Question about Leave It To Beaver?!
Question: I was watching TV Land today and noitced that on earlier episodes of Leave It To Beaver that there was a different Wally and a different father. How long did they play these parts until the original actors took over?
Answers: I was watching TV Land today and noitced that on earlier episodes of Leave It To Beaver that there was a different Wally and a different father. How long did they play these parts until the original actors took over?
they weren't the only non-originals:
"IT'S A SMALL WORLD was the pilot show for "Leave It To Beaver", which aired 4/23/57 on Heinz Studio '57. The pilot was not seen as a part of the original "Leave It To Beaver" series. It was hoped this pilot would lead into a series, which of course, it did." In the pilot, Paul Sullivan played Wally, Casey Adams (AKA Max Showalter) was Ward, and Harry Shearer played Frankie, an Eddie Haskell type character. (Harry later became a regular on Saturday Night Live. )
According to the book, "And Jerry Mathers As The Beaver", Paul Sullivan's height had increased too much during the summer to play Wally and the part went to Tony Dow. It was felt Casey Adams was not right for the Ward Cleaver character and Hugh Beaumont got that part. It was felt Harry Shearer was not right for the Eddie Haskell character and the role went to Ken Osmond.
Max Showalter (The original Ward Cleaver):
Bet you didn't remember this guy! He played Ward Cleaver in the pilot, "It's a small world." Actor Max Showalter learned his craft at the Pasadena Playhouse. An adroit, quick-witted comic performer, Showalter was one of the earliest participants in the infant medium known as television. He was an ensemble player on 1949's The Swift Show, and that same year was a panelist on the "charades" quiz show Hold It Please. 20th Century-Fox chieftan Darryl F. Zanuck was a fan of Showalter's work; the producer hired Showalter as a Fox featured player, but not before changing his name to the more "box-office" Casey Adams. While there were a few leading roles, notably as Jeanne Crain's obtuse husband in Niagara (1953), for the most part Showalter/Adams' film career was confined to brief character parts (e.g. Return to Peyton Place [1958] and The Music Man [1962]). While still traveling under the alias of Casey Adams, Showalter appeared in a half-hour pilot film titled It's a Small World (1956); on this one-shot, the actor originated the role of Ward Cleaver, a role that would ultimately be assumed by Hugh Beaumont when Small World matriculated into Leave It to Beaver. Shedding the Casey Adams alias in the mid '60s, Max Showalter remained a busy character player into the '80s, appearing as a regular on the 1980 sitcom The Stockard Channing Show."
"This pilot is one of the few programs in television history to be designated as an episode of two different television series: the original "Leave it to Beaver" (Pilot) and "The New Leave it to Beaver" (episode #68). This episode originally aired on April 23, 1957 as a stand alone special, and was not presented as the premiere episode of "Leave it to Beaver". After that broadcast, most copies of the film were destroyed, but a copy was discovered nearly 30 years later--in the mid 1980s-- in a film vault in Illinois. It was then reintroduced for the first time in three decades as a special episode of "The New Leave it to Beaver" on October 4, 1987, exactly 30 years after the original series premiered on CBS. The 1987 broadcast featured new wrap around segments featuring Jerry Mathers, Barbara Billingsley, Tony Dow, and Kipp Marcus standing on the front yard set of the new series. Unlike the series, this pilot did not use a laugh track. The tv channel, TV Land, aired this episode as part of a "Leave it to Beaver" Marathon on October 6, 2007. The episode aired at 11:00 AM ET. Wally Cleaver was played by Paul Sullivan in the Pilot Episode. Ward was actually played by Casey Adams."
I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. Tony Dow and Hugh Beaumont were the only actors to ever star in those roles. There were no others (not even for a pilot).
omg that is so funny i seen that today too i dont know though