Who didn’t crush on Tony Dow?
In college, we’d watch Leave it to Beaver, getting stoned after classes.
As played by Dow, Wally was the “all-American” boy—an intelligent, polite teenager, trusted by his parents, popular with his peers, and liked by his teachers. (Wally was based on the series writer Joe Connelly’s 14-yr old son, Jay.)
Tony Dow’s mother was a stuntwoman in westerns. As a boy growing up in Hollywood, he trained as a swimmer and was a Junior Olympics diving champion. Without any acting credits, Dow answered an open-call to land the spot as Wally! Producers took advantage of Dow’s popularity and scripted episodes delving into Wally’s dating life, his after-school jobs, his friends.
He took a break from his acting career to serve in the California Army National Guard from 1965 to 1968, during the Vietnam War, where he served in the 40th Armored Division as a photographer. During the 1970s, Dow continued acting while working in the construction industry and studying journalism and film making.
Dow revealed that he suffered from clinical depression which he described as a “self-absorbing feeling of worthlessness, of hopelessness.” He subsequently starred in self-help videos chronicling this battle, including the 1998 Beating the Blues.
In addition to acting, directing, producing, and writing, Dow was a sculptor, creating abstract bronze, as well as burl wood, sculptures at his home in Topanga Canyon. In fact, he was chosen as one of three sculptors in the United States delegation, when he was 63, to show at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts exhibition. The sculpture was Unarmed Warrior, a bronze figure of a woman holding a shield.
“It’s a huge honor,” Dow says, and then laughs. “It’s a little odd, because I can’t get in some of the shows around here, but I got in at the Louvre.”
In 2022, Dow died from liver cancer, age 77, in Topanga. “He was the best Dad anyone could ask for,” son Christopher stated.
