12/13/2023 0 Comments Who played wally on leave it to beaverThat first year all the shows were from kids’ experiences.” “It was a fun time, a good show and unique in that it looked at the world through a child’s point of view,” Dow, a youthful-looking 68, says of Beaver’s 234 episodes. “Jerry was amazing. The pilot fizzled, but Dow got an agent and auditioned for Beaver. The rest is history. The lifeguard lost the part, but Dow won a TV pilot role. A swimmer and diving champion, he was asked by a pool lifeguard to go on an audition. They didn’t want us to get a big head,” Dow explains.ĭow was an accidental actor. “The producers, who were the writers, asked us not to watch it. Jerry Mathers, who starred opposite Dow as Beaver on their hit sitcom, told fans earlier this month that he’d been in contact with Dow, whose managers said had been “in and out of the hospital with various complications and treatments.Forever famous as “Wally,” Beaver’s likable elder brother on TV’s Leave It to Beaver, Tony Dow admits he never watched the hit series during its 1957-63 run. He also directed episodes of series like “Harry and the Hendersons,” “Coach” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” “I think people should take the leap of faith that they can feel better,” he said.ĭow continued to work in Hollywood, taking parts in TV series and even reprising his role in “The New Leave It to Beaver” in the 1980s. He channeled that hope into art, too, sculpting ornate pieces at his home studio. But I’m just one of millions.”ĭow told CBS that once he accepted his diagnosis and began treatment, he found hope. “You know, the fact that I was in a TV program that epitomized the supposed ideal world of the ’50s, and here I’m suffering from depression. “I realize there’s a perceived irony about this,” he told the Baltimore Sun of his depression in 1993. In 1993, he was an honorary speaker at a convention for the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association. ![]() “It’s sad to be famous at 12 years old or something, and then you grow up and become a real person, and nothing’s happened for you,” he told CBS.ĭow, who said he experienced undiagnosed depression from age 20 to age 40, spoke out for decades about his mental health challenges, long before it was common for celebrities to disclose that information publicly. Wally Cleaver, the straight-arrow teenage son, star athlete and Boy Scout, became inextricably tied to Dow, who said he struggled to stand on his own. In a January interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Dow recalled learning over a hamburger and malt that he was offered the part after auditioning on a whim. ![]() Dow revealed in May he had been diagnosed with cancer and was receiving hospice care this week, according to his son.ĭow was thrust into stardom at age 12, when he was cast on the soon-to-be-smash sitcom “Leave It to Beaver.” In the role, Dow helped create the archetype of a suburban nuclear family and became a household name to millions of viewers. News of the actor’s passing comes one day after a premature announcement of his death. He was my coach, my mentor, my voice of reason, my best friend, my best man in my wedding, and my hero,” Christopher Dow said, according to a statement that Bilotta shared on Tony Dow’s official Facebook page. He was the best Dad anyone could ask for. “Although this is a very sad day, I have comfort and peace that he is in a better place. Tony Dow, an actor and director best known for portraying Wally Cleaver on the sitcom “Leave It to Beaver,” died Wednesday morning, according to his manager Frank Bilotta, citing Dow’s son Christopher.
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