Dow was born in Hollywood, California, to John Stevens Dow, Jr. (1908–1987), a designer and general contractor, and Muriel Virginia Dow (née Montrose) (May 27, 1906 – April 30, 2001),^[1] a stunt woman in early Westerns and Clara Bow's movie double in Hollywood. In his youth, Dow was a Junior Olympics diving champion.^[2] He won the role of Wally Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver in a casting call with almost no previous acting experience.^[3]

Dow continued to perform on Leave It to Beaver for six years, until the series ended in 1963. After that, he appeared on other television shows, including My Three Sons, Dr. Kildare, The Greatest Show on Earth, Never Too Young, and on five episodes of Mr. Novak in three different roles. Then, from 1965 to 1968, he served in the National Guard, interrupting his acting career. On his return to acting, he was a guest star in the television series Adam-12, Love American Style, Knight Rider, Square Pegs, The Mod Squad, The Hardy Boys, and Emergency!.^[3]

During the 1970s, Dow continued acting while working in the construction industry and studying journalism and filmmaking.^[4]

From 1983 to 1989, Dow reprised his role as Wally Cleaver in a reunion television movie and in a subsequent series The New Leave It to Beaver.

In 1987, he was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award for his role as Wally Cleaver.^[5]

Dow's most recent screen appearance was in the 2003 film Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star.

In April 2019, Dow was seen promoting the Leave It To Beaver television series and other classic television series on the MeTV television network.

Gerald Patrick Mathers (born June 2, 1948) is an American actor. Mathers is best known for his role in the television sitcom Leave It to Beaver, originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963, in which he played Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver, the younger son of the suburban couple June and Ward Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont, respectively) and the brother of Wally Cleaver (Tony Dow).

Mathers was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1948, the son of a high school principal, and grew up in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, California.^[1] Mathers has three siblings, one sister and two brothers, including Jimmy Mathers.

Early career

Mathers began his career at the age of 2 when he appeared as a child model for a department store ad.^[2] Soon after, he starred in a commercial for PET Milk opposite vaudeville comedian Ed Wynn.^[1]

His early movies included This is My Love (1954), Men of the Fighting Lady (1954), The Seven Little Foys (1955) and Alfred Hitchcock's black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), in which he plays the son of Shirley MacLaine and finds a dead body in the forest.

Leave It to Beaver

Mathers states that he got the role of Beaver Cleaver after telling the show's producers he would rather be at his Cub Scout meeting than auditioning for the part. The producers found his candidness appealing and perfect for the role.^[1][3] Mathers played the Beaver for six years, appearing in all 234 episodes of the series. He was the first child actor ever to make a deal to get a percentage of the merchandising revenue from a television show. The Leave It to Beaver show still generates merchandise revenue today, many years after its original production run ended.

The original sitcom has been shown in over 80 countries in 40 languages. Mathers has noted that the Leave It to Beaver phenomenon is worldwide. "I can go anywhere in the world, and people know me," Mathers has said. "In Japan, the show's called 'The Happy Boy and His Family.' So I'll be walking through the airport in Japan, and people will come up and say, 'Hi, Happy Boy!'"^[4]

When asked in a 2014 television interview whether he had known at the time of the filming of the Leave it to Beaver series that the show was special, and would be in perpetual syndication, Mathers responded: "No, not at all. I had worked since I was two years old. I did movies. I didn't do any other series, but I had done a lot of movies and things like that so, in fact, every year it was a question whether we would come back for the next year 'cause you had to be picked up. So you would do 39 shows and then we would go to New York and meet all the press, and then we'd go to Chicago to meet the ad people, then we'd come back and take about five to six weeks off, and if we got picked up, then we'd start again. So we did that for six years because that was the length of the contracts at those times. So that's why there are 39 [episodes] for six years, and then it was off the air. Not off the air, but we didn't film any new ones [after that.]"^[5]

Mathers remained friends with Barbara Billingsley, who played his TV mother, June Cleaver, and remembered her after her death as "a good friend and an even better mentor. For me she was like the favorite teacher that we all had in school.