Wally Cleaver, the Good Son

 

Tony Dow 1945-2022*

In real life actor Ken Osmond was nothing like Eddie Haskell.

Jerry Mathers, who had been a professional actor since he could talk, treated Beaver as another role.

But Tony Dow was an awful lot like the good son Wally Cleaver that he played on “Leave It to Beaver.”

I found that out in January 1980 when I interviewed him before a dinner theater production in Louisville, Kentucky. He even used the same phrases that Wally would have used: he was “bugged” by his situation after getting out of the National Guard and he hated running a business with “employees and accounts and all that crap.”

Tony Dow died today at age 77.

Here’s the story I wrote about him after that interview. He was one of the nicest stars I ever interviewed.

Wally Cleaver was Tony Dow's first professional acting role. "I had done a pilot for Columbia called Johnny Wildlife, but it didn't sell. I was about to move to Hawaii. My folks had decided to go. But the agent I had picked up said, 'Let's go on three more interviews.' And ’Leave It to Beaver' happened to be one of them."

And the rest, as they say, is history. Or as Wally might say. it was neat.

Unlike Jerry Mathers, who was acting before he was old enough to understand, Tony Dow never intended to be an actor.

"It was kind of a flukey thing. 1 was a swimmer and diver and the guy who was the lifeguard at the club where I was working out was an actor. He was going on an audition (for Johnny Wildlife) and somebody there said to him, 'Why don't you take Tony Dow with you because you two kind of look alike?' So I put on a blue suit and went. I really didn't know what I was getting into. Anyway I ended up getting the part and he didn't. I didn't really have any aspirations in that direction, it just kind of occurred."

Dow was twelve when he was picked for the role of Wally Cleaver.

Another actor, Paul Sullivan, was selected originally and had filmed the pilot with Jerry Mathers. "The fellow who played Wally grew about sixteen inches in a six-month period so all of a sudden they were saying, 'We need someone who is sixteen inches shorter than that person.' I kind of wandered in and didn't have any polish or any of the pretentiousness of the 'child actor' and they said, 'Well, I guess he's the guy.' I was terribly untrained but they felt that was essential. And I think, in retrospect, that's one of the things that makes the show."

Dow graduated from Wally and high school the same year. "After the show ended, I went to UCLA. I started out studying psychology and then I transferred to film."

All the while he stayed busy acting. "1 did a number of shows in the two or three years following 'Beaver.' Then the army became a problem. At the time I was doing a television series called 'Never Too Young,’ which was a daytime series at ABC, I decided that the National Guard would be the place to go because I could continue working. So I joined the National Guard and spent six years in it."

They were not productive years professionally for Dow. He had an army haircut at a time when all producers wanted fashionably longish hair. And the guard kept his active-duty requirement hanging over his head, so it was impossible for him to commit for future assignments. "So I didn't work for two and a half years. When 1 finally got out of the National Guard, I was kind of bugged by the situation. So I bought a sailboat and lived on a sailboat for four and a half years. I acted and did a few things like that. "                                                                            .

Then came marriage. "I had to settle down and do something.”

For a time Dow was a sculptor. "I did a lot of copper, did some painting, had some shows, then 1 started doing a lot of commission work. That kind of evolved into a building company, doing storefronts that kind of stuff, and I got into construction. 1 got real busy with the construction company for about four years. It was to supplement acting, because as an actor you can work twenty days a year and rcally make a very good living but between those twenty days you’re always under the assumption that you will never work again the rest of your life. The construction company was terrific for a while, but got to be a real business, employees and accounts and all that crap, all these receivables and all that stuff. I'm not a businessman. So I woke up one morning and said, 'I don't want this anymore.' "

Dow's marriage was breaking up about the same time so he wanted to become more active in entertainment. That is when he and Jerry Mathers decided to put a dinner theater show together. They worked sixteen months with “So Long Stanley,” which had been written by Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf, two veterans of "All in the Family.”

Meanwhile in 1983 Dow and Mathers reprised their roles as Wally and Beaver in a CBS movie, "Still the Beaver."

After all these years. Tony Dow still couldn’t escape the role he created way back in the fifties, Wally Cleaver.

"There are positive aspects and there are negative aspects. The positive aspects are that, as an actor, you work years and years to establish yourself and get an identity. It's positive to be associated with what I consider was a quality thing.”

The original Wally Cleaver: actor Paul Sullivan who grew 16 inches from the time he landed the part until filming was set to begin. This is Sullivan in the pilot episode.