Read Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life for Free Online

Big Boy Combination Plate and a lemonade and we'd say, "Make it snappy. We gotta get back to work."
This would be Tony, me, Osmondoh, no, not Beav. He usually did not come. I told you. He was a squirt. Just like Eddie Haskell called him on the show. Sometimes, we'd give Jerry a thrill and let him ride in my Corvette with us and go for burgers. Pat would come with us, too.
We didn't have to go looking for girls. Girls found us. Everywhere. Wherever we went. It wasn't too bad, believe me. Not too bad at all.
Understand something. Arguably speaking, Tony might have been the biggest teenage heartthrobe in the country at the time. It was real close between him and Ricky Nelson.
I always thought Tony was better than Ricky. Ricky seemed a little hung-up or something.
Tony was always a shy guy, but believe me, he had his share. He had a girlfriend for a long time. Not really from the cast.
Mary Ellen Rogers? Well, Cheryl Holdridge, who first played Mary Ellen, turned out getting married real young. She married some poor slob from the backwoods.
His name was Lance Reventlow. He was the heir to Revlon.
He was a race-car driver and he got killed. Guess who inherited it all? Girl named Cheryl.
But Cheryl was a doll. I loved Cheryl. We all did. She was a good kid. And she wasn't stuck up either. She was good people.
Everyone was good people on the show.
As a fellow bad-lad on the show, I asked Kenny Osmond what he thought about the "Leave It to Beaver" years. What he thought of the cast, the way the show developed, our different personalities, pranks we played.
I find it pretty interesting after all these years to get Kenny's take on things.
Here's what he had to say.
About me:
"Frank was an older kid and even back then he was a sharp dresser. God, it seemed like he changed cars like underwear. They were always nice cars. Brand new. Usually a convertible, bright red, some other bright color. Always a nice car. He looked like he was enjoying life. That was impressive.
"I know it was neat having a guy with a driver's license and a fancy convertible to shoot over to Bob's Big Boy.
"I don't know if 'admired' was the word I'd use for him at the time. I was raised considerably different, I guess. He was definitely flashier than my

 

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tastes. God, my first car, my brother and I got from selling illicit firecrackers. We always spent our summers in Oklahoma and there you can buy fire-works over the counter. Every time we came back, we'd bring a trunk-load. A dollar a pack here, a dollar a pack there. We were able to buy this old car.
"It was a 1950 Mercury. Not much of a car.
"I don't think I resented Frank's flashy ways. No. It was just different than what I was accustomed to and I had no idea how he could afford such things. I was making the same money he was and I couldn't."
About others in the cast:
"We played basketball on a hoop outside the soundstage. I've never really been into sports. It was not my thing. But Tony was a jock from the get-go. Whoever was on Tony's team won. It was a lot of fun, even if I couldn't play worth a crap."
Best prank ever on the set:
"There was this time when Frank went around whip-creaming everybody. He'd sneak up and get it in your hair. Squirt it in your face. Down your neck. Down your pants.
"We made up our minds to get even.
"We'd gone camping according to this one script on 'The New Leave It to Beaver.' Everyone except Lumpy went on the trip. The storyline called for us to get jammed out in the rain, with no tents or anything. The scene called for every last one of us to be lounging around in the mud trying to get some sleep.
"We were really crudded up and terrible.
"Frank was inside this humongous motor home, meanwhile, with this microwave and color TV and everything. And he never got a drop of mud on him.
"But we just kind of worked behind his back and kept the cameras rolling at the end of our camping scene. As we reached the end of the scene, we grabbed Frank and dragged him out into the