 In the pilot episode "It's a Small World", Richard Deacon plays a character named "Mr. Baxter", an employee for the "Franklin Milk Co."

Beginning in "Leave It To Beaver"'s fifth season which launched in September 1961, Fred Rutherford began appearing less often in episodes because Richard Deacon began appearing as a regular on "The Dick Van Dyke Show".He reprised the role in the 1983 reunion television movie, "Still the Beaver", but Deacon died shortly before the spinoff television series "The New Leave It to Beaver" began filming in 1984.His character had already been written into two early scripts for the revival series with a fairly large role, so the producers chose to recast the role with actor Larry D. Mann.