About
Gerald Patrick Mathers (born June 2, 1948) is an American former actor best known for his role in the television sitcom Leave It to Beaver, originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963. He played the protagonist Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, the younger son of the suburban couple June and Ward Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont, respectively) and the younger brother of Wally Cleaver (Tony Dow).
Mathers was born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1948, the son of a high school principal, and grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California. Mathers’s brother is Jimmy Mathers.
Mathers began his career at the age of two when he appeared as a child model for a department store ad. Soon after, he starred in a commercial for PET Milk opposite vaudeville comedian Ed Wynn.
His early movies included This Is My Love (1954), Men of the Fighting Lady (1954), The Seven Little Foys (1955) and Alfred Hitchcock’s black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), in which he plays Arnie, the son of Shirley MacLaine’s character, and finds Harry’s body in the nearby forest.
Mathers states that he got the role of Beaver Cleaver after telling the…
Born On This Day
Bio and photo via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons licensing.