Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Wally Cleaver was the big brother I wish I had, and Tony Dow was just adorable in that role. As a young kid watching Leave it to Beaver Wally gave me an early glimpse of what being a teenage boy might be like. My teen years turned out to be very different from Wally's but I retained a bit of a crush on him as I watched reruns of that very entertaining show.

I'd come here yesterday, wondering why no one had posted this piece of boomer essentialism, only to hit at exactly the moment the story was being retracted. I presumed it was a Natasha Richardson-like "it's happening, but not quite official", seeing it was his wife who made the initial post. There's a certain symmetry to how, back in the early 70s, the rumor went around (broadcast wide by Shelley Winters) that Jerry Mathers was dead, when he was very much still around.

There's no way to explain how central this show was back in my youth. It has a reputation of being 50s-empty-headed, but that's more applicable to shows like Ozzie & Harriet or Donna Reed. In the Beaver's world, Eddie Haskell or Larry Mondello or Whitey were always coming up with schemes that could land the Beav in trouble either at school or with the law. Childhood was a battlefield in this world, and, by the era's standards, it was close to subversive.

A day after his wife's premature announcement, his son reveals that the Leave It to Beaver star died this morning.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tony- ... smsnnews11