Season one shows Wally at a normal age behavior. Season two shows Wally a lot more mature and by season three, Wally seems really mature.

Am I the only one that thinks like this?


Maybe they wanted Beaver to have the spotlight as the "little Kid" and therefore made Wally more mature so that there would not be two kids.

According to Wiki, Tony Dow's b'day is 4/13/1945. So, he was probably 12 when they started filming LITB in 1957. It would seem a little soon for such a growth spurt between 12 and 13 years old, so maybe they did try to "age" him a little.

Jerry Mathers' b'day was 6/2/48, so he was playing a year-younger kid. Later, they "aged" him, too, completely skipping the seventh grade. And, with Dow, he was a senior in HS for two years.

Wally seemed always mature but almost like an adult in the last episodes. He was every father's dream that he date their daughter. Even when he messed up like accepting money for looking after Beaver when the bathtub overflowed. He just didn't feel right accepting money under false pretenses. He was always adult and way too boring. The only time he wasn't adult was when he retaliated and poured ice cream on Eddie and Lumpy and pulled off Lumpy's axle. He was a perfect person. Just his short conversations with Ward and June are mature.

No wonder Tony wanted to play a beach bum who drinks beer.

I loved the episode where Wally poured ice cream on Lumpy! It was so out of character and funny to see Wally lose his temper like that, finally giving Lumpy what he deserved. I think that was in one of the later seasons, probably season 5.

Other than that Wally was really mature, much more so than his peers.

You have to love him when Marlene gives him this long passionate kiss and Wally tries to push her away and says "Golly." He acts like he doesn't belong in the bar. He is very mature in that one and never tries to "get with it." He hates the beer and the smoke. They might be close in age but years apart. We all know our hero will never fall for Marlene she is a "hussy."

I can't place the Wally dumping ice cream on Lumpy episode...more details?

Wally shows how naive he is when he tries to date the tennis pro's girlfriend. If he was more mature he probably could have figured out she was using him.

I can't place the Wally dumping ice cream on Lumpy episode...more details?



Wally's Weekend Job. Season 5, Ep 6. Wally gets a job at a soda fountain. Eddie and Lumpy pull a trick by ordering a bunch of ice cream for Julie Foster's slumber party. Wally gets stuck with all of the ice cream, so he goes and pays a visit to Eddie and Lumpy.

Oh, yeah! One of the few times Wally loses his temper. Haven't seen that one in awhile.

Love how he pours the ice cream in Eddie's sweater then pats it. Tells Eddie how much he owes him for the ice cream. He pours another container of melted ice cream over Lump's head. Lumpy calls out for Daddy. Wally was always more than a big brother he was more like a second father. He knew he wanted to be a aeronautical engineer as a junior.

Personally, I never thought Wally matured too quickly. If anything, I thought he regressed, getting into many of the schemes and scrapes that Beaver would usually get into, with Beaver himself becoming more of an observational character.

Eddie actually became quite prominent and saved seasons 5 and 6.