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mud.
"Oh yeah, he saw it coming the instant before we grabbed him. He tried to escape, but he didn't make it. There was a whole bunch of us on him. The crew was in on it, too.
"We plopped him in this big mudhole that was created by the artificial rain, not far from his motor home. We got him good and muddy. He looked like a mummy wrapped in mud.
"Matter of fact, we got him so good, the cameras were rolling when we dragged him in the mud and they kept it on tape and used it in the show."
About Hugh and Barbara:
"They were Mom and Dad. When I still see Barbara today, I call her 'Mom.' I love Barbara dearly. She is everybody's mom. We miss Hugh terribly since his death."

 

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About the fact Jerry Mathers once said Kenny and I had the toughest roles on the show:
"It's very flattering to hear Jerry say that. I thank him for it. I don't think it's so much a matter of how we made our characters work. It's more the types of characters Jerry and Tony had. The characters of Wally and the Beaver don't lend themselves to raw energy and playing with the characters.
"I'd been to every acting class available before 'Beaver' came along. So I had a lot of professional training prior to that. Before they turned the cameras on, I'd really try and be Eddie.
"As far as Lumpy Rutherford, he started out as a guy stuck in one episode. Dumpy Lumpy, dumb as an ox. Instead of one or two episodes, Frank stuck around. The reason? He was perfect for Lumpy. Both physically and, if you watch him, you can see it in his face. He is Lumpy for X-period of minutes. Big Dumpy Lumpy."
About why the show has endured in the hearts of its fans:
"Believe me, I've heard this question a lot, so I've given it a great deal of thought.
"First off, film-making back then was an art. Today it's no longer so much of an art. Today it's a matter of 'let's put this together real quick and make some money on it.' It's not about quality.
"Another major thing is that 'Leave It to Beaver' was totally different in that it didn't have funny lines. It had funny situations. That's totally different from any sitcom you watch today.
"Today, it's setup . . . setup . . . joke. I think the thing that made 'Beaver' fly so well is that every show, every plot, was something that you as a child went through yourself. So you could relate to it.
"Remember the time that you lost your haircut money? Are you gonna tell your mom? The time you ordered something from a catalogue without mom and dad's permission? Just silly things like that.
"It's good, clean entertainment. When you get home after a hard day at the office, you want to escape someplace. That's what television is all about.
"Do you want to escape to Miami and chase drug-dealers? No. I tell you, Mayfield's a nice place to escape to.
"Another thing that helped the longevity is that you can go back for years and years and years, through all the supermarket tabloidsyou will not find any crap associated with anyone on our show.
"Nobody robbed a liquor store. Nobody has been strung out on drugs. Nobody went into prostitution. I mean, not just the cast, but the crewmembers, and everyone, were family people.
"I think most people watching the show felt that way, too.
"We were just part of their family."

 

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Finally, I ought to be shotshouldn't I?if I got out of this chapter without hearing from The Man, himself.
Jerry Mathers.
The Beav.
He was, after all, the reason there was a Beaver to leave it to.
I was asking him about the show and these are some of the things he said.
About paling with Tony and Eddie and me:
Every once in a while if I was luckybecause I was kind of the tagalong as the youngest onewe would go to lunch at Bob's Big Boy. Frank always had a really neat car. Being the youngest kid and very impressionable, cars became very important to me.
But in a way it was kind of a favor if they would even bother to take me along.
Did we treat him like "The Squirt," as Eddie called him?
Not really. That really wasn't part of their