Leave It to Beaver

Tony Dow, who played Wally Cleaver to Jerry Mathers' Beaver in the iconic series "Leave It to Beaver," has died.

Dow battled depression in his 20s, making the self-help video “Beating the Blues” to help others, and later survived two bouts of cancer. He also played himself in the 2003 comedy “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star,” which featured cameos of dozens of former young actors, and appeared in the John Landis skit comedy feature “The Kentucky Fried Movie.” The popular black-and-white sitcom, centered around the typical idealized family of the time, followed the adventures of mischievous young Beaver, his practical brother Wally, their devious friend Eddie Haskell, and their long-suffering but understanding parents played by Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont.

He went on to a varied career as an actor, director, producer and sculptor, but he could never shake his association with the sitcom that brought him ...

Mr. Dow said in the end that he was no longer troubled by the outcome of his early success. As he observed at the end of one episode, “For a little kid like that, a lot of stuff sure goes on in his head.” In David Spade’s comedy “Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star,” Mr. Dow sang in the front row of a glee club of former child stars. The film became a Disney Channel series for one season and returned on TBS as “The New Leave It to Beaver” from 1986 to 1989. But he soon realized he had been hopelessly typecast as his “Leave It to Beaver” character. Along the way, he also had a contracting business and did visual effects for film. When he appeared on camera in movies or television later on, it was often with a healthy dose of amused self-awareness. He had virtually no acting experience when he was cast as Wally Cleaver in “Leave It to Beaver.” Wally played Chinese checkers with his brother in their room, sometimes went along with his friend Eddie Haskell’s misguided pranks and was young enough in the first season to ask, “Dad, if I saved up my allowance, could I buy a monkey?” His face was soon on the cover of magazines aimed at teenage readers. And, “Will you stop being nice to me and just go back to being a little creep?” The central character on the sitcom was the button-cute, trouble-prone Beaver Cleaver, played by Jerry Mathers, but whenever Beaver needed the benefit of counsel from someone older and wiser who was not likely to yell at him, he turned to Wally, his only sibling and most trusted confidant.