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Jerry Mathers searched for decades to reunite with Larry Mondello
Rusty Stevens' final Sixties role was on The Rifleman. After that, nobody could track him down for nearly two decades.
The last time anybody saw child actor Rusty Stevens on TV was in 1963.
His final appearance was on a special Halloween episode of The Rifleman called "Hostages of Fortune." In the episode, he plays a bully who ends up getting in a fistfight with Mark McCain (Johnny Crawford).
In the years before this Rifleman appearance, Rusty had been seen on popular shows like Wagon Train, Perry Mason, and My Three Sons. But to classic TV fans, he will always be best known as playing Larry Mondello on Leave It to Beaver from 1957 to 1960.
For Stevens, getting cast on Leave It to Beaver was a life change that came out of nowhere.
At that time, he was working as a paperboy, selling newspapers on a street corner, when a children's talent scout named Lola Moore happened to see him.
Rusty had been selling those papers for 10 months without anyone paying any attention to him, but to Lola, there was just something about him. She liked his style.
Stevens' parents were shocked.
"The studio people say he's a real discovery," his mom told The Valley Times — the very newspaper her son had been selling — in 1957.
In all of Rusty's life, he'd never once been asked to act in anything, not a school play or a church skit, nothing. But his mom admitted he loved to watch movies and TV Westerns and act out the parts around the house.
That year Rusty made his TV debut on Leave It to Beaver, becoming known to audiences as one of Beaver's very best pals.
Stevens continued appearing on Leave It to Beaver over 67 episodes while also appearing on shows like 77 Sunset Strip and Shirley Temple’s Storybook.
His acting career could've kept on going after Leave It to Beaver ended, but instead his parents decided to end his contract with the show and leave Los Angeles suddenly.
According to Leave It to Beaver star Barbara Billingsley, the issue may have been that producers weren’t fans of Stevens' overbearing mother. The TV mom claimed Stevens was fired.
Whatever happened, Rusty's family moved to Pennsylvania, and the last few projects he had acted in continued airing over the next few years, as Rusty gave up the life of a child star and traded it back for a normal childhood.
It seemed everybody forgot about Rusty. Everybody except his old buddy Beaver, that is.
Jerry Mathers kept searching for his old friend and was frustrated with how long it took to finally reunite.
"Nobody could find him for the longest time," Mathers told The Pantagraph in 1982, nearly two decades after Rusty had disappeared. "Everybody lost touch with him."
Finally, Beaver did find his pal, though, and when he did, he found him working as a car insurance salesman in New Jersey.
Mathers persuaded Stevens to take part in the 1983 Leave It to Beaver reunion movie, and Rusty even did three guest spots on episodes of The New Leave It to Beaver, making his final TV role the same as his first.
It had to feel like he was stepping back into another life, much the same as when he got scouted selling newspapers and got whisked away from the street corner to the studio, just like that.
According to Mathers, from that point on, the pair of classic TV buddies never lost touch again.
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113 Comments
There must be plenty of other things to write about.
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Or too rude so as not to appreciate "Poetic License" (as well as the original story itself). I think we get the connection between a character's name and his actual name. And eager to read it again!
Judy Hensler Chester Anderson
Tooey Brown and Bill Scott
Bengie Bellamy (Joey Scott)
Appeared on LITB for a couple
Of episodes before Bengie
Vanished with no explanation.
On GOMER Pyle USMC
Cpl. Boyle(Roy Stuart)
And aCpl.Nick Cuccinelli
(Tommy Leonetti ) disappeared with no explanation.
Also on The Andy Griffith Show
There was an episode called
Stranger In Town where Ed
Sawyer(William Lanteau)
Moves to Mayberry because
Mayberry was his home town.
Then Ed Sawyer vanished into
Thin air never to be seen
Again.If Ed Sawyer really
Moved to Mayberry then
Then where was Ed Sawyer
Hiding in Mayberry??
Also Sudsy and Robbie's.
Friend Hank vanished from
My 3 Sons with no explanation.
Also Angela Brown Ann Marshall)vanished from
My Favorite Martiann with
No explanation after only
3 episodes.
And Ginger(Charlene Salerno)
The girlfriend of Wally Plumstead(Skip Young) on
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet disappeared with no
Explanation.
On Green Acres
Newt Kiley and Roy Trendell
Were not seen on season 6
On Green Acres.
When Spike disappeared from
Happy Days Chachi arrived in
Milwaukee .
Larry Monello(Rusty Stevens)
Disappeared from Leave It To
Braver another heavyset kid
Named Harry Henderson
(Keith Taylor) replaced Larry
Mondwllo. And Judy Hensler
(Jeri Weil) was replaced by
Penny Woods(Karen Sue Trent).
Chester Anderson (Buddy Hart)
And Tooey Brown(Tiger Fafara)
And Bill Scott(David Kent)
Vanished from Leave It To
Beaver with no explanation
It reminded me of the Happy
Days characters who disappeared with no explanation:
Moose:Barry Greenberg
Eugene Belvin: Denis Mandel
Melvin Belvin: Scott Bernstein
Bag Zombroski; Neil J Schwartz
Chuck Cunningham:
Gavan O Herlihy and
Randolph Roberts
Trudy :TITA Bell
Jill Higgins:Charlene Tilton
Spike :Danny Butch
Wendy :/Misty Rowe
Marsha Simms: Beatrice Colen
Flip Phillips :Billy Warlock
KC Cunningham: Crystal Bernard
1) His acting career did continue after LITB as he acted in seven other shows after he left Leave it to Beaver in 1960. His last acting credit was in 1963. These were not like movie roles which are sometimes released years after they were filmed. These were TV roles, filmed only months before airing on TV.
2) His family did not leave suddenly as is seen by the TV roles played for 3 years after leaving Leave it to Beaver
3) I may be wrong, but in interviews with Jerry Mathers and others, the producer of the Still the Beaver movie had to hire a detective to find Rusty. It wasn't Mathers himself who found him.
Those are the only errors I can see that appear immediately to me, but there may be others. But I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt. But I do wonder how many other errors are in these blog posts about actors on the METV site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Stevens
Well, the misstatement actually originates in the Wiki link. A service which actually requests their readers to update for accuracy, and to add to the citations. In fact, doing the math explains that his appearances continued forward to the final date noted. And I didn't know the reason why he left the Series.
My hunch is, that MeTV Writers don't quite have enough time to do that. Just as much as the readers on this site, probably don't either. Except Ultra Fans of particular Series, as I would regarding mine as well.
"Still the Beaver" reunion movie.
But if Disney is at all involved, or has rights exceeding Universal's, I think that's code for how they're not going to make it available for free. But either through hard copy Media, or Pay-to-View (streaming). And, I haven't researched any further. Too bad, think what a perfect Saturday Morning Show it would be!!
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That's unfortunate if the major corporations that own the syndication/broadcast rights to the series are tying it up with w/e tactics their using. It would make a perfect addition to the series currently running. Either Saturday morning or alternating with the LITB episodes they run on Sunday afternoons.
Obviously there aren't enough Mannix Fans around 😉
