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Tony Dow,Wally on Leave It To Beaver,at 77
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Looks like the mods deleted the previous thread on Dow. It's been confirmed that he passed today. Jerry Mathers spoke of their life long friendship. The early seasons of the show were very good, but declined once Dow and Mathers grew up. They were both very good as young actors. Hugh Beaumont was great as the dignified Ward Cleaver...
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As was Richard Deacon as Lumpy Rutherford's overprotective father, Fred. I wrote that on the killed thread.
Also a casualty of the thread cancellation was the tally of LITB actors still alive. It's now three -- Jerry Mathers, Jeri Weil (Judy Hensler) and Stephen Talbot (Gilbert Bates).
I just checked the LITB imdb.com page and several other actors in the series, among them Rusty Stevens (Larry), Richard Correll (Richard), are still with us. But it's sad to see the great actors and actresses of these classic series pass away.
Forgot about Larry Mondello, but don't remember Richard at all. Was he part of the regular ensemble? Friend of Beaver's or of Wally's?
Apparently, Karen Sue Trent, who played Penny, is also still with us. I found an obit from a woman in West Virginia, who also had the same name, and even the same birthdate, but this woman had gotten the last name Trent through marriage in 1970. The actress Karen Sue Trent apparently keeps a very low profile.
Beaver's. He also played Richard.
Oh, so kind of a LITB reverse equivalent of Joe Rockhead, the "Flintstones" character who only appeared occasionally and had multiple looks?
And he was also a co-worker of Ward who was a jerk. He was great wherever he appeared.
I remember stumbling across an old movie on TV one afternoon and there he was as a dead serious bad guy. Apparently, he played several villainous film roles before finding his niche in television comedy. He was terrific as Mel Cooley, Alan Brady's officious suck-up of a brother-in-law on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," too.
Oh, yeah. I haven't seen many of those but I think I would like them.
Larry was in the early seasons as Beaver's best friend. He disappeared later without explanation. Gilbert, Whitey, and Richard became Beaver's friends later in the show. All were played by different actors. I recall that Wally's pals included Eddie, Tooey, Chester, and Lumpy at various times...
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Since the first thread was deleted I'll put my previous comment back in: There were videos on some clickbait You Tube channels claiming Tony had died a month or so ago, which turned out weren't true. Unfortunately now it has actually happened.
Would like to have my own thread restored. I had links in it that I probably can't find, now.
The old thread has been deleted. It contained too much false information and many of the links were broken. Sorry.
Richard Deacon was priceless.
RIP Tony...Your character Wally, along with Jerry Mather's Beaver (or as Eddie Haskell said "Young Theodore ") were characters that we could all relate to growing up, Hugh Beaumont played a great Dad, but Barbara Billingsley's "Mom" was such a stereotyped representation of a 1950s Housewife even then, it seemed almost comic. In fact everyone should checkout Barbara Billingsley's cameo role in "Airplane" she was brilliant, a real gem.
The earliest thing I can remember seeing Richard Deacon in is Invasion of the Body Snatchers where he plays a doctor at the opening and close.
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