His death was announced by his representatives in a post on his Facebook page. It was not stated where he died. In May, Mr Dow said he had been diagnosed with prostate and gall bladder cancer. Mr. Dow went on to a varied adult career, finding mixed success as an actor, director, producer and later a sculptor, but he could never shake his connection to “Leave It to Beaver,” a dose of early life. fame that may have contributed to his later struggles with depression. The sitcom’s central character was buttoned-up, trouble-prone Beaver Cleaver, played by Jerry Mathers, but whenever Beaver needed advice from someone older and wiser who wasn’t likely to yell at him, he turned to Wally. his only brother and his most trusted. They shared a bedroom – and a private bathroom – in an immaculately kept two-story house in Mayfield, a fantastic, walkable, crime-free, apparently all-white American suburb. Wally was a good student, kind to his elders and a responsible good guy who “dripping with decency and honesty,” as Brian Levant, executive producer of the 1980s sequel series “The New Leave It to Beaver,” described him on The Arizona Republic in 2017. Wally played Chinese checkers with his brother in their room, sometimes went along with his friend Eddie Haskell’s misguided pranks, and was young enough in the first season to ask, “Dad, if I saved my allowance, could i buy a monkey “ And he would never “squeal” the Beav unless he had to. As the seasons went by, Wally matured, gaining the attention of teenage viewers, but his attitude towards his brother remained largely unchanged. “What did you go and do that?” he would ask. And, “Will you stop being nice to me and go back to being a little creepy?” But when he was talking to his parents, Wally was more thoughtful. As he remarked at the end of one episode, “For a little kid like that, there sure is a lot going on in his head.” Anthony Lee Dow was born in Hollywood on April 13, 1945, the son of John Stevens Dow, a designer and contractor, and Muriel Virginia (Montrose) Dow. His mother was a stuntwoman in westerns and was the double for silent screen star Clara Bow. Tony was an athletic boy who won swimming and diving competitions. In fact, it was a coach who suggested Tony accompany him to an acting audition, the boy’s first. He had virtually no acting experience when he was cast as Wally Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver. “I’ve always been a bit of a rebel,” The Outsider website quoted him as saying in 2021, and success had come so easily. Soon his face was on the cover of magazines aimed at teenage readers. After six years, as the fictional Wally prepared to go off to college, Mr. Dow was ready to move on to something new. He appeared as a guest star in series such as “Dr. Kildare’ (1963), ‘My Three Sons’ (1964), ‘Lassie’ (1968), ‘The Mod Squad’ (1971), ‘Love, American Style’ (1971) and ‘Emergency’ (1972). She was a regular on Never Too Young (1965-66), a soap aimed at teenage audiences. But he soon realized that he had hopelessly mischaracterized his “Leave It to Beaver” character. In his 20s, he began to suffer from clinical depression, which he described as a “self-absorbed feeling of worthlessness, hopelessness”. Aided by psychotherapy and medication, he became a spokesperson for the National Depressant and Manic Depressant Society. ”I realize there’s a perceived irony about it,” Mr. Dow told The Chicago Tribune in 1993, acknowledging that his name and face were associated with one of the sunniest series in broadcasting history. But fame was part of the problem. “If you have anonymity, you can sit in the corner and sulk and nobody cares,” he said. “But if you’re a celebrity, pouting is unpredictable.” Twenty years after ‘Leave It to Beaver’ went off the air, it’s back – in the form of a CBS TV movie, ‘Still the Beaver’ (1983). He reunited the cast, with the exception of Mr. Beaumont, who had died in 1982 at the age of 72. Wally was then a lawyer who had married a high school sweetheart. Beaver was going through a messy divorce. The show was made into a Disney Channel series for one season and returned to TBS as “The New Leave It to Beaver” from 1986 to 1989. The show featured monsters in the closet. mishaps with borrowed cars, bicycles, comic books, football tickets and prom dates. and a seemingly endless supply of flashbacks (clips from the original series). In the ’90s, Mr. Dow turned to directing, being hired for episodes of shows like “Coach,” “Harry and the Hendersons,” “Babylon 5” and, of course, his own “The New Leave It to Beaver.” He directed a TV movie, ‘Child Stars: Their Stories’ (2000) and produced two others, ‘The Adventures of Captain Zoom From Outer Space’ (1995) and ‘It Came From Outer Space II’ (1996). When he later appeared on camera in movies or television, it was often with a healthy dose of amusing self-awareness. In the David Spade comedy “Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star,” Mr. Dow sang in the front row of a club of former child stars. His last on-screen role was in an episode of the anthology series “Suspense” in 2016. Along the way, he also had a contracting business and did visual effects for movies. But he found his passion when, in his 50s, he took up sculpture, working mainly in wood and bronze. In 2008, his sculpture “Unarmed Warrior” was presented in Paris at the Salon de la Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Carrousel du Louvre. He was with his first wife, Carol Marlow, from 1969 until their divorce in 1980. He married Lauren Shulkind, a ceramic artist, in 1980. Information about his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Dow said in the end that he was no longer bothered by the result of his early success. “That’s probably how I felt from the time I was 20 until I was 40,” he said in a 2022 interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.” “At 40, I realized how great the show was.”
