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persona. We were all working together, so it was really the kind of thing where everybody wanted, honestly, to make Tony and me happy. If for some reasonand this never happenedwe'd had some huge blowout, it would not have been good for the show. So everybody tried to keep everybody else happy.
His recollections of me:
I remember Frank over the series of the show, but not so much at first. Especially in the first few months of the show, there were all sorts of people who would come and go.
Only the good ones stayed.
When I met Frank, he was a very nice guy. But because there was a big age difference between us (7 years), I didn't really know Frank until the "New Leave It to Beaver" years.
When you're in your teens and early 20s and a guy is a few years older than you, it's a lot . . . but when you're in your 30s and 40s, that age difference pretty much evaporates.
When I started my business career and had more money to investand Frank had then gone into the investment fieldthat's when Frank and I really became friends, when he started managing some of my accounts.
Frank is very articulate. A very smart business person. A very good friend. That's the Frank I know today. I don't hesitate to trust a lot of my assets with him. And I definitely go to him for advice, any time there's a turn in the market, or for some reason I either come into or have to get ahold of some of my money and I want to know what to do with it, Frank's always the one I call. He has a very good insight into the market.
Obviously, he's honest.
He's somebody I care very very much and deeply about.
One that I'll always care and worry about.

 

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Frank, Kenny, Tony and and I were all very much good friends and we all remained good friends. You know, I went to Frank's weddings and over the years, whenever anybody would have babies, or even today when Ken Osmond's son got married and things like that.
You don't find many people like that. I've worked in a lot of different businesses and most of those people, while you're working with them, they're business acqaintances. And that's pretty much it.
But I go to personal events in Frank's and Kenny's and Tony's lives and when things happen in my life, I definitely tell them about it.
Why the Lumpy character endured:
Well, you know, all the characters on ''Leave It to Beaver" are all very endearing because people know people like that. Everyone knows an Eddie Haskell, who's the guy that stabs you in the back. Everyone knows a Lumpy, who's dominated by their father and in some ways is kind of the bully, because their father dominates them so much they're frustrated.
Because the characters are so well-written, there are general things about them, so that everyone can find some of their characteristics in people they know.
Frank is definitely a fine actor. He had a hard part to play, in a lot of ways. The bully is fairly easy, and almost every character actor could do that. But it's demeaning to have to play a bully who's also a browbeaten coward. That's a hard part for a young vibrant man to play a lot of times. And Frank took that part on, even though it's very far-flung from his own nature;
I mean, for me it was very easy, because the Beaver character is an everyman character.
But the Eddie Haskell character and the Lumpy character are harder to play, because when people see them they tend to think that the way they were like on the show, that's their true personality.
I mean, I'm sure Frank took a lot of guff for being Lumpy.
And yet, a lot of people identify with Lumpy. It may not be your parent, but you may have to knuckle under to your boss, or to maybe a wife, or some authority figure in your life. And that's what the Lumpy character does. He's the person who, you know, goes along . . . but the sad part about the Lumpy character, he takes it out on everyone else around him.
He's so frustrated, he vents all the stuff that's lingering in him. And the Beaver is the low man on the totem pole, so he gets the