“Leave It to Beaver” premiered 69 years ago today, on October 4, 1957, and the boy at the center of it is still here to tell the story. Jerry Mathers, now 78, is the last surviving member of the show’s core Cleaver family cast, according to Best Life.
The show’s path was stranger than its tidy suburban world suggests. CBS aired the 39-episode first season and then let it go. ABC picked it up and ran it for five more seasons, through June 20, 1963, and the reruns never really stopped. Hugh Beaumont died in 1982, Barbara Billingsley in 2010, Ken Osmond in 2020, and Tony Dow in July 2022, one day after erroneous reports of his death had already circulated, as PBS NewsHour reported at the time.
‘Leave It To Beaver’ Outlived Every Rumor
Mathers has spent decades cheerfully debunking the strangest rumor of all, the persistent myth that the Beaver died in Vietnam. It was never true, and he has had a long and happy life proving it. We took a full look at the cast in our story on the only Cleaver still with us today.
Sixty-nine years after Ward first sighed at his boys, the show remains shorthand for a gentler world. Golly, as the Beaver might say, that is some run.
