Mathers came to the role with more experience than most people realize. Born in Sioux City, Iowa in 1948, he had been working as a model since age two, picked up at a department store in Los Angeles by a PR director who needed a replacement catalog kid. By the time Leave It to Beaver premiered on CBS, Mathers had already learned the basics of rejection and early-morning call times.
Dow’s path was different. Born in Hollywood in 1945 to a stuntwoman mother and a contractor father, he had almost no acting background when he walked into an open casting call and landed the role of Wally at 12. The show ran for 234 episodes over six seasons before wrapping in 1963.
After the series ended, the two actors handled the transition to civilian life in notably different ways. Mathers, by his own account, was ready to move on. He attended a regular high school, played sports, served in the California Air National Guard, and eventually earned a philosophy degree from UC Berkeley. (A false rumor spread during that period that he had been killed in Vietnam — his family received condolence letters and flowers.) He worked in banking and real estate through the 1970s.
- Humek, Brian (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 490 Pages - 12/06/2022 (Publication Date) - Independently published (Publisher)
Dow, meanwhile, struggled to shake what he later described as the bubble of a child star’s world, one where everyone bent over backward to help and nothing prepared you for ordinary adult hustle. He took guest roles on shows like The Mod Squad and Adam-12, studied journalism and film at UCLA without finishing, and worked in construction on the side.
By the late 1970s, both men had circled back to performing together. They appeared in the stage comedy Boeing, Boeing and then toured the dinner theater circuit in So Long, Stanley, a production written specifically for the two of them. The reunion onstage helped pave the way for a bigger one. In 1983, a CBS TV movie called Still the Beaver reunited most of the original cast (Hugh Beaumont, who had retired from acting after a stroke and later died in 1982, was the notable exception). The response was strong enough to launch a full revival.
VIDEO | Still the Beaver reunion movie (1983)
The New Leave It to Beaver ran from 1983 to 1989, first on the Disney Channel and later on TBS, with 101 episodes — this time with Beaver as a divorced dad and Wally as a married adult. Dow directed five episodes of the revival, which launched a second career behind the camera. He went on to direct episodes of Coach, Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
VIDEO | The New Leave It to Beaver, episode 1 (1984)
In later years, the two men’s lives took quite different turns. Dow stepped away from acting in the late 1990s and devoted himself to sculpting, working in bronze and burl wood. In 2008, he was one of three American sculptors selected for the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts exhibition at the Louvre. He also spoke publicly about his long struggle with clinical depression, producing self-help videos on the subject.
Mathers made his Broadway debut in Hairspray in 2007, became a public advocate for healthy living after a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis in the late 1990s, and continued making convention appearances for devoted fans of the show. The two remained close until Dow’s death from liver cancer on July 27, 2022, at age 77.
Grown-up Jerry & Tony / Beaver & Wally in 2015
The photos and articles collected here offer a look at Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow across the decades — as the fresh-faced kids on the Leave It to Beaver set, and as the grown men they became long after Mayfield was behind them.
Life after “Leave It To Beaver”
Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow grew up in somewhat of a fairytale world — as make-believe brothers in the make-believe town of Mayfield on television’s “Leave It to Beaver.” Now, 20 years later, they talk of what it’s like to be childhood stars who had to cope with the adult world.
Mathers, a 29-year-old real estate salesman, says playing Beaver helped him make the transition from boy to man. But Dow, now 32, thinks maybe his six years as Beaver’s older brother Wally created a gap in growing up because he never had to learn to hustle.
Mathers and Dow were part of a cast of five in the family comedy “Leave It To Beaver,” which ran from 1957 to 1963. Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont played the parents, June and Ward Cleaver, and Ken Osmond played Wally’s best friend, Eddie Haskell.
Living in the real world
“My problems tend to relate to the way I was brought up, because I tended to be brought up in a very idealistic world,” says Tony Dow, who owns a contracting and remodeling firm, and who now takes an occasional part in movies, television commercials and soap operas. “My early development was influenced by non-realistic relationships with peopIe.
“For instance, I never had any trouble getting service in a restaurant, a room in a hotel. I never had any trouble getting anything, because everybody was perfectly interested in bending over backward. Everybody was always saying that I had a great future, and there were no problems in life.
“Consequently, I don’t have a lot of drive, and I don’t have a lot of the pushy attitude, and I don’t tend to understand manipulations as well as people do who seem to be more successful in the business world.”
In contrast, Mathers, who several months ago left his job as a bank operations officer to go into real estate, is satisfied with the direction he is going.
“When you’re a star, you’re kind of cloistered,” he says. “I’m a very sociable person, and selling real estate, you get to meet a lot of people.”
The childhood adulation, he says, “was nice. That you can’t deny. But it was nothing that l became so accustomed to that I felt I had to have it.”
Mathers says his careers in banking and real estate have given him an inside look at how to invest the money he made in television.
Dow says he made some bad investments, and a vacation house on Catalina Island is the last remnant of the money from the Wally role on “Leave It To Beaver.” Still, his current activities finance comfortable living in a home sequestered behind a fence on an acre of land in Van Nuys.
“Leave It To Beaver” boys became family men
Ward Cleaver, the stern, kind, wise and always fair-handed father on the show would have been proud of how the boys turned out to be good, stable family men.
Dow and his wife, Carol, a travel agent, have been married eight years and have one son, Christopher, 4.
Mathers has been married three years, and lives in Woodland Hills. His wife Diana teaches high school Latin.
Mathers thinks he may see things a bit differently than Dow, because he started working when he was two years old as a model for department store clothing advertisements. As a result, he says he began to understand early what it was like to be turned down for a job, and how it felt to get up at 6 am “to go to work” instead of school.
Tony Dow, as a teenager, wound up as Wally shortly after a YMCA lifeguard, a would-be actor, took him for a studio interview.
WATCH IT AGAIN! Stream episodes of “Leave it to Beaver” or buy it on DVD
After the series ended, Mathers quit acting, because he wanted to attend a regular high school and play sports.
Dow graduated from high school on the set, and went on to UCLA to study psychology and film, but quit before graduation to take acting jobs.
During his late teens and early 20s, Dow appeared in a few films and soap operas.
“I probably turned down 10 beach party movies because I didn’t think they were morally healthy. I didn’t feel they were particularly entertaining, which was dumb from a business standpoint.
“The job of an actor is to act, not to pass judgment on the piece he’s acting in.”
Wally and Beaver play a few college jobs, where personal appearances are combined with old clips from their show. Joining them is Osmond, who spends most his time as a Los Angeles motorcycle cop.
Barbara Billingsley is married to a Santa Monica physician, and spends much of her time traveling or working with charities.
Hugh Beaumont is recovering from a stroke, but directs an occasional TV show, and appears on occasion in little theater productions.
Young Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers on Leave it to Beaver
Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow of Leave it to Beaver as adults in 2008
Jerry Mathers with Johnny Galecki on the set of Big Bang Theory
2013, photo courtesy JerryMathers.com
JerryMathers.com website welcome video
Also, see Tony Dow’s memorial Facebook page here. 💔
One Response
I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. Loved Leave It To Beaver and other shows of that time; still do. Such nicer times over today. Thx for the view into that fun era.