OCR Text |
Show ove it, says h k l r Y j Blathers, 33 by Ron Miller Knight-Ridde- r You can have an awful lot of fun trying to figure out what Beaver Cleaver would be doing today if he were in a world where the a real grown-u- p least of your worries is having to eat your brussels sprouts. In 1982, the lovable little guy from TVs Leave It To Beaver would be about 33. Would he wear a suit and tie to work like his dad? Would he marry a girl who wears chiffon dresses and pearls 24 hours a day, like mama June? Would he still eat milk and cookies after work or get into something heavier? I REALLY DONT know, chuckles Jerry Mathers, who spent most of his childhood playing the Beaver, but I can tell you the way they see him turning out. The they hes talking about are the writers preparing a script for a potential CBS movie that will bring us all up to date on the "Leave It To Beaver gang and maybe even serve as the pilot for a new series about a grown-uBeaver and his kids. They have him pretty mixed up at the beginning of the show, Mathers Hes 'getting divorced, going says. through a lot of jobs and things like that. IF THAT SOUNDS like a black comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live, keep reading. It gets blacker. Mathers says the writers would like to open the movie with that familiar shot of the two Cleaver brothers coming down the front walk of the family home. Only this time the boys would be Beavers sons and they would be followed out the front door by Beaver with his suitcases. I guess the idea is that his wife is throwing him out, Mathers says. OF COURSE, YOU instinctively know that all that advice and tender love the Beaver got from Ward and June Cleaver will see him through anything. After all, it saw him through all the bum advice he got from Eddie Haskell, Gilbert Bates and Lumpy Rutherford, didnt it? and it If the movie gets the does well, Id love to see it go to series, Mathers says. Id love to play Beaver as a single father, trying to make a go of it today. And I think the public would p 1982 11, April love it. Of course, there are several stumbling blocks. Hugh Beaumont, who played Ward Cleaver, is recovering from a stroke and is unable to act. Tony Dow, who was Beavers brother Wally, is not eager to link himself again with the role he feels has haunted his acting career. Week, Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell, is a Los Angeles police officer, happily retired from show business. And Steve Talbot, who was Beavers pal Gilbert, is now an award-winninindependent filmmaker in San Francisco, no longer interested in acting jobs. OF ALL THOSE interested in a Leave It To Beaver revival, Mathers and for good is the most fervent reason. He loves being Beaver and isnt at all bothered by the obvious fact that the public has frozen him into the character for life. Im very proud of the show, he explains. "I dont have a single unpleasant memory from doing it. Everywhere I go, people say, Hi, Beav! They loved the show. How can you not enjoy that feeling? g TV Lake Salt The T O I Writer In a way, you could look at Mathers one. He has done little acting of any note since the run in 1963. Beaver ended a seven-yea- r He has been offered lots of cameos in TV shows, has toured widely with Tony So Long, Dow in the stage play Stanley and has done virtually every talk show known to man, mainly pitching TV nostalgia. WHY DOESNT MATHERS get more work as an actor? He admits its a real task to get producers to envision him playing anyone but the Beaver. Unless somebody takes a chance on you with an role, you have no way of proving you can do it. Not long ago I was called up for an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, Mathers says. Then they called me back and said no. It was a policemans part and they decided I wouldnt be tough enough for it. BUT IF YOU think Mathers is bitter, guy, perfectly forget it. Hes a happy with his life. Hes married and the father of two kids. He and his younger brother Jimmy are partners in a video production business. He does a weekly radio talk show in the Los Angeles area. As the cliche goes, nobody will have to throw any benefits for Jerry Mathers. When I go on talk shows with other child stars, he says, I often hear them saying how they cant read and write, that it drove them to drugs and all that. Its like people are looking for that from me. I hate to disappoint them, but it just didnt happen. MATHERS HAS A pretty good idea why. In the first place, his father is an educator, currently the assistant superintendent of the Los Angeles city school system. He was a vice principal, then principal of Los Angeles largest high school during the seven years Mathers worked on the series. He was very, very used to dealing with kids, Mathers recalls. Anything I was going to do he had been dealing with already for years. So there were no big surprises for him. THERE HAD BEEN NO actors in the Mathers family before Jerry. He got into it quite by accident in 1950 when he was walking through a department store with his mother and one of the staff people thought he looked just like the kid who had posed for the stores Christmas ads. "The little boy they were using had outgrown his clothes, Mathers explains. They liked the rest of them. HE DID THE modeling job and that led to work in live television in Hollywood. There were virtually no juvenile actors trained to do live TV, so when Mathers worked out, he was in constant demand. He doesnt believe his acting career started because he had any flash of genius. I just happened to be one of those kids a director could tell to go stand he says. there and do it well, "Actually, it was a game then and its still a game for me now. AFTER HIS MOVIE debut in Hitchcocks The Trouble With Harry, Mathers worked in a couple of Bob Hope pictures, innumerable TV shows and finally was cast as the Beaver. Looking back, Mathers thinks the career as a stunted image-breakin- g laid-bac- k This is Jerry Mathers as Beaver Cleaver, the young star of one of Americas most popular comedies of the 1950s. When the series began, Beaver was seven. As the years passed and he got older, the stories naturally moved away from the little-bo- y premise until, in the final season, in 1963, Beaver was about to enter his teens and his brother, Wally (Tony Dow), was ready for college. atmosphere on the set of Beaver prevented his becoming a Hollywood brat. The writers based the concept on their own families and they loved kids. A private tutor was employed to keep Mathers current with his school work and the producers even built a little basketball court for the kids to play on In those between camera days, nobody thought of it as a kid Mathers says. Most of the school, kids in my neighborhood didnt even realize I was on TV because they never saw the show. They just thought I went to a different school or something. When Id get home after work, Id just go out and play baseball or whatever else they were doing that day. MATHERS ADMITS working 8 to 5 all week wasnt exactly a normal life for a child, but he treasures the experience and wouldnt have had it any other way. Its really interesting to be raised by 50 guys whose jobs depend on you being happy and having a good time, he says. When I had the chicken pox, they just closed the show down for a week. They just constantly entertained me and I had a good time all the time I was working. Mathers isnt much for philosophizing, even though he studied philosophy during his college years at the University of California at Berkeley, but he pretty well knows why Leave It To Beaver developed such a cult following among young people of his generation. I think everybody who watched it recognized that it was taken from real life, he says. Thats what made it such a good show. That and the fact the writers were so good. WHEN THE SHOW finally came to an end in 1963, it didnt break Mathers heart. He was ready to enter high school and he was eager to have the time to play sports. He came back to being a regular kid and didnt worry about his future one bit. I always had a basic plan that I would go into the business world after college, then come back to acting when I was about 30, Mathers says. That was kind of screwed up when I got out of high school because the Vietnam War was heating up and I had to go in the service for two years. AFTER HIS TOUR of duty (he still laughs over the rumors that he was killed in Vietnam), he went to college, went into banking for three years as a loan officer, then spent a few more years selling real estate. He returned to acting almost on schedule three years ago. WHEN TONY AND I are on the road together, Mathers says, people expect us to be best friends and do everything together. They usually ask us if we want adjoining hotel rooms. But actually our interests are totally different. For example, hes very much into jazz and Im more into rock n roll. WHAT REALLY AMUSES Mathers, though, is to have an old Leave It To Beaver fan spot him at some watering hole, knocking off a brew or two after a hard day on the road. Youd be surprised how many of them tell me the Beaver shouldnt be doing something like that," Mathers says, laughing. I usually just smile and say: Why not: Hes over 21. jgj |