This one’s for Hoback.
JOE CONNELLY, 85
TV pioneer co-created `Leave It to Beaver’
Los Angeles Times
February 15, 2003
Joe Connelly, a prolific pioneer television writer-producer who co-created the classic situation comedy “Leave It to Beaver,” died Thursday. He was 85.
His name is professionally inseparable from his longtime writing and producing partner, Bob Mosher. Together, they served as writer-producers on a spate of television shows, which they created or developed, including “The Munsters,” “Tammy” and “Blondie.”
“Leave It to Beaver,” however, remains their most enduring and fondly remembered credit.
The series, which ended in 1963 after six seasons but continues in syndication around the world, starred Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont as June and Ward Cleaver, Tony Dow as Wally and, of course, Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.
“I think the show is part of the Golden Age of television, and because of Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, all the cast members feel very lucky to have had such great, inspired writers,” Mathers told the Los Angeles Times recently.
Born in New York City in 1917, Mr. Connelly had a stint in the merchant marines before landing a job at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York City, where he met Mosher.
For 12 years, he and Mosher wrote for “Amos `n’ Andy,” including the early 1950s TV version of the radio show.