy and says: “So Billy, when moisture in the air comes in contact with the cold pitcher, it forms water droplets, what we call ‘condensation’... Just like on your mother when she gets out of the shower, glistening with tiny little beads of...”

After being interrupted by Leslie Nielsen’s detective Frank Drebin, Olsen sends Billy away with the line: “Next week, we’ll look into some interesting experiments we can do with discarded swimwear.”

Police Squad! ran for just six episodes, but Williams returned in the role of Olson when the show was adapted into the successful Naked Gun film trilogy: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994). He and Nielsen were the only actors to reprise their roles for the film series.

Williams also played priests and ministers on screen several times. He can be heard in voiceover officiating at Carla’s wedding in Cheers, and most famously married Annie Banks (Kimberly Williams) and Bryan MacKenzie (George Newbern) in 1991’s Father of the Bride.

Williams is survived by Nancy, his wife since 1954, his sons Fred and Ian and his grandchildren Stephanie and Maureen.