The Beaver is back!
Jerry Mathers, who played the titular Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver on the hit 1950s sitcom Leave iI to Beaver, delighted viewers with autographs and photos at a fan event, the Hollywood Show, on June 6 and 7 in Burbank, Calif.
Mathers, 77, reunited with Luke Tiger Fafara, 80, who played Tooey Brown, Stephen Talbot, 76, who played Gilbert, Veronica Cartwright, 76, who played Violet Rutherford and Jeri Weil, 77, who played Judy Hensler.
POSE Photo Ops
Stephen Talbot, Jeri Weil, Jerry Mathers, Tiger Fafara, Veronica Cartwright of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ at the June 2025 Hollywood Show
It’s been more than 60 years since Leave It to Beaver left the small screen in 1963 following its 1957 debut, but the show still has a legion of dedicated fans thanks to syndication (season 1 is also streaming on Peacock).
After Leave It to Beaver, Mathers took a break from acting. He went to high school, where he played football. He then served in the Air National Guard and later attended the University of California, Berkeley to pursue a degree in philosophy.
While at Berkeley, a rumor spread that Mathers had been killed in the Vietnam War. “People sent letters of condolence and flowers to my family,” he recalled.
CBS via Getty
Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver, Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver, Jerry Jerry Mathers as Beaver (Theodore) Cleaver and Tony Dow as Wally Cleaver in the 1950s, with on-screen parents Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver and Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver
In 1978, he and his onscreen brother Tony Dow, who played Wally, starred in a production of the comedy play Boeing, Boeing, which ran for 10 weeks in Kansas City, Mo. The two later reunited for the reboot of Leave It to Beaver, The New Leave It to Beaver, which aired from 1983 to 1989.
Through the reboot, the classic show about Beaver Cleaver’s misadventures was introduced to a new generation. Much of the main cast returned for the reboot. with the exception of Beaver’s father, played by Hugh Beaumont, as the actor died in 1982. Dow died in 2022, and Cleaver family matriarch Barbara Billingsley died in 2010.
Talbot also didn’t return for the reboot, and like Mathers, quit child acting after Leave It to Beaver. He attended Wesleyan University and went on to have a successful career in public television.
“I’m trying to establish myself as a documentary filmmaker and an investigative reporter,” Talbot told Salon in a 1997 article of his choice to not participate in The New Leave It to Beaver. “I can’t go back to being Gilbert.”
Weil, who played the smart-mouthed Judy, also found it difficult to shed her role as a bully once she left the show.
“When I started junior high, nobody would even talk to me. I mean, I was Judy — who wanted to be friends with Judy Hensler?” she told Remind Magazine.
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She revealed that she left the show after 31 episodes after an alleged dispute with the showrunners’ over attempts to hide her changing body. Other than making a guest appearance in The New Leave It to Beaver, Weil didn’t return to acting and instead enjoyed a successful career in real estate.
Cartwright continued her acting career, working with Audrey Hepburn in The Children’s Hour and Alfred Hitchcock in The Birds. She also had roles in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Witches of Eastwick. As an adult, she received three Emmy nominations, two for her role in ER and one for her role in The X-Files.
Cartwright still looks back on her time on Leave It to Beaver fondly.
“It’s always fun to run into each other and reminisce about our childhoods and the work we did together,” Cartwright told Fox in 2021.
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