The Beav!
Leave it to Beaver was probably my favorite TV show growing up. The half hour Thursday night show was about the lives of two brothers, Wally and Theodore (Beaver) Cleaver growing up in a fictional suburb named Mayfield. What I liked most about the show was Beav's unassuming demeanor and Wally’s dry sense of humor. In a typical episode, Beaver (played by Jerry Mathers) gets into some sort of boyish scrape, drags his older brother into the situation to make matters worse, then faces his parents, June & Ward Beaver, for some level-headed parental discipline. The series often showed the parents debating their approach to child rearing, and some episodes were built around parental gaffes. Leave it to Beaver was unique in that the premise was from the kids’ point of view. At the time, the Beav was considered a modern day Tom Sawyer!
According to Wally played by Tony Dow, if the studio audience laughed too much, they redid the scene to tone down the comedy and to keep the show more low-key. It didn’t work, as I laugh out loud when re-viewing an old episode.
Leave It to Beaver premiered on October 4, 1957, the very same day as the Communists launched Sputnik, the first satellite in orbit around the earth, which started the space race between the USSR and the United States. The TV show ran for 234 episodes over 6 seasons. Check out that first episode the day of the Sputnik launch by clicking here.
One of the special Leave It to Beaver characters was Eddie Haskell. Typically, Eddie would greet his friends' parents with overdone good manners and often a compliment such as, "That's a lovely dress you're wearing, Mrs. Cleaver." However, when no parents were around, Eddie was always up to no good—either conniving with his friends or picking on the Beav. An untrustworthy wise guy, Eddie could be relied upon to concoct and instigate schemes with his friends, schemes for which they would be in the position of blame if (and frequently when) they were caught. One of his most infamous pranks with the Cleaver brothers involved fastening a chain around the rear axle of their friend Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford's car, causing unplanned damage as the entire rear axle, wheels and all, became detached when Lumpy tried to move the car.
Eddie was played by Ken Osmond. In 1970, after the show was over, Osmond joined the Los Angeles Police Department and grew a mustache which helped to secure his anonymity. He worked as a motorcycle officer and while on duty, was struck by five bullets while in a foot chase with a suspected car thief. He was protected from four of the bullets by his bullet-resistant vest, with the fifth bullet ricocheting off of his belt buckle. Osmond was placed on disability and eventually retired from the force in 1988.The shooting was later dramatized in a November 1992 episode of the CBS series Top Cops.
Another episode had Wally and the Beav wanting a pet, so they ordered a baby alligator from a catalog. Once it arrived, they soon realized there was no place with water to keep their new pet, so they improvised and used the tank of the toilet in their bathroom. At the time, censors would not allow toilets to be shown on TV, but after re-filming the segment showing only the back tank without displaying the bowl, the episode was allowed to be shown.Those TV censors are sure long gone!
Click here for access to every episode of Leave It to Beaver. LOL!
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