Trivia: Child actor Jerry Mathers began picking up modeling work at the age of two. His first TV appearance was on Ed Wynn's variety show in 1950. Among Mather's larger film roles were the son of Shirley MacLaine in Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry (1955) and the son of Bob Hopeand Eva Marie Saint in That Certain Feeling (1955). In 1956, Mathers was cast as all-American kid Theodore "Beaver" Clever in It's a Small World, an unsold pilot film that showed up on the syndicated anthology Studio 57. One year later, a heavily revamped and recast It's a Small World re-emerged as the weekly sitcom Leave It to Beaver, with Mathers in the title role. He starred in 234 episodes of Beaver from 1957 through 1963, literally growing up before the eyes of the nation. Unable to sustain his acting career into his teen years, Mathers quit show business for nearly a decade, attending UCLA, selling real estate, and denying rumors that he'd been killed in Vietnam. In 1983, Mathers starred in the "retro" made-for-TV film Still the Beaver, which evolved into a moderately successful weekly cable series, The New Leave It to Beaver (1985-89), Essentially, Mathers played himself: a middle-aged divorced father, wondering just what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Jerry Mathers' professional life in the 1990s has been a maelstrom of personal appearances, TV guest shots, and punchline bits on Jay Leno's Tonight Show.

Trivia: Previously a clerk for a London real-estate agent, white-maned, well-poised Donald Marshall Gray became a stage actor in 1952. Since there already was a Donald Gray in British equity, Gray changed his professional first name to Charles (he was sometimes billed as Charles D. Gray to avoid confusion with American character player Charles H. Gray, and in the early 1960s, he briefly appeared on stage as Oliver Gray). A Shakespeare specialist in the theatre, Gray was most often cast as icy authority figures on screen: Essex in Cromwell (1970), Mycroft Holmes in 7% Solution (1978), and, of course, the unctuous criminologist/narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). The actor's aura of well-bred insincerity was eminently suited to villainy, notably as Blofield in the 1970 James Bond entry Diamonds are Forever. Though never credited as such, Charles Gray served as the "voice" of actor Jack Hawkins after the latter lost his larynx to throat cancer.

Trivia: Tony Dow is best remembered for playing Wally Cleaver, the clean-cut and much wiser older brother of Beaver on the classic family sitcom Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963). Since the show's demise, he has appeared sporadically in a couple feature films and in a few television movies. He reprised the role of Wally in the 1980s in the made-for-TV reunion film Still the Beaver (1983) and in the series it spawned. In 1965, Dow starred in the short-lived series Never Too Young. After a final feature-film appearance as a judge in the good-natured, nostalgic spoof of the Beach Party movies Back to the Beach (1987), Dow disappeared for a few years and then re-emerged as a director of television episodes for such series as Babylon 5 (1993) and as a producer of films such as It Came From Outer Space II (1996).

Trivia: Though she played many diverse roles in films of the '50s before Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963), slim, blonde, and wholesome-looking Barbara Billingsley will always be best remembered as June Cleaver, one of the greatest mothers in the vast pantheon of television sitcom domestic goddesses. In addition to her filmwork, Billingsley also appeared on a number of television plays on such shows as Four Star Playhouse and Matinee Theater. Following the end of Beaver, Billingsley traveled extensively until the late '70s. She made her acting comeback playing the crazy "Jive Lady" in Airplane (1980). In 1983, she reprised her role as June Cleaver in the television reunion movie Still the Beaver, which spawned a television series by the same name two years later. In 1984, she gave voice to the character of Nanny in Jim Hanson's animated kids' show Muppet Babies. After that, she appeared occasionally in movies and made guest television appearances; in 1997, she played Aunt Martha in the big-screen version of Leave It to Beaver. Billingsley died in 2010 after a long illness.

Trivia: American actor Hugh Beaumont originally studied for the clergy, remaining busy as a lay minister throughout his acting career. After stage experience, Beaumont arrived in Hollywood in 1940. While most of the draftable leading men were away during World War II, Beaumont enjoyed a brief spell of stardom; his faint resemblance to actor Lloyd Nolan enabled Beaumont to inherit Nolan's screen role of detective Michael Shayne in a series of inexpensive programmers. After the war, Beaumont returned to character parts, contributing memorable moments to such films as The Blue Dahlia (1946) and The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947). He also played quite a few villains during this period; fans of Beaumont's later television work are in for a jolt as they watch the affable Hugh connive and murder his way through 1948's Money Madness. During the early 1950s, Beaumont frequently popped up in uncredited featured roles at 20th Century-Fox, most prominently in Phone Call From a Stranger (1952) as the doctor killed by drunken driver Michael Rennie, and in The Revolt of Mamie Stover as the Honolulu cop who advises goodtime girl Jane Russell to get out of town. In 1957, Beaumont was cast as philosophy-dispensing suburban dad Ward Cleaver on the popular sitcom Leave It to Beaver (he replaced Casey Adams, who played Ward in the 1955 pilot). While he despaired that the series might ruin his chances for good film roles, Beaumont remained with Beaver until its cancellation in 1963. Hugh Beaumont retired from show business in the late 1960s, launching a second career as a successful Christmas tree farmer.

Trivia: Supporting actor Ken Osmond is best remembered for playing Wally Cleaver's oily, conniving best friend Eddie Haskell on Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963), a role he has periodically capitalized on in films and subsequent incarnations of the ever-popular series. Prior to getting that role, Osmond -- usually billed as Kenneth Osmond -- was already a busy child actor, playing supporting parts in such big-budget Warner Bros. films as So Big (his big-screen debut) at age eight. He made the rounds of the studios, appearing in Fox's tear-jerker Good Morning, Miss Dove in 1955, as well as the comedy Everything But the Truth at Universal in 1956. It was a year later that he took on the part of Eddie Haskell in Leave It to Beaver, which was produced by Universal's television unit. Osmond's work as Eddie earned him a Youth In Films Lifetime Achievement Award. Following the show's cancellation, Osmond did occasional television work, turning up in one episode of The Munsters (playing -- surprise! -- a troublemaking student) and elsewhere on the small screen, as well as in Paramount's 1967 college campus exploitation drama C'mon, Let's Live a Little, before he left acting. Osmond and his brother founded a charter helicopter company, and he later spent 18 years as a Los Angeles police officer. After sustaining multiple gunshot wounds during an attempted arrest, Osmond had to retire. In 1983, he returned to acting and Eddie Haskell, in The New Leave It to Beaver. The show ran until 1989 and featured his real sons, Eric and Christian Osmond, playing Eddie's sons Freddie and Boomer. In 1997, Osmond again showed up as Eddie in a cameo role in the feature-film version of Leave It to Beaver.

Trivia: Born on her family's cattle ranch in Texas, American actress Phyllis Coates left home to attend UCLA. Shortly afterward she secured a dancing job with Ken Murray's Blackouts, a long-running LA-based stage review. She later danced for producer Earl Carroll and in a USO tour of Anything Goes. Through the auspices of her first husband, director Richard Bare, Phyllis entered films in 1948 as leading lady of Warner Bros.' Behind the Eight-Ball short subjects series, playing Mrs. Joe McDoakes (George O'Hanlon). Coates stayed with the Eight-Ball series even after her marriage to Bare ended, and also appeared in supporting parts in such Warners features as Look for the Silver Lining (1949). In 1951, Coates was cast as reporter Lois Lane in Lippert Productions' "B"-feature Superman and the Mole Men, wherein George Reeves played the dual role of Superman and Clark Kent for the first time. This week-long assignment led to both Reeves and Phyllis being cast in the subsequent Superman TV series. While Phyllis thrived on the rigors of the hectic production schedule and was a good friend of Reeves', she was compelled to leave Superman after its first season when a possible starring role in another TV weekly came her way. That project died, but Phyllis remained in films until the early 1960s, mostly in westerns (Marshall of Cedar Creek [1953] and Blood Arrow [1958]) and also as the lead in one of the last Republic serials, Panther Girl of the Kongo (1953). She appeared in quite a few sci-fi and horror films as well; in Invasion USA (1952) one of her fellow cast members was Noel Neill, the actress who'd replaced her as Lois Lane on Superman. Phyllis remained active in television throughout her career, co-starring on the short-lived 1958 sitcom This is Alice and playing good guest roles in a multitude of series like Perry Mason, The Untouchables and The Patty Duke Show. Long in retirement, Phyllis Coates returned to films and TV in the early 1990s; one of her best latter-day roles was on the newest Superman TV incarnation, Lois and Clark where she plays Lois Lane's mother!