Meet the Beaver, and Wally, and Eddie, and Lumpy too!

Recently, I said that I consider Leave it to Beaver to be one of the best, if not the best, TV series ever produced. By happy coincidence, this Wednesday, JERRY MATHERS, TONY DOW, KEN OSMOND, and FRANK BANK will appear together on Shokus Internet Radio.

“STU’S SHOW” AIRS LIVE ON
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4!

This week’s guests:

The Cast from “Leave it to Beaver” –
JERRY MATHERS (Beaver)
TONY DOW (Wally)
KEN OSMOND (Eddie)
FRANK BANK (Lumpy)

At posting time, all four cast members are scheduled to appear. We’ll finish covering Jerry’s career post “Beaver”, including a stint in the air force, working as a banker, and touring the country in a stage play with co-star Tony Dow before coming back and doing the sequel to the original series in the 1980s. Plus, all four will share their favorite episodes from both series, and we’ll invite the listeners to call in and share their favorites too!

THAT’S THIS COMING WEDNESDAY,
MARCH 4, 2009
LIVE FROM 4-6 P.M. PT
CALL IN WITH YOUR QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
TOLL-FREE – (888) SHOKUS-5!
REBROADCASTS DAILY

Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow
Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow in the final scene of Leave it to Beaver, June 20, 1963

3 thoughts on “Meet the Beaver, and Wally, and Eddie, and Lumpy too!”

  1. P.S., Bonnie, that’s gotta be pricey! Wouldn’t that be great! Say, can ya get Ernest Borgnine back out here to central PA? My late mother was a personal friend of Ernie’s at the very start of his career. Literally handed him his costume for his first role, a non-speaking part in “State of the Union.” He filmed “Another Harvest Moon” last year and he and I and his fantastic personal assistant Joyce O’Connell couldn’t get past his young, high-strung producer to fit me in for two minutes.

    You work out of L.A., right?

  2. What was great about the show is that the parents were depicted as intelligent and consistent with their discipline AND their love. Also, the were not too proud to apologize to their boys if they made an error in judgment. Most importantly, Ward treated June as an EQUAL. I think I remember a few episodes where he offered to do the dishes (“You like tired, dear.”) Even better, I swear I remember this, there was an episode where she’d hurt he back and he was giving her a back massage while she lay on a table. Her back was … BARE! Must have given the young boys an interesting evening of TV viewing!

    Why people criticize the show as being “a perfect life” is beyond me. There were kids in the orbit of Wally and Beaver who weren’t so well off, and it was funny watching Ward and June react to them. Yeah, OK, so maybe all REAL 50s dads didn’t really have a den and sit there with a pipe and slippers. Maybe they were down at the corner bar, like most of my husband’s father’s friends after a hard day of work. My late father-in-law was just too exhausted to join them!

    One that that IS true: all of Tom’s friends growing up in the 50s DID have goofy nicknames. In a lot of ways, I envy his “normal” childhood in blue-collar Pittsburgh, with his bilingual mother (English/Slovakian, God I loved her) and his gruff, pure German father). And of course, everybody was Catholic! Weddings generally lasted three days, with lots of polkas and stinky sauerkraut.

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