Leave It to Beaver
Leave It to Beaver is an American television sitcom that follows the misadventures of a suburban boy, his family and his friends. It starred Barbara Billingsley, Hugh Beaumont, Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers.
CBS first broadcast the show on October 4, 1957, but dropped it after one season. ABC picked it up and aired it for another five years, from October 2, 1958, to June 20, 1963. It proved to be a scheduling challenge for both networks, moving through four time slots over the course of its run. The series was produced by Gomalco Productions from 1957 to 1961, and then by Kayro Productions from 1961 to 1963. It was distributed by Revue Studios.
While Leave It to Beaver never broke into the Nielsen Ratings top 30 in its six-season run, it proved to be much more popular in reruns. It also led to an unsuccessful 1997 film of the same name.
Premise
The show is built around young Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver and the trouble he gets himself into while navigating an often incomprehensible, sometimes illogical world. Supposedly, when he was a baby, his older brother Wallace "Wally" mispronounced "Theodore" as "Tweedor". Their firm-but-loving parents, Ward and June Cleaver, felt "Beaver" sounded better. Conversely, Mathers has said that the real reason for the name "Beaver" is that one of the show's writers, Joe Connelly, had a shipmate named "The Beaver" in World War II; from that came the family's name, "Cleaver."Beaver's friends include the perpetually apple-munching Larry Mondello in the early seasons, and, later, Gilbert Bates, as well as the old firefighter, Gus. His sweet-natured-but-no-nonsense elementary school teachers are Miss Canfield , Miss Landers and Mrs. Rayburn, the school's principal. In the early seasons, Beaver's nemesis in class is Judy Hensler.
In its first season, Wally was in eighth grade and 12 years old, while Beaver was 7 and in second grade, a five-year age difference; in real life, the two actors were only three years apart. By the series' end, the boys were inexplicably only four years apart, with Wally graduating from high school and Beaver graduating from grammar school. Wally is popular with both peers and adults, getting into trouble much less frequently than some of the other characters. He letters in three sports. He has little difficulty attracting girlfriends, among them Mary Ellen Rogers and Julie Foster. His pals include the awkward Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford and smart aleck Eddie Haskell, the archetype of the two-faced wise guy, a braggart among his peers and an obsequious yes man to the adults he mocks behind their backs. Eddie often picks on the Beaver.
The family lives in the town of Mayfield, Ohio. In the episode "The Grass is Always Greener" a major clue is seen on the side of a "Henry's Refuse" garbage truck, where the address "8102 Euclid" is seen. Euclid Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the Cleveland, Ohio area and Mayfield is a Cleveland suburb. Beaver attends Grant Ave. Grammar School and Wally attends Mayfield High School.
Cast
Main characters
- Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver: Billingsley has said that June Cleaver's wardrobe was more than a fashion statement. The pearl necklace hid a hollow on her neck that would have caused shadows and high-heeled shoes were employed to offset the boys' growing height.
- Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver: Before he made Ward Cleaver his acting trademark, Beaumont sometimes played villains in film and television. He directed a number of Leave It to Beaver episodes in the last two seasons, including the final one, the retrospective "Family Scrapbook".
- Tony Dow as Wally Cleaver
- Jerry Mathers as Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver: The casting directors noticed that Mathers was uneasy at the auditions and asked him where he would rather be. Mathers replied that he would rather be at his Cub Scout den meeting, where he was going after the audition. That boyish innocence got Mathers the part of Beaver.
Supporting characters
- Ken Osmond as Eddie Haskell
- Eddie Haskell's parents played by:
- * Karl Swenson in two 1958 episodes, "Train Trip" and "Voodoo Magic".
- * Ann Doran in the 1958 episode "Voodoo Magic".
- * John Alvin in the 1961 episode "Eddie Spends the Night".
- * Anne Barton in two 1963 episodes, "Summer in Alaska" and "The Credit Card".
- * George O. Petrie in two 1963 episodes, "Summer in Alaska" and "The Credit Card".
- Diane Brewster as Miss Canfield, Beaver's first teacher at Grant Avenue Grammar School. Brewster also played Miss Simms in the pilot episode.
- Sue Randall as Miss Alice Landers, Beaver's teacher, replacing Miss Canfield
- Doris Packer as Mrs. Rayburn, the principal of Grant Avenue Grammar School
- Stephen Talbot as Gilbert Bates : Appears first as an insecure braggart, becomes a character who constantly gets Beaver in trouble, and ends up as Beaver's best friend.
- Rusty Stevens as Larry Mondello
- Madge Blake as Margaret Mondello, Larry's mother
- Richard Correll as Richard Rickover
- Stanley Fafara as Hubert "Whitey" Whitney
- Jeri Weil as Judy Hensler
- Karen Sue Trent as Penny Woods
- Burt Mustin as Gus the fireman, head of Auxiliary Firehouse No. 7
- Frank Bank as Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford
- Richard Deacon as Fred Rutherford, Lumpy's pompous, demanding father and Ward Cleaver's equally pompous, smug co-worker
- Buddy Hart as Chester Anderson
- Tiger Fafara as Tooey Brown, Wally's friend
- Pamela Baird as Mary Ellen Rogers, Wally's first girlfriend
- Cheryl Holdridge as Julie Foster, another of Wally's girlfriends
Episodes
The second episode, "Captain Jack", was intended to be the pilot, but as Jerry Mathers told Fox News in 2014, the episode had to show a toilet, which censors would not allow at the time. Wally and Beaver put their pet alligator in the toilet tank, since it needed to be in water. The episode was finally allowed to air with just the toilet tank showing. Mathers said the show "actually set some precedent for the television industry."
A voice-over by Hugh Beaumont precedes each episode in the first season, providing a background to that episode's theme. These are omitted in airings on TV Land, but included in airings on MeTV.
Opening titles
Season one: The characters are not shown. A drawing of a street, viewed from above, displays the credits in wet concrete.Season two: Ward and June, standing at the bottom of the stairs, see the boys off to school as they come down the stairs and exit the front door.
Season three: Ward and June enter the boys' bedroom to wake them.
Season four: Ward and June open the front door and stand on the stoop. As Wally, followed by Beaver, leave for school, June hands them their lunches; Ward gives them their jackets.
Season five: June takes refreshments to the men in the front yard.
Season six: June, carrying a picnic basket, walks from the front door towards the car. Ward, carrying a thermos jug for the picnic, is next, followed in quick succession by Wally. Beaver, lagging behind, runs out, slamming the door behind him. Ward, with June in the passenger seat and the boys in back, then reverses toward the camera.
Musical theme
The show's playfully-bouncy theme tune, which became as much of a show trademark as Beaver's baseball cap or Eddie Haskell's false obsequiousness, was "The Toy Parade," composed by David Kahn, Melvyn Leonard, and Mort Greene. For the final season, however, the song was given a jazz-like arrangement by veteran composer/arranger Pete Rugolo.Syndication
Reruns of the show became part of CBS affiliates' lineups in the mornings for several years. TBS aired the show for many years in the late 1980s. TV Land began airing it in July 1998, MeTV in May 2013, Antenna TV in May 2015 and FETV in August 2021. MeTV currently airs it weekdays at 8am & 8:30am ET and Sundays at 1pm & 1:30pm ET, while FETV airs it weekdays at 10:30am & 11:05am ET, every night at 2am & 2:35am ET and Sundays at 6:30am & 7:05am ET. Today, NBCUniversal Television owns the syndication rights and all properties related to the series.Spinoffs
A made-for-television reunion movie, Still the Beaver, appeared in 1983. The main original cast appeared, except for Beaumont, who had died the previous year. Ward Cleaver was still a presence, however: the film's story used numerous flashbacks to the original show, as it followed young-adult Beaver's struggle to reconcile divorce and newly minted single fatherhood, straining to cope with what his father might or might not have done, as he faces the possibility of his widowed mother selling their childhood home. June Cleaver is later elected to the Mayfield City Council.Its reception led to a new first-run, made-for-cable series, The New Leave It to Beaver, with Beaver and Lumpy Rutherford running Ward's old firm, Wally as a practicing attorney and expectant father, June having sold the old house to Beaver himself but living with him as a doting grandmother to Beaver's two young sons. Eddie Haskell runs his own contracting business and has a son, Freddie, who is every inch his father's son — right down to the dual-personality.