Growing Up

Brace yourselves: The Beav turned 52 on June 2. Jerry Mathers, of course, grew up as Beaver Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver, the TV sitcom that ran from 1957 to 1963. I was celebrating early with a sinful bear claw when Mathers checked in by phone from his home in Valencia, California.

Mathers told me that in 1996 two doctors—they were family friends who had seen him steadily gain weight since 1989—finally persuaded him to go in for a physical. After the exam, the doctors asked Mathers if he wanted to see his daughters graduate from high school or marry. (He also has a grown son.) The doctors told Mathers that he wasn’t going to be alive in three to five years unless he lost weight immediately. He was up to 209 pounds, his diabetes was out of control, and he had high blood pressure.

Question: Didn’t you have trouble losing the weight at first?
Answer: I first tried starvation, where I wouldn’t eat all day and then I’d have one meal, but by the time that one meal came around, I’d say, “Well, gee, I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch, so now I can eat.” I went about three months like that.

Q: Were you exercising at that point?
A: I was, but not on a regimented schedule. I was exercising, but I’d go out for a walk.

Q: How did you finally take off the weight?
A: A friend of mine’s wife with a weight problem all her life suddenly lost all this weight. She said, “Well, I’ve tried to diet all my life, and I couldn’t do it by myself, so I’ve gone to Jenny Craig.” I went in as a totally regular client, not as a celebrity, I mean. (Mathers later became a spokesman for the company.) I started May 7 of 1997—and by December of that year, I was within 10 pounds of my target weight (about 170).

Q: What kind of exercising are you doing?
A: I usually get up between 4:30 and 5, have a grapefruit and some sort of a grain, a cereal, and then I run every day. I was in the military and, just so you know, basically what I’m doing is a military “double time,” or jog is what most people would call it. I then come back to my house and, three to four days a week, I use the ab machine—the cheap kind. And then I lift free weights, depending on how I feel and how much time I have.

Q: Your doctors, I assume, are happy with your progress.
A: Yes. In fact, I’m now totally off—I had adult onset or type II diabetes—all medication for diabetes. I still am taking blood pressure medication, but it’s also been reduced.

Q: What are you eating nowadays?
A: Most of the (business) people I deal with are on expense accounts, and they all want me to come to lunch. So, that’s usually a salad. Actually, my favorite is Mexican food. I’ll have a tostada salad and, instead of dressing, I use the salsa. I usually don’t eat again until dinner. Usually I will have either a light pasta or a lot of times I really like salads. The one thing I do that fills me up a lot more than probably most people, I drink about 70 ounces of water a day and I don’t drink anything else but water.

Q: Tell me something. How come you’re not a mess like some child stars?
A: At the time I was doing Leave It to Beaver, my father was the principal of a high school in the San Fernando Valley. My parents always asked me, “Do you want to work?” In fact, when Leave It to Beaver closed down, the studio wanted to put me under a long-term contract. I had always gone to studio school all through elementary school, and I said, “No. I want to go to high school.” And my parents told the studio, “Nope, he wants to go to high school.” It wasn’t like they had to say, “Oh my God, we’re not going to eat because Jerry’s not going to work for the next four years.”

Q: Your story is really different from that of so many child stars.
A: That’s what everybody says. They keep saying—what’s the bad part? I cannot find a down side. Yes, I had a very different childhood than anyone else, but I have met people and done things that I would never have had the opportunity to do if I hadn’t done Leave It to Beaver and I definitely know that.

I am lucky enough to realize that Leave It to Beaver is part of the Golden Age of television. I don’t consider it the pinnacle of my career because I’ve done many other things, but because of its status in the Golden Age of television, it’s definitely something I’m very proud of. People say when I do interviews, “Do you mind talking about Leave It to Beaver?” Of course not. Why would I mind? As I say, it’s something that I’ll always be remembered for. Why in any way would I want to disassociate myself from it or not talk about it?