The cast of Leave It to Beaver triggered a wave of nostalgia when they reunited at a fan event at the Hollywood Show, more than 60 years after the sitcom ended.
Jerry Mathers, who played Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, signed autographs and took photos with fans on June 6 and 7 at the event in Burbank, California.
The 77-year-old actor reunited with Tiger Fafara, who played Tooey Brown; Stephen Talbot, who played Gilbert; Veronica Cartwright, who played Violet Rutherford; and Jeri Weil, who played Judy Hensler.
Leave It to Beaver aired from 1957 to 1963, but the six-season sitcom gained new fans from reruns and the streaming platform Peacock.
The cast of Leave It to Beaver reunited nearly seven decades after the sitcom premiered
Image credits: CBS Photo Archive
The show ended when Jerry was 15 years old. After the finale, he took a break from acting to focus on his studies. He went to high school, where he played football, and then served in the Air National Guard.
The Iowa-born actor attended the University of California, Berkeley to study philosophy. He graduated in 1973.
When he was in college, a rumor spread that he had lost his life in the Vietnam War. “People sent letters of condolence and flowers to my family,” Jerry recalled.
He re-entered the entertainment industry in 1978 and starred in the comedy play Boeing, Boeing with his on-screen brother, Tony Dow.
The two later reunited for the reboot of Leave It to Beaver, titled The New Leave It to Beaver.
The show aired from 1983 to 1989 and saw the return of much of the original cast, with the exception of Beaver’s father, played by Hugh Beaumont, who passed in 1982, and Stephen Talbot, who decided to quit acting.
In a 1977 interview, Stephen explained that he couldn’t “go back to being Gilbert” and preferred to focus on his career as a documentary filmmaker and an investigative reporter.
The show focused on the misadventures of a suburban boy and his family and friends
Jerry returned to the stage in 2007 on Broadway’s Hairspray as Wilbur Turnblad. He had three children with his second wife, Rhonda Gehring, whom he met while touring in the production of So Long, Stanley.
Reminiscing about his time on Leave It to Beaver, the actor said, “The show was just a grand adventure with a lot of adults around, and we just had a really good time.
“After I’d do my schoolwork, I’d work on models that kids were building at the time. We’d play catch during lunch. It was just always a fun place to be every day.”
Jerry Mathers, who played Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, reunited with Tiger Fafara, Stephen Talbot, Veronica Cartwright, and Jeri Weil
For the first few years on the show, Jerry struggled to memorize his lines, so he would have someone read them out loud to him.
Asked whether he had kept in touch with his co-stars after the sitcom ended, he shared, “Los Angeles is very, very spread out. I couldn’t drive at the time, so when Leave It to Beaver ended, we all went back to our homes. When we were teenagers, we all became close friends.”
The 77-year-old said he had a “wonderful childhood” and revealed that he was closest with Richard Correll, who played Beaver’s school friend Richard Rickover.
Jeri Weil, who played Beaver’s class nemesis Judy, changed careers after the show and is now a successful real estate agent.
In an interview with Remind Magazine, Jeri revealed that people treated her differently in high school after she left Leave It to Beaver, as they believed she was a bully like her character.
“When I started junior high, nobody would even talk to me. I mean, I was Judy — who wanted to be friends with Judy Hensler?” she said.
The show aired from 1957 to 1963 and had a reboot titled The New Leave It to Beaver
Tiger Fafara’s last role was as the adult Tooey Brown in The New Leave It to Beaver. He has a son, Bradley James “Dez” Fafara, who is a vocalist in the metal bands DevilDriver and Coal Chamber.
After the show ended, the Cleaver family matriarch Barbara Billingsley returned to the entertainment industry with guest roles on Empty Nest and Murphy Brown. She also starred in Airplane! and received an Emmy award for Muppet Babies. The actress passed away in 2010 at the age of 94.
Tony Dow, who portrayed older brother Wally Cleaver, passed away in 2022 after being diagnosed with liver cancer.
“The show was just a grand adventure with a lot of adults around, and we just had a really good time,” Jerry Mathers recalled
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Veronica Cartwright continued her acting career and received three Emmy nominations: two for her roles in ER and one for The X-Files. After Leave It to Beaver, she worked with Audrey Hepburn in The Children’s Hour and Alfred Hitchcock in The Birds.
She has also starred in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien, and The Witches of Eastwick.
“It’s always fun to run into each other and reminisce about our childhoods and the work we did together,” Veronica said in 2021 when asked about her time on the popular sitcom.
Many people shared that they continue to watch the popular sitcom
