Leave It to Beaver
Encyclopedia
Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy
about an inquisitive but often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver
(portrayed by Jerry Mathers
) and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood. The show also starred Barbara Billingsley
and Hugh Beaumont as Beaver's parents, June and Ward Cleaver, and Tony Dow
as Beaver's brother Wally. The show has attained an iconic
status in the United States, with the Cleavers exemplifying the idealized suburban family of the mid-20th century.
One of the first primetime sitcom series written from a child's point-of-view, the show was created by the writers Joe Connelly
and Bob Mosher
. These veterans of radio and early television found inspiration for the show's characters, plots, and dialogue in the lives, experiences, and conversations of their own children. Like several television dramas and sitcoms of the late 1950s and early 1960s (Lassie
and My Three Sons
, for example), Leave It to Beaver is a glimpse at middle-class, white American boyhood. In a typical episode Beaver got into some sort of trouble, then faced his parents for reprimand and correction. However, neither parent was omniscient; indeed, the series often showed the parents debating their approach to child rearing, and some episodes were built around parental gaffes.
Comprising six full 39-week seasons (234 episodes), the show had its debut on CBS
on October 4, 1957, and then moved to ABC
the following year, completing its run on June 20, 1963. Although television production was transitioning from black-and-white to color in the latter years of the show's run, the series continued to be shot with a single camera on black-and-white 35mm film. The show's production companies included comedian George Gobel
's Gomalco Productions (1957–1961) and Kayro Productions (1961–1963) with filming at Revue Studios/Republic Studios and Universal Studios
in Los Angeles, California. The show was distributed by MCA Television.
The still popular show was canceled in 1963 because the stars wanted to move on. In that year Jerry Mathers was entering his freshman year in high school and actor Tony Dow
was about to graduate from high school.
Contemporary commentators praised Leave It to Beaver, with Variety
comparing Beaver to Mark Twain
's Tom Sawyer
. Much juvenile merchandise was released during the show's first-run including board game
s, novels, and comic book
s. The show has enjoyed a renaissance in popularity since the 1970s through off-network syndication, a reunion telemovie, Still the Beaver (1983), and a sequel series The New Leave It to Beaver
(1985–89). In 1997, a movie version
based on the original series was released to moderate acclaim, and, in October 2007, TV Land
celebrated the show's 50th anniversary with a marathon. Although the show never broke into the Nielsen ratings
top-30 nor won any awards, it placed on TIME
magazine's unranked 2007 list of "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME."
According to Tony Dow, "if any line got too much of a laugh, they'd take it out. They didn't want a big laugh; they wanted chuckles."
, and other sitcoms and domestic comedies of the era, the show would not focus upon the parents, but upon their children, with the series being told from the kids' point-of-view. Working titles during the show's gestation period included It's a Small World and Wally and the Beaver. The pilot aired April 23, 1957 as "It's a Small World
" on anthology series Heinz Studio 57.
Pilot stars Casey Adams
and Paul Sullivan (as father and son Ward and Wally Cleaver) were replaced as series production neared, and, six months after the pilot's broadcast, the series properly debuted on CBS
Friday October 4, 1957 as Leave It to Beaver with the episode third in production order, "Beaver Gets 'Spelled
." The intended premiere, "Captain Jack," displayed a toilet
tank (which didn't pass the censor
's office in time for the show's scheduled debut) and aired the week following the premiere. "Captain Jack" has claimed its place in television history as the first American TV show to display a toilet tank. In 1997, it was ranked #42 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
was a potential sponsor during the show's conception period, and counseled against the show's suggested title, Wally and the Beaver, believing viewers would think the show was a nature program. The show was ultimately sponsored by Ralston Purina, with General Electric
and Chrysler Corporation coming on board in the later seasons (Ward Cleaver was seen driving a Plymouth Fury
during the opening credits in the final season).
Episodes were budgeted at $30,000 to $40,000 each, making the show one of the most expensive of its kind during its years of production. High costs were incurred with the show's many outdoor scenes. The most expensive single episode, "In the Soup" (in which Beaver gets stuck in an advertising billboard with a gigantic make-believe cup of soup, curious to learn how "steam" could come out of the cup), was budgeted at $50,000. Two billboards were built for the episode: one outside on the backlot, and the other inside the studio.
, an eight-year-old with substantial acting experience. At one of many auditions, Mathers wore his Cub Scout
uniform and told casting personnel he was anxious to leave for his den meeting. Connelly and Mosher were charmed with Mathers's innocent candor and cast him in the title role. Barbara Billingsley
, an actress with experience in several B-movies and one failed television series (Professional Father), was then hired to play Beaver's mother, June Cleaver
. Preteen Tony Dow
accompanied a friend auditioning for Johnny Wildlife to the studio, and, although Dow had no aspirations to an acting career, tried out for the role of Beaver's brother Wally Cleaver
and was hired. Several adult candidates then auditioned for the role of Beaver's father Ward Cleaver
, but Connelly and Mosher finally signed Hugh Beaumont
, a Methodist
lay minister who had worked with Mathers in a religious film.
Recurring characters included Eddie Haskell
(played by Ken Osmond
), Larry Mondello (Rusty Stevens
), Hubert "Whitey" Whitney (Stanley Fafara
), Gilbert Bates (Stephen Talbot
), Judy Hensler (Jeri Weil
), Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford (Frank Bank
), and Mary Ellen Rogers (Pamela Baird
). Burt Mustin
played elderly fireman Gus, Richard Deacon
played Ward's co-worker Fred Rutherford, and Sue Randall
played schoolteacher Miss Landers.
and continued to write the well-received show when it moved to CBS television in 1950. Although both men initially wrote all the scripts for earlier episodes of Leave It to Beaver, after becoming executive producer
s, they began accepting scripts from other writers, refining them if necessary.
With Mosher the father of two children and Connelly six, the two men had enough source material and inspiration for the show's dialogue and plot lines. Connelly's eight-year-old son, Ricky, served as the model for Beaver and his fourteen-year-old son, Jay, for Wally while Eddie Haskell and Larry Mondello were based on friends of the Connelly boys. Connelly often took the boys on outings while carrying a notebook to record their conversations and activities.
Other writers who contributed to the show were Bill Manhoff, Mel Diamond, Dale and Katherine Eunson, Ben Gershman, George Tibbles, Fran van Hartesvelt, Bob Ross, Alan Manings, Mathilde and Theodore Ferro, and the team of Dick Conway and Roland MacLane, who wrote many of the shows for the last two seasons. Connelly told an interviewer, "If we hire a writer we tell him not to make up situations but to look into his own background. It's not a 'situation' comedy where you have to create a situation for a particular effect. Our emphasis is on a natural story line."
Connelly and Mosher worked to create humorous characters in simple situations, rather than relying on contrived, set-up jokes. The two often adapted real-life situations in the lives of their children. "The Haircut", for example, was directly based on an incident involving Bobby Mosher, who was forced to wear a stocking cap in a school play after giving himself a ragged haircut. Fourteen-year-old Jay Connelly's preening habits became Wally's and seven-year-old Ricky Connelly's habit of dropping the initial syllables of words was incorporated into Beaver's character.
Norman Tokar
, a director with a talent for working with children, was hired to direct most of the episodes for the first three years and developed the characters of Eddie Haskell
and Larry Mondello. Other directors included Earl Bellamy
, David Butler (who had directed child actress Shirley Temple
), Bretaigne Windust
, Gene Reynolds, and Hugh Beaumont. Norman Abbott
directed most of the episodes through the last three years.
was occasionally used for establishing shots.
The script for an upcoming episode would be delivered to the cast late in the week, with a read-through the following Monday, awkward lines or other problems being noted for rewrites. On Tuesday afternoon, the script was rehearsed in its entirety for the camera and lighting crew. Over the following three days, individual scenes would be filmed with a single camera.
Filming was limited to one episode per week (rather than the two typical of television production of the period) to accommodate the large number of child actors, who were allowed to work only four hours a day. Scenes with children were usually filmed first, with adult actors having to wait until after 5:00 pm for filming.
Series cinematographers
included Mack Stengler with 122 episodes between 1958 and 1962, Jack MacKenzie with 40 episodes between 1962 and 1963, and William A. Sickner with 37 episodes between 1957 and 1959. Fred Mandl (1962), Ray Rennahan (1958), and Ray Flin (1960) served as cinematographers on less than five episodes each.
featuring clips from the episode (or generic footage from other episodes) and a voice-over introduction by Beaumont briefly stating the episode's theme. The teaser is followed by the main title and credits in which only the show's four main stars are introduced. In some seasons, significant crew are noted as an extension of the opening credits after a commercial break. Midway through the first season, the Beaumont voice-over introduction was discarded in favor of a brief scene extracted from the episode at hand, and, at the end of the first season, the teaser was entirely discarded, moving immediately to the title and credits.
Each season had an individually filmed sequence for the opening credits. In season one, for example, a cartoon-like drawing of a freshly laid cement sidewalk was displayed with the show title and stars' names scratched into its surface, while in the final season, the Cleavers left the house through the front door carrying articles suitable for a picnic. (See List of Leave It to Beaver episodes for specific season opening sequences). Billingsley was the first to be introduced in all opening sequences, followed by Beaumont and Dow. Mathers was introduced last, with the voice-over line, "...and Jerry Mathers as The Beaver". The camera zoomed in for a close-up of Mathers' face. The voice-over line became the title of Mathers' 1998 memoirs.
The closing sequence for the first season featured a simple, dark background as the credits rolled. In the second season, Wally and Beaver are seen walking home from school with their schoolbooks and entering the house through the front door. In the third through fifth seasons, Wally and Beaver are seen walking towards the Pine Street house. Beaver carries a baseball glove and limps along the curbstone. Both boys go to the front door. In the last season, Wally chases teen Beaver around a tree and into the house. All opening and closing sequences were accompanied by the show's theme music.
l rendition of the show's bouncy theme music, "The Toy Parade", by David Kahn, Melvyn Leonard, and Mort Greene. For the third season, the tempo was quickened and the tune whistled by a male chorus
over an orchestral accompaniment for the closing credits and for the production crew credits following the opening sequence. For the final season, the song was given a jazz
-like arrangement by veteran composer/arranger Pete Rugolo
. Though lyrics
exist for the theme tune, an instrumental arrangement is used for the show's entire run. Elements of the theme tune were given a subdued musical arrangement, which was then used as background music for tender and sentimental scenes. Occasionally, a few phrases from well-known musical compositions such as Chopin
's "Funeral March" and the French national anthem
"La Marseillaise
" are quoted.
was launched into space and left the air a few months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy
, references to contemporary news issues or topics are infrequent. Communism is mentioned in "Water, Anyone?".
Contemporary cultural references are more frequent but not overwhelming. The show acknowledges the greaser subculture and, in the last season, "The Twist"
, a popular song and dance craze of the early 1960s. The dance's promoter, Chubby Checker
, is hinted at in the episode's fictional "Chubby Chadwick" and his fictional hit tune, "Surf Board Twist". Wally and his friends perform a tepid version of The Twist at Wally's party in "The Party Spoiler". The 1960 Kirk Douglas
vehicle Spartacus
is brought up, Eisenhower is mentioned and, in one episode, Beaver says Angela Valentine wore a "Jackie Kennedy
wig" to class. Contemporary celebrities mentioned on the show include Rock Hudson
, Tuesday Weld
, Sal Mineo
, Frank Sinatra
, Tony Curtis
, Sonny Liston
, Cassius Clay
, Chet Huntley
, David Brinkley
, Jack Paar
, John Glenn
, Warren Spahn
, Fabian
and others. Then current Los Angeles Dodgers
celebrity star Don Drysdale
appears as himself in one episode. When Beaver appears on a TV show, not knowing it is being recorded to air another day, Gilbert compares the misunderstanding with "a Rod Serling
Twilight Zone
". The episode in which Beaver graduates from grammar school (8th grade) is perhaps the only time a year is mentioned. June and Ward inspect the gift they have for Beaver's graduation and read the inscription, "...Class of '63".
Leave It to Beaver is set in the fictitious community of Mayfield and its environs with scenes set on Mayfield's streets and in its stores, schools, and parks. The principal setting, however, is the Cleaver home. The Cleavers live in two houses over the series' run. The "move" was necessary when the façade of the original house—located at Republic Studios—became unavailable for filming following the production's move to Universal. The "new house" stood on the Universal backlot. The first house is fictionally located at 485 Mapleton (sometimes Maple) Drive and the second at 211 Pine Street. In an early episode set in the Mapleton Drive house, Beaver speaks of living in another house where he suffered the measles and became attached to "Billy," his first teddy bear
. In another episode, however, Beaver indicates the Mapleton Drive house was the first house he'd ever lived in.
Surrounded by a picket fence
, the Mapleton Drive house is two stories with a first floor kitchen
, dining room
, living room
and adjoining patio
, and at least three bedroom
s on the second floor—one for the boys, one for the parents, and a guest room into which Beaver moves for a night. In one episode, Wally ventures into the cellar. A kitchen door opens onto a small side yard, the driveway, and a single-car garage—a frequent setting for get-togethers between the boys, their father, and their friends.
Toward the close of season two, the Cleavers discuss moving. In the season's closer, Ward tells the boys the Mapleton Drive house has been sold. In the season three opener, the Cleavers are comfortably settled in a new house at 211 Pine Street. No episode features the actual move.
The Pine Street house consists of several rooms (kitchen and laundry room, dining room, living room, den) on the ground floor and at least three bedrooms on the second floor. None of the furnishings from the Mapleton Drive house appear in the new house; the Pine Street house is completely refurnished. Reproductions of Gainsborough
's The Blue Boy
and Lawrence
's Pinkie
hang in the front entry above graceful bergère
s. An upholstered
wing chair
at the edge of the hearth
in the living room is covered in a chinoiserie
print.
After the move to Pine Street, the boys continue to attend the same schools, frequent the same hang-outs, and visit the same friends. The Pine Street house is in the vicinity of the Mapleton Drive house; in one episode, Beaver and Larry walk to the Mapleton Drive house, uproot a small tree, and transport it to the Pine Street house in a wagon.
In the Pine Street house, Ward has a private den study off the main entry, which serves as a setting for many scenes. Unlike the garage at the Mapleton Drive house, the Pine Street garage is used less as a setting for masculine get-togethers. June and Ward's bedroom is seen for the first time in the Pine Street house. They have their own bath, sleep in twin beds, and have a portable TV in the room.
Two years before Leave It to Beaver went into production, the Pine Street façade and its neighborhood were employed extensively in the 1955 Humphrey Bogart
film, The Desperate Hours, a story about three escaped convicts terrorizing and holding hostage a four-member family.
In 1969, the Pine Street house was reused for another Universal-produced television hit, Marcus Welby, M.D.
This house can still be seen at Universal Studios
, though the original façade was replaced in 1988 for the following year's The 'Burbs
and sat in storage elsewhere on the Universal lot. The façade was replaced again for the 1996 Leave It to Beaver movie. The house and the street it sits on are currently used as the main exterior set for Wisteria Lane of Desperate Housewives
, and was previously used as the Pearson family house on The Bill Engvall Show
.
A typical episode generally follows a simple formula: Beaver or Wally (or both) get into trouble and then face their parents for a lecture regarding the event. Lectures sometimes take the form of fables, with Ward allowing the boys to discover their moral meanings and applying those meanings to their lives. Occasionally, when offences are serious, punishments such as being grounded are dealt the miscreants. The parents are sometimes shown debating the best approach to the situation. Other episodes (especially in earlier seasons) even reverse the formula, with Ward making a parenting mistake and having to figure out how to make up for it.
While the earlier seasons focus on Beaver's boyhood adventures, the later seasons give greater scope to Wally's high school life, dating, and part-time work life. Several episodes follow Wally's acquisition of a driver's license and a car. The show's focus is consistently upon the children, however: no episodes examine the marital concerns of June and Ward who are depicted from one episode to the next as an untroubled, happily married couple.
Beaver and Wally both attend public schools and are encouraged to pursue college educations as a means to prepare for their futures. Ward and June attended prep school and boarding school respectively and both attended college. Their sons are expected to do the same. While both boys consider prep school educations, Wally at the Bellport Military Academy and Beaver at an eastern school called Fallbrook, both remain at home and attend Mayfield High with their friends. School and homework are the bane of Beaver's existence. In "Beaver's Secret Life", the boy decides to become a writer in adulthood because "you don't have to go to school or know nothing ... You only have to make up adventures and get paid for it." Beaver's attitude toward education provides comic counterpoint to the backgrounds, values, and ambitions of his parents.
Occupation is presented as important to the happy life with Ward representing the successful, college-educated, middle-class professional with a steady but obscure office job, and June the competent and happy homemaker. When Beaver expresses interests in lower class occupations (such as trash collector), his parents understandably squirm with embarrassment and discomfort.
A happy marriage is the cornerstone of successful middle class life, and June and Ward represent the warm, happily married, successful middle class couple. In contrast, the parents of Beaver's friend Larry Mondello are a husband frequently out of town on business and an exasperated wife struggling singlehandedly to raise a son and sometimes depending on Ward to help discipline him. Spinsters like prim Aunt Martha are shown as out-of-touch and irksome while bachelors like globe-trotting, yarn-spinning Uncle Billy, free-loading Jeff, the tramp, and Andy, the alcoholic handyman are shown to be untrustworthy. The one episode dealing with divorce understandably shows it as having negative effects on children and family life.
June and Ward are conscientious parents, keenly aware of their duty to impart traditional, but proven, middle class family values to their boys. They do so by serving as examples in word and deed, rather than using punitive means. Ward and June are models of late-1950s, conscientious parenting. Stay-at-home June maintains a loving, nurturing home and Ward consistently supervises the behavior and moral education of his sons. While the series portrays the world through the eyes of a young boy, it sometimes dealt with controversial and adult subjects such as alcoholism and divorce.
June Cleaver remains calm amid household tumult, providing crucial guidance to her sons while shielding them from nefarious outside influences with a matronly force of will. Her protection is frequently needed against the pernicious intrigues of Eddie Haskell. He engages in impulsive, selfish, disruptive, and malevolent schemes, almost evil personified. For crafty Eddie, each day is one more step toward the twilight of the adults, which will herald his ascension to neighborhood ruler.
Ward Cleaver is a Solomon-like figure of quiet dignity who dispenses parental justice tempered with understanding. He sometimes finds himself punishing his sons for deeds he admits he committed as a child himself. He often finds himself learning the most in the episode from something his sons or sometimes his wife says.
extensively. Wally and Beaver both use "gyp" (to swindle), "mess around" (to play), and "hunka" (meaning "hunk of" in relation to food portions such as "hunka cake" or "hunka milk"). "Junk", "crummy", "grubby", "rat", and "creep" are frequently heard. The word "beef" was also used at times (mostly by Wally) over the course of the show's run, meaning "disagreement" (as in contemporary hip-hop). Ward and June disapprove. Wally uses "sweat" to his mother's annoyance; she prefers "perspiration" and asks him not to use the slang word "flip". "Goofy" is one of Beaver's favorite adjectives, and it is applied to anything that lies outside the bounds of 1950s conformism. "Giving me/you/him/her the business" was a phrase used to describe a character being sarcastic with another character.
s (consolation prize becomes "constellation prize", amulet becomes "omelette"). Grammatical errors are frequent. When Miss Canfield asks Beaver if "Beaver" is his 'given name', Beaver tells her, "My brother given it to me." Beaver uses the phrase "kinda-sorta" to mean "somewhat" throughout the first season. Beaver's speech habits were based on those of Joe Connelly's son, Ricky. Connelly carried a notebook to record the conversations of his sons and their friends, and then incorporated his notations into Beaver's character and the content of the show. As the more educated Beaver grew into a young teen, his errors with the English language diminished significantly, putting an end to one source of mirth for the viewer.
", offers a retrospective look at the show's six seasons as the Cleavers leaf through an old scrapbook while recalling past moments. The episode closes the series at milestones in the lives of the Cleaver boys: Wally readying himself for his first year of college, and Beaver leaving grammar school for high school. The episode is directed by Hugh Beaumont, written by Connelly and Mosher, and is regarded as being one of the first sitcom episodes written expressly as a series finale. Leave It to Beaver was not renewed for the 1963–64 season. My Three Sons moved into its time slot.
Several Leave It to Beaver performers appeared on the long-running CBS television series Lassie
. Hugh Beaumont had yet to snag his signature role as Ward Cleaver when he appeared in "The Well", one of the two pilots filmed for the series. The episode was filmed in color and aired monochromatically in the series' first season (1954). In 1968, Jerry Mathers appeared in "Lassie and the 4-H Boys", an episode about two teen brothers quarreling over the disposition of a prize-winning bull, while, the same year, Tony Dow appeared with Jan-Michael Vincent
as a hippie-type character in a three-part story called "Hanford's Point". Stephen Talbot (Gilbert) was featured in two episodes of "Lassie" in 1959, "The Flying Machine" and "Growing Pains." Before their commitments to Leave It to Beaver, "Tiger" Fafara appeared in one Lassie episode while Madge Blake made appearances in two episodes. In the 1960–1961 season, Richard Correll played Steve Johnson, one of Timmy Martin's Calverton friends in two episodes. Ken Osmond played a delivery boy in a second season episode and a smart-aleck kid whose carelessness causes a forest fire in the fourth season episode "The Cub Scout". One Lassie episode is titled "Leave It to Lassie and the Beavers".
, the main cast appeared in the reunion telemovie Still the Beaver (1983). The film followed adult Beaver's struggle to reconcile his recent divorce and single parenthood, while facing the possibility of his widowed mother selling their childhood home. June Cleaver is later elected to the Mayfield City Council.
(1984–1989), with Beaver and Lumpy Rutherford running Ward's old firm (where Lumpy's pompous, demanding father—played by Richard Deacon
in the original series before his death in 1984 — had been the senior partner), Wally, who married his high school girlfriend Mary Ellen Rogers, as a practicing attorney and expectant father, and 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 two sons; eldest son Freddie (played by Ken Osmond
's real-life son, Eric Osmond), who was every inch his father's son—right down to the dual-personality, and a younger son, Eddie, Jr., aka "Bomber" (played by Osmond's younger real-life son, Christian Osmond), who was often away at military school, but would periodically come home to visit.
CBS
first broadcast the show on Friday, October 4, 1957, at 7:30 pm (EST) opposite Saber of London
on NBC and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
on ABC. In March 1958, Beaver was moved to Wednesdays at 8:00 pm opposite Wagon Train
, then on NBC.
CBS dropped the show after one season. ABC picked it up and ran it for another five seasons, from October 2, 1958, to June 20, 1963. In his memoirs, Jerry Mathers states the move was the decision of the sponsor, Ralston Purina, who arranged a better deal with ABC than with CBS.
On ABC, the show saw several time slots over its run. From October 1958 to June 1959 it aired on Thursdays at 7:30 pm (EST), with summer 1959 reruns airing at 9:00 pm. From October 1959 to September 1962 the show was televised Saturdays at 8:30 pm, and during its last season (1962–1963) the show aired Thursdays at 8:30 pm.
Reruns of the show became part of CBS affiliates' lineups in the mornings for several years to come. CBN Cable Network
(now ABC Family) aired it in the early 1980s. TBS and WGN showed it for many years in the late 1980s (TBS sometimes running it back-to-back with the New Leave It to Beaver on occasion), and briefly on Nick at Nite
from July 12, 2002-August 10, 2002 as part of TV Land Sampler. It currently airs on TV Land
, where it has been shown since July 1998. Today, NBC Universal Television
owns the syndication rights and all properties related to the series.
The show started airing on the digital TV network Antenna TV
on October 3. 2011.
During the show's first run, merchandise including novels, records, and board game
s was generated for the juvenile market. With the show's renaissance in popularity decades later, merchandise produced was aimed toward the adult babyboomer/nostalgia collectors market and included pinback buttons, clocks, greeting cards, calendars, non-fiction books about the show's production, memoirs, and miscellaneous items. In 1983, Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow appeared on boxes of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. In 2007, one of the cereal boxes realized $300 at auction. Promotional photographs from the studio, autographs, original scripts, copies of TV Guide
and other magazines from the period featuring articles about the show are all collectibles. Props and costumes from the show with documentation establishing provenance are highly prized.
published Leave It to Beaver (1959), an inexpensive storybook for young children. Distinguished children's author Beverly Cleary
published three softcover novels based on the series, Beaver and Wally, Leave It to Beaver (1960), and Here's Beaver (1961). Whitman Publishing printed Leave It to Beaver: Fire! (1962), a hardcover novel by Cole Fanin. In 1983, The Beaver Papers (ISBN 0-517-54991-3) by Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones was published. The book is a parody
of a lost season comprising twenty-five episodes written in the style of various authors such as Tennessee Williams
.
published six Leave It to Beaver comic book
s with photo covers of Beaver, Beaver and Wally, or Beaver and Ward. The first comic book (Four Color No. 912) is dated June 1958 and the last (Four Color No. 01-238-207) May–July 1962. In 2004, all six Dell Leave It to Beaver comic books in 'Near Mint' condition were valued in excess of two hundred dollars each.
. The games were typical roll-and-move track games for two to four players. All three game box covers feature photographic portraits of Jerry Mathers as Beaver.
"Leave It to Beaver Money Maker Game" suggests one of the show's recurrent themes—Beaver's attempts to make money. Equipment includes a center-seamed board with illustrations of Beaver and Ward. One player distributes and collects money as "Father".
"Leave It to Beaver Rocket to the Moon Space Game", rather than using dice or a spinner to advance players along the track, employs a rocket-shaped cone that is flipped onto a board to determine the number of spaces to be moved. "Leave It to Beaver Ambush Game" is a track game with an Old West theme.
as Ward, Janine Turner
as June, Erik von Detten
as Wally, and Cameron Finley
as the Beaver. It was panned by many critics, except for Roger Ebert
, who gave it a three-star rating. It performed poorly at the box office, earning only $11,713,605. Barbara Billingsley, Ken Osmond and Frank Bank made cameo appearance
s in the film.
has released the first two seasons of Leave It to Beaver on DVD in Region 1. Season one was released in two versions: an inexpensive cardboard slip-cased collection, and a costlier version in which the DVDs were contained in a retro-styled, plastic photo album tucked inside a plaid metal lunch box displaying portraits of the cast on its exterior.
On January 26, 2010, it was announced that Shout! Factory
had acquired the DVD rights to the series (under license from Universal
). They have subsequently released seasons 3–5 on DVD as well as a complete series box set. The sixth and final season was released on March 1, 2011.
, The Real McCoys
, and Dennis the Menace managed to do so.
Leave It to Beaver faced stiff competition in its time slots. During its next to last season, for example, the show ran against The Defenders, a program examining highly charged courtroom cases about abortion and the death penalty. In its final season, the show was up against Perry Mason and Dr. Kildare but was in the ABC line-up with television greats The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show, and My Three Sons.
A comparison of how children interact with their brothers and sisters on such 1950s situation comedy television programs as Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best with those on such 1980s programs as The Cosby Show and Family Ties found that children interacted more positively in the early period but were important and central—if more conflictual—to the main story action in the 1980s.
". In 1984, Jerry Mathers was awarded the Young Artist's Former Child Star Special Award
, and in 1987, Ken Osmond and Tony Dow were both honored with the Young Artist's Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003, Diane Brewster was nominated for TV Land's Classic TV Teacher of the Year Award while, in 2005, Ken Osmond was nominated for TV Land's Character Most Desperately in Need of a Timeout Award. Leave It to Beaver placed on Time's "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-Time" list. Bravo ranked Beaver 74th on their list of the 100 greatest TV characters.
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
about an inquisitive but often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver
Theodore Cleaver
Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver is the fictional title character in the American television series Leave It to Beaver. Seven-year-old Beaver is son to June and Ward Cleaver and sibling to thirteen-year-old Wally Cleaver .Beaver prefers "messin' around" with his pals and reading comic books to...
(portrayed by Jerry Mathers
Jerry Mathers
Gerald Patrick "Jerry" Mathers is an American television, film, and stage actor. Mathers is best known for his role in the television sitcom series Leave It to Beaver , in which he played Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver, the younger son of archetypal suburban couple June and Ward Cleaver , and the brother...
) and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood. The show also starred Barbara Billingsley
Barbara Billingsley
Barbara Billingsley was an American film, television, voice and stage actress. She gained prominence in the 1950s movie The Careless Years, acting opposite Natalie Trundy, followed by her best–known role, that of June Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver and its sequel Still...
and Hugh Beaumont as Beaver's parents, June and Ward Cleaver, and Tony Dow
Tony Dow
Tony Lee Dow is an American film producer, director, sculptor, and a television child actor of the 1950s and 1960s.Dow is best known for his role in the television sitcom Leave It to Beaver, which ran in primetime from 1957 to 1963...
as Beaver's brother Wally. The show has attained an iconic
Cultural icon
A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...
status in the United States, with the Cleavers exemplifying the idealized suburban family of the mid-20th century.
One of the first primetime sitcom series written from a child's point-of-view, the show was created by the writers Joe Connelly
Joe Connelly (producer)
Joe Connelly was a television and radio scriptwriter born in New York City. He was best known for his work on Amos and Andy, Meet Mr...
and Bob Mosher
Bob Mosher
Robert "Bob" Mosher was a television and radio scriptwriter born in Auburn, New York. He was best known for his work on Amos and Andy, Meet Mr. McNutley, Leave It To Beaver, Ichabod and Me, Bringing Up Buddy, and The Munsters, along with his co-writer Joe Connelly who is buried in Culver City's...
. These veterans of radio and early television found inspiration for the show's characters, plots, and dialogue in the lives, experiences, and conversations of their own children. Like several television dramas and sitcoms of the late 1950s and early 1960s (Lassie
Lassie (1954 TV series)
Lassie is an American television series that follows the adventures of a female Rough Collie named Lassie and her companions, human and animal. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was televised from September 12, 1954, to March 24, 1973...
and My Three Sons
My Three Sons
My Three Sons is an American situation comedy. The series ran from 1960 to 1965 on ABC, and moved to CBS until its end on August 24, 1972. My Three Sons chronicles the life of a widower and aeronautical engineer named Steven Douglas , raising his three sons.The series was a cornerstone of the CBS...
, for example), Leave It to Beaver is a glimpse at middle-class, white American boyhood. In a typical episode Beaver got into some sort of trouble, then faced his parents for reprimand and correction. However, neither parent was omniscient; indeed, the series often showed the parents debating their approach to child rearing, and some episodes were built around parental gaffes.
Comprising six full 39-week seasons (234 episodes), the show had its debut on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
on October 4, 1957, and then moved to ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
the following year, completing its run on June 20, 1963. Although television production was transitioning from black-and-white to color in the latter years of the show's run, the series continued to be shot with a single camera on black-and-white 35mm film. The show's production companies included comedian George Gobel
George Gobel
George Leslie Gobel was an American comedian and actor. He was best known as the star of his own weekly NBC television show, The George Gobel Show, which ran from 1954 to 1960 .-Early years:He was born George Leslie Goebel in Chicago, Illinois, His father, Hermann Goebel, was a...
's Gomalco Productions (1957–1961) and Kayro Productions (1961–1963) with filming at Revue Studios/Republic Studios and Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
in Los Angeles, California. The show was distributed by MCA Television.
The still popular show was canceled in 1963 because the stars wanted to move on. In that year Jerry Mathers was entering his freshman year in high school and actor Tony Dow
Tony Dow
Tony Lee Dow is an American film producer, director, sculptor, and a television child actor of the 1950s and 1960s.Dow is best known for his role in the television sitcom Leave It to Beaver, which ran in primetime from 1957 to 1963...
was about to graduate from high school.
Contemporary commentators praised Leave It to Beaver, with Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
comparing Beaver to Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
's Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. The story is set in the Town of "St...
. Much juvenile merchandise was released during the show's first-run including board game
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
s, novels, and comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s. The show has enjoyed a renaissance in popularity since the 1970s through off-network syndication, a reunion telemovie, Still the Beaver (1983), and a sequel series The New Leave It to Beaver
The New Leave It to Beaver
The New Leave It to Beaver is an American sitcom sequel to the 1950s and '60s series, Leave It to Beaver. The New Leave It to Beaver began with the 1983 CBS TV movie Still the Beaver, and was picked up in 1984 as a Disney Channel series with the same name; however, it only lasted one season...
(1985–89). In 1997, a movie version
Leave It to Beaver (film)
Leave It to Beaver is a 1997 film that is a remake of the TV series of the same name. There are many in-jokes related to the original series within the movie.-Plot:...
based on the original series was released to moderate acclaim, and, in October 2007, TV Land
TV Land
TV Land is an American cable television network launched on April 29, 1996. It is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, and networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon...
celebrated the show's 50th anniversary with a marathon. Although the show never broke into the Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
top-30 nor won any awards, it placed on TIME
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's unranked 2007 list of "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME."
According to Tony Dow, "if any line got too much of a laugh, they'd take it out. They didn't want a big laugh; they wanted chuckles."
Concept, pilot, and premiere
In 1957, radio, film, and television writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher developed a concept for a TV show about childhood and family life featuring a fictional suburban couple and their children. Unlike The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Father Knows BestFather Knows Best
Father Knows Best is an American radio and television comedy series which portrayed a middle class family life in the Midwest. It was created by writer Ed James in the 1940s.-Radio:...
, and other sitcoms and domestic comedies of the era, the show would not focus upon the parents, but upon their children, with the series being told from the kids' point-of-view. Working titles during the show's gestation period included It's a Small World and Wally and the Beaver. The pilot aired April 23, 1957 as "It's a Small World
It's a Small World (Leave It to Beaver episode)
"It's a Small World" is the pilot episode from the iconic American television series Leave It to Beaver . The pilot was first televised April 23, 1957 on a syndicated anthology series, Studio 57, without a laugh track nor the series' well known theme song, "The Toy Parade"...
" on anthology series Heinz Studio 57.
Max Showalter
Max Showalter was an American film, television, and stage actor, as well as a composer, pianist, and singer. One of Showalter's most memorable roles was as Jean Peters' character's husband in the 1953 film Niagara...
and Paul Sullivan (as father and son Ward and Wally Cleaver) were replaced as series production neared, and, six months after the pilot's broadcast, the series properly debuted on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
Friday October 4, 1957 as Leave It to Beaver with the episode third in production order, "Beaver Gets 'Spelled
Beaver Gets 'Spelled (Leave It to Beaver episode)
"Beaver Gets 'Spelled" is the premiere episode of the iconic American television series Leave It to Beaver . The episode aired on CBS on October 4, 1957. The episode is the first episode in the first season, and the first episode in the complete series...
." The intended premiere, "Captain Jack," displayed a toilet
Toilet
A toilet is a sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement, often found in a small room referred to as a toilet/bathroom/lavatory...
tank (which didn't pass the censor
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
's office in time for the show's scheduled debut) and aired the week following the premiere. "Captain Jack" has claimed its place in television history as the first American TV show to display a toilet tank. In 1997, it was ranked #42 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
Sponsors and budget
Remington RandRemington Rand
Remington Rand was an early American business machines manufacturer, best known originally as a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation as the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers but with antecedents in Remington Arms in the early nineteenth century. For a time, the...
was a potential sponsor during the show's conception period, and counseled against the show's suggested title, Wally and the Beaver, believing viewers would think the show was a nature program. The show was ultimately sponsored by Ralston Purina, with General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
and Chrysler Corporation coming on board in the later seasons (Ward Cleaver was seen driving a Plymouth Fury
Plymouth Fury
The Plymouth Fury is an automobile which was produced by the Plymouth division of the Chrysler Corporation from 1956 to 1978. The Fury was introduced as a premium-priced model designed to showcase the line, with the intent to draw consumers into showrooms....
during the opening credits in the final season).
Episodes were budgeted at $30,000 to $40,000 each, making the show one of the most expensive of its kind during its years of production. High costs were incurred with the show's many outdoor scenes. The most expensive single episode, "In the Soup" (in which Beaver gets stuck in an advertising billboard with a gigantic make-believe cup of soup, curious to learn how "steam" could come out of the cup), was budgeted at $50,000. Two billboards were built for the episode: one outside on the backlot, and the other inside the studio.
Characters and casting
Casting directors interviewed hundreds of child actors for the role of "Beaver" but kept calling back Jerry MathersJerry Mathers
Gerald Patrick "Jerry" Mathers is an American television, film, and stage actor. Mathers is best known for his role in the television sitcom series Leave It to Beaver , in which he played Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver, the younger son of archetypal suburban couple June and Ward Cleaver , and the brother...
, an eight-year-old with substantial acting experience. At one of many auditions, Mathers wore his Cub Scout
Cub Scout
A Cub Scout is a member of the section of the worldwide Scouting movement for young persons, mainly boys normally aged about 7 to 11. In some countries they are known by their original name of Wolf Cubs and are often referred to simply as Cubs. The movement is often referred to simply as Cubbing...
uniform and told casting personnel he was anxious to leave for his den meeting. Connelly and Mosher were charmed with Mathers's innocent candor and cast him in the title role. Barbara Billingsley
Barbara Billingsley
Barbara Billingsley was an American film, television, voice and stage actress. She gained prominence in the 1950s movie The Careless Years, acting opposite Natalie Trundy, followed by her best–known role, that of June Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver and its sequel Still...
, an actress with experience in several B-movies and one failed television series (Professional Father), was then hired to play Beaver's mother, June Cleaver
June Cleaver
June Evelyn Bronson Cleaver is a principal character in the American television sitcom Leave It to Beaver. June and her husband, Ward, are often invoked as the archetypal suburban parents of the 1950s. The couple are the parents of two sons, Wally and "Beaver"...
. Preteen Tony Dow
Tony Dow
Tony Lee Dow is an American film producer, director, sculptor, and a television child actor of the 1950s and 1960s.Dow is best known for his role in the television sitcom Leave It to Beaver, which ran in primetime from 1957 to 1963...
accompanied a friend auditioning for Johnny Wildlife to the studio, and, although Dow had no aspirations to an acting career, tried out for the role of Beaver's brother Wally Cleaver
Wally Cleaver
Wallace "Wally" Cleaver is a fictional character in the iconic American television sitcom Leave It to Beaver. Wally is the thirteen-year-old son of archetypal 50s suburban parents, Ward and June Cleaver and the older brother of the seven-year-old title character, Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver...
and was hired. Several adult candidates then auditioned for the role of Beaver's father Ward Cleaver
Ward Cleaver
Ward Cleaver is a fictional character in the American television sitcom Leave It to Beaver. Ward and his wife, June, are often invoked as archetypal suburban parents of the babyboomer 1950s. The couple are the parents of Wally, a thirteen-year-old in the eighth grade, and seven-year-old ...
, but Connelly and Mosher finally signed Hugh Beaumont
Hugh Beaumont (actor)
Eugene Hugh Beaumont was an American actor and television director. He was also licensed to preach by the Methodist church...
, a Methodist
Methodism
Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide. The movement traces its roots to John Wesley's evangelistic revival movement within Anglicanism. His younger brother...
lay minister who had worked with Mathers in a religious film.
Recurring characters included Eddie Haskell
Eddie Haskell
Edward Clark "Eddie" Haskell is a fictional character on the Leave It to Beaver television situation comedy, which ran on CBS from October 4, 1957 to 1958 and then on ABC from 1958 to June 20, 1963...
(played by Ken Osmond
Ken Osmond
Ken Osmond is an American actor. Beginning a prolific career as a child actor at the age of four, Osmond is best known for his iconic role as Eddie Haskell on the 1950s television situation comedy Leave It to Beaver, and for reprising the role on the 1980s revival series The New Leave It to...
), Larry Mondello (Rusty Stevens
Rusty Stevens
Robert "Rusty" Stevens is an American former child actor. He played Larry Mondello, Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver's friend, in the original Leave It to Beaver television series. He appeared in 68 of the show's 235 episodes, between 1957 and 1963. Stevens left the show because his family moved from...
), Hubert "Whitey" Whitney (Stanley Fafara
Stanley Fafara
Stanley Albert Fafara was an American actor, best known for his role as "Whitey" Whitney in the original Leave It to Beaver television series. He appeared in forty-two of the show's 234 episodes. His older brother, Tiger, played "Tooey Brown" in the series.Fafara was born September 20, 1949 in San...
), Gilbert Bates (Stephen Talbot
Stephen Talbot
Stephen Henderson Talbot is an award-winning TV reporter, writer, and producer who began his career as a television child actor of the late 1950s and early 1960s...
), Judy Hensler (Jeri Weil
Jeri Weil
Jeri Warner Weil is an American former actress, best known for her role as Judy Hensler, Theodore Cleaver's classmate in the original Leave It to Beaver television sit-com series. She appeared in 31 of the show's 235 episodes.-References:*...
), Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford (Frank Bank
Frank Bank
Frank Bank is an American actor, particularly known for his role as Clarence 'Lumpy' Rutherford on the situation comedy television series Leave It to Beaver.Bank is a bond broker in Los Angeles, California...
), and Mary Ellen Rogers (Pamela Baird
Pamela Baird
Pamela Baird is an American former actress, best known for her role as "Mary Ellen Rogers", the girlfriend of "Wally Cleaver" on the classic sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. She appeared in seven of the show's 235 episodes. but her name was mentioned in many other segments...
). Burt Mustin
Burt Mustin
Burton Hill "Burt" Mustin was an American character actor.-Early life:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to W. I. and Sadie Mustin, Mustin was a 1903 graduate of the Pennsylvania Military College , earning his degree in civil engineering...
played elderly fireman Gus, Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon (actor)
Richard Deacon , born in Philadelphia, was an American television and motion picture actor.-Career:The bald and usually bespectacled character actor often portrayed pompous or imperious figures. He made appearances on The Jack Benny Show as a salesman and a barber, and on NBC's Happy as a hotel...
played Ward's co-worker Fred Rutherford, and Sue Randall
Sue Randall
Marion Burnside Randall, who acted under the name Sue Randall, was an American actress best known for her role as the kindly Alice Landers, Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver's grade-school teacher in ABC's sitcom, Leave It to Beaver.Philadelphia-born Randall's debut on the small screen was in the 1955...
played schoolteacher Miss Landers.
Writers and directors
The show's chief writers, Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly, met while working in New York City for the J. Walter Thompson Agency. Once in Hollywood, the men became head writers for the radio show, Amos 'n' AndyAmos 'n' Andy
Amos 'n' Andy is a situation comedy set in the African-American community. It was very popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s on both radio and television....
and continued to write the well-received show when it moved to CBS television in 1950. Although both men initially wrote all the scripts for earlier episodes of Leave It to Beaver, after becoming executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
s, they began accepting scripts from other writers, refining them if necessary.
With Mosher the father of two children and Connelly six, the two men had enough source material and inspiration for the show's dialogue and plot lines. Connelly's eight-year-old son, Ricky, served as the model for Beaver and his fourteen-year-old son, Jay, for Wally while Eddie Haskell and Larry Mondello were based on friends of the Connelly boys. Connelly often took the boys on outings while carrying a notebook to record their conversations and activities.
Other writers who contributed to the show were Bill Manhoff, Mel Diamond, Dale and Katherine Eunson, Ben Gershman, George Tibbles, Fran van Hartesvelt, Bob Ross, Alan Manings, Mathilde and Theodore Ferro, and the team of Dick Conway and Roland MacLane, who wrote many of the shows for the last two seasons. Connelly told an interviewer, "If we hire a writer we tell him not to make up situations but to look into his own background. It's not a 'situation' comedy where you have to create a situation for a particular effect. Our emphasis is on a natural story line."
Connelly and Mosher worked to create humorous characters in simple situations, rather than relying on contrived, set-up jokes. The two often adapted real-life situations in the lives of their children. "The Haircut", for example, was directly based on an incident involving Bobby Mosher, who was forced to wear a stocking cap in a school play after giving himself a ragged haircut. Fourteen-year-old Jay Connelly's preening habits became Wally's and seven-year-old Ricky Connelly's habit of dropping the initial syllables of words was incorporated into Beaver's character.
Norman Tokar
Norman Tokar
Norman Tokar was a prolific director of serial television and feature films, who directed many of the early episodes of Leave it to Beaver, and found his greatest success directing over a dozen films for Walt Disney Productions, spanning the 1950s to the...
, a director with a talent for working with children, was hired to direct most of the episodes for the first three years and developed the characters of Eddie Haskell
Eddie Haskell
Edward Clark "Eddie" Haskell is a fictional character on the Leave It to Beaver television situation comedy, which ran on CBS from October 4, 1957 to 1958 and then on ABC from 1958 to June 20, 1963...
and Larry Mondello. Other directors included Earl Bellamy
Earl Bellamy
Earl Arthur Bellamy was an American film and television director, producer, writer, and set decorator.-Biography:...
, David Butler (who had directed child actress Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
), Bretaigne Windust
Bretaigne Windust
Bretaigne Windust was a French-born theatre, film, and television director.-Early life:He was born Ernest Bretaigne Windust in Paris, France, the son of English violin virtuoso Ernest Joseph Windust and singer Elizabeth Amory Day from New York City...
, Gene Reynolds, and Hugh Beaumont. Norman Abbott
Norman Abbott
Norman Abbott is a television director. He directed episodes of Get Smart, Leave It To Beaver, The Munsters, and The Jack Benny Program.He is a nephew of the comedian Bud Abbott.-External links:...
directed most of the episodes through the last three years.
Filming
For the first two seasons, Leave It to Beaver was filmed at Republic Studios/CBS Studio Center, 4024 Radford Avenue, Studio City, Los Angeles, California. For its final four seasons, production moved to Universal Studios. Exteriors, including the façades of the two Cleaver houses, were filmed on the respective studio back lots. Stock footageStock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures and file footage are film or video footage that may or may not be custom shot for use in a specific film or television program. Stock footage is of beneficial use to filmmakers as it is sometimes less expensive than shooting new...
was occasionally used for establishing shots.
The script for an upcoming episode would be delivered to the cast late in the week, with a read-through the following Monday, awkward lines or other problems being noted for rewrites. On Tuesday afternoon, the script was rehearsed in its entirety for the camera and lighting crew. Over the following three days, individual scenes would be filmed with a single camera.
Filming was limited to one episode per week (rather than the two typical of television production of the period) to accommodate the large number of child actors, who were allowed to work only four hours a day. Scenes with children were usually filmed first, with adult actors having to wait until after 5:00 pm for filming.
Series cinematographers
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
included Mack Stengler with 122 episodes between 1958 and 1962, Jack MacKenzie with 40 episodes between 1962 and 1963, and William A. Sickner with 37 episodes between 1957 and 1959. Fred Mandl (1962), Ray Rennahan (1958), and Ray Flin (1960) served as cinematographers on less than five episodes each.
Opening and closing sequences
In the first season, each episode opens with a teaserTeaser
A teaser is a type of gambling bet that allows the bettor to combine his bets on two different games. The bettor can adjust the point spreads for the two games, but realizes a lower return on the bets in the event of a win....
featuring clips from the episode (or generic footage from other episodes) and a voice-over introduction by Beaumont briefly stating the episode's theme. The teaser is followed by the main title and credits in which only the show's four main stars are introduced. In some seasons, significant crew are noted as an extension of the opening credits after a commercial break. Midway through the first season, the Beaumont voice-over introduction was discarded in favor of a brief scene extracted from the episode at hand, and, at the end of the first season, the teaser was entirely discarded, moving immediately to the title and credits.
Each season had an individually filmed sequence for the opening credits. In season one, for example, a cartoon-like drawing of a freshly laid cement sidewalk was displayed with the show title and stars' names scratched into its surface, while in the final season, the Cleavers left the house through the front door carrying articles suitable for a picnic. (See List of Leave It to Beaver episodes for specific season opening sequences). Billingsley was the first to be introduced in all opening sequences, followed by Beaumont and Dow. Mathers was introduced last, with the voice-over line, "...and Jerry Mathers as The Beaver". The camera zoomed in for a close-up of Mathers' face. The voice-over line became the title of Mathers' 1998 memoirs.
The closing sequence for the first season featured a simple, dark background as the credits rolled. In the second season, Wally and Beaver are seen walking home from school with their schoolbooks and entering the house through the front door. In the third through fifth seasons, Wally and Beaver are seen walking towards the Pine Street house. Beaver carries a baseball glove and limps along the curbstone. Both boys go to the front door. In the last season, Wally chases teen Beaver around a tree and into the house. All opening and closing sequences were accompanied by the show's theme music.
Music
The show's opening and closing sequences are accompanied by an orchestraOrchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
l rendition of the show's bouncy theme music, "The Toy Parade", by David Kahn, Melvyn Leonard, and Mort Greene. For the third season, the tempo was quickened and the tune whistled by a male chorus
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
over an orchestral accompaniment for the closing credits and for the production crew credits following the opening sequence. For the final season, the song was given a jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
-like arrangement by veteran composer/arranger Pete Rugolo
Pete Rugolo
Pietro "Pete" Rugolo was an Italian-born jazz composer and arranger.-Life and career:Rugolo was born in San Piero Patti, Sicily, Italy. His family emigrated to the United States in 1920 and settled in Santa Rosa, California...
. Though lyrics
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
exist for the theme tune, an instrumental arrangement is used for the show's entire run. Elements of the theme tune were given a subdued musical arrangement, which was then used as background music for tender and sentimental scenes. Occasionally, a few phrases from well-known musical compositions such as Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
's "Funeral March" and the French national anthem
Anthem
The term anthem means either a specific form of Anglican church music , or more generally, a song of celebration, usually acting as a symbol for a distinct group of people, as in the term "national anthem" or "sports anthem".-Etymology:The word is derived from the Greek via Old English , a word...
"La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
" are quoted.
Time setting
The time setting of Leave It to Beaver is contemporary with its production—the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Though the show had its debut the same day SputnikSputnik 1
Sputnik 1 ) was the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth's orbit. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1s success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space...
was launched into space and left the air a few months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
, references to contemporary news issues or topics are infrequent. Communism is mentioned in "Water, Anyone?".
Contemporary cultural references are more frequent but not overwhelming. The show acknowledges the greaser subculture and, in the last season, "The Twist"
Twist (dance)
The Twist was a dance inspired by rock and roll music. It became the first worldwide dance craze in the early 1960s, enjoying immense popularity among young people and drawing fire from critics who felt it was too provocative. It inspired dances such as the Jerk, the Pony, the Watusi, the Mashed...
, a popular song and dance craze of the early 1960s. The dance's promoter, Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker
Chubby Checker is an American singer-songwriter. He is widely known for popularizing the twist dance style, with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard's R&B hit "The Twist"...
, is hinted at in the episode's fictional "Chubby Chadwick" and his fictional hit tune, "Surf Board Twist". Wally and his friends perform a tepid version of The Twist at Wally's party in "The Party Spoiler". The 1960 Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...
vehicle Spartacus
Spartacus
Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...
is brought up, Eisenhower is mentioned and, in one episode, Beaver says Angela Valentine wore a "Jackie Kennedy
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle...
wig" to class. Contemporary celebrities mentioned on the show include Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson
Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...
, Tuesday Weld
Tuesday Weld
Tuesday Weld is an American actress.Weld began her acting career as a child, and progressed to more mature roles during the late 1950s. She won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Female Newcomer in 1960...
, Sal Mineo
Sal Mineo
Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. , was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
, Sonny Liston
Sonny Liston
Charles L. "Sonny" Liston was a professional boxer and ex-convict known for his toughness, punching power, and intimidating appearance who became world heavyweight champion in 1962 by knocking out Floyd Patterson in the first round...
, Cassius Clay
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
, Chet Huntley
Chet Huntley
Chester Robert "Chet" Huntley was an American television newscaster, best known for co-anchoring NBC's evening news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, for 14 years beginning in 1956.-Early life:...
, David Brinkley
David Brinkley
David McClure Brinkley was an American newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997....
, Jack Paar
Jack Paar
Jack Harold Paar was an author, American radio and television comedian and talk show host, best known for his stint as host of The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962...
, John Glenn
John Glenn
John Herschel Glenn, Jr. is a former United States Marine Corps pilot, astronaut, and United States senator who was the first American to orbit the Earth and the third American in space. Glenn was a Marine Corps fighter pilot before joining NASA's Mercury program as a member of NASA's original...
, Warren Spahn
Warren Spahn
Warren Edward Spahn was an American Major League Baseball left-handed pitcher. He played his entire 21-year baseball career in the National League. He won 20 games each in 13 seasons, including a 23-7 record when he was age 42...
, Fabian
Fabian
-People:*Fabian Månsson, , Swedish socialist*Fabian , , 1950s American teen idol and singer*Fabian Bachrach, an American photographer*Fabian Cancellara, , Swiss professional road cyclist...
and others. Then current Los Angeles Dodgers
Los Angeles Dodgers
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a professional baseball team based in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers are members of Major League Baseball's National League West Division. Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known by a number of nicknames before becoming...
celebrity star Don Drysdale
Don Drysdale
Donald Scott "Don" Drysdale was a Major League Baseball player and Hall of Fame right-handed pitcher with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was one of the dominant starting pitchers of the 1960s, and became a radio and television broadcaster following his playing career...
appears as himself in one episode. When Beaver appears on a TV show, not knowing it is being recorded to air another day, Gilbert compares the misunderstanding with "a Rod Serling
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling was an American screenwriter, novelist, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen and helped form...
Twilight Zone
Twilight zone
-Television series and spinoffs:*The Twilight Zone, the anthology television series and its franchise:**The Twilight Zone , the 1959–1964 original television series***Twilight Zone: The Movie, a 1983 film based on the original series...
". The episode in which Beaver graduates from grammar school (8th grade) is perhaps the only time a year is mentioned. June and Ward inspect the gift they have for Beaver's graduation and read the inscription, "...Class of '63".
Leave It to Beaver is set in the fictitious community of Mayfield and its environs with scenes set on Mayfield's streets and in its stores, schools, and parks. The principal setting, however, is the Cleaver home. The Cleavers live in two houses over the series' run. The "move" was necessary when the façade of the original house—located at Republic Studios—became unavailable for filming following the production's move to Universal. The "new house" stood on the Universal backlot. The first house is fictionally located at 485 Mapleton (sometimes Maple) Drive and the second at 211 Pine Street. In an early episode set in the Mapleton Drive house, Beaver speaks of living in another house where he suffered the measles and became attached to "Billy," his first teddy bear
Teddy bear
The teddy bear is a stuffed toy bear. They are usually stuffed with soft, white cotton and have smooth and soft fur. It is an enduring form of a stuffed animal in many countries, often serving the purpose of entertaining children. In recent times, some teddy bears have become collector's items...
. In another episode, however, Beaver indicates the Mapleton Drive house was the first house he'd ever lived in.
Social and ethnic setting
Characters are nearly uniformly white and middle-class. Only one African-American had a speaking role during the run of the series; in 1963, Kim Hamilton played a maid in episode 212, "The Parking Attendants." Five years earlier, an episode featured a Hispanic family, as Alan Roberts Costello played Roberto "Chuey" Varella, a friend and weekend house guest of the Beaver in 1959's "Beaver and Chuey." The friend spoke only Spanish, leading to a cruel Eddie Haskell prank.Mapleton Drive house
Picket fence
A picket fence is a variety of fence that has been used mostly for domestic boundaries. Until the introduction of advertising on fences in the 1980s, a Cricket field was also usually surrounded by a picket fence, giving rise to the expression rattling the pickets for a ball hit firmly into the...
, the Mapleton Drive house is two stories with a first floor kitchen
Kitchen
A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation.In the West, a modern residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a refrigerator and kitchen cabinets arranged according to a modular design. Many households have a...
, dining room
Dining room
A dining room is a room for consuming food. In modern times it is usually adjacent to the kitchen for convenience in serving, although in medieval times it was often on an entirely different floor level...
, living room
Living room
A living room, also known as sitting room, lounge room or lounge , is a room for entertaining adult guests, reading, or other activities...
and adjoining patio
Patio
A patio is an outdoor space generally used for dining or recreation that adjoins a residence and is typically paved. It may refer to a roofless inner courtyard of the sort found in Spanish-style dwellings or a paved area between a residence and a garden....
, and at least three bedroom
Bedroom
A bedroom is a private room where people usually sleep for the night or relax during the day.About one third of our lives are spent sleeping and most of the time we are asleep, we are sleeping in a bedroom. To be considered a bedroom the room needs to have bed. Bedrooms can range from really simple...
s on the second floor—one for the boys, one for the parents, and a guest room into which Beaver moves for a night. In one episode, Wally ventures into the cellar. A kitchen door opens onto a small side yard, the driveway, and a single-car garage—a frequent setting for get-togethers between the boys, their father, and their friends.
Toward the close of season two, the Cleavers discuss moving. In the season's closer, Ward tells the boys the Mapleton Drive house has been sold. In the season three opener, the Cleavers are comfortably settled in a new house at 211 Pine Street. No episode features the actual move.
Pine Street house
The Pine Street house consists of several rooms (kitchen and laundry room, dining room, living room, den) on the ground floor and at least three bedrooms on the second floor. None of the furnishings from the Mapleton Drive house appear in the new house; the Pine Street house is completely refurnished. Reproductions of Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
's The Blue Boy
The Blue Boy
The Blue Boy is an oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough. Perhaps Gainsborough's most famous work, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, although this was never proved...
and Lawrence
Thomas Lawrence (painter)
Sir Thomas Lawrence RA FRS was a leading English portrait painter and president of the Royal Academy.Lawrence was a child prodigy. He was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper. At the age of ten, having moved to Bath, he was supporting his family with his...
's Pinkie
Pinkie (Lawrence painting)
Pinkie is the traditional title for a portrait of 1794 by Thomas Lawrence in the permanent collection of The Huntington at San Marino, California where it hangs opposite The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. These two works are the centerpieces of the institute's art collection, which specializes in...
hang in the front entry above graceful bergère
Bergère
A bergère is an enclosed upholstered French armchair with an upholstered back and armrests on upholstered frames. The seat frame is over-upholstered, but the rest of the wooden framing is exposed: it may be moulded or carved, and of beech, painted or gilded, or of fruitwood, walnut or mahogany...
s. An upholstered
Upholstery
Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word upholstery comes from the Middle English word upholder, which referred to a tradesman who held up his goods. The term is equally applicable to domestic,...
wing chair
Wing chair
A "wing chair" is an easy chair or club chair with "wings" mounted to the back of the chair typically but not always stretching down to the arm rest...
at the edge of the hearth
Hearth
In common historic and modern usage, a hearth is a brick- or stone-lined fireplace or oven often used for cooking and/or heating. For centuries, the hearth was considered an integral part of a home, often its central or most important feature...
in the living room is covered in a chinoiserie
Chinoiserie
Chinoiserie, a French term, signifying "Chinese-esque", and pronounced ) refers to a recurring theme in European artistic styles since the seventeenth century, which reflect Chinese artistic influences...
print.
In the Pine Street house, Ward has a private den study off the main entry, which serves as a setting for many scenes. Unlike the garage at the Mapleton Drive house, the Pine Street garage is used less as a setting for masculine get-togethers. June and Ward's bedroom is seen for the first time in the Pine Street house. They have their own bath, sleep in twin beds, and have a portable TV in the room.
Two years before Leave It to Beaver went into production, the Pine Street façade and its neighborhood were employed extensively in the 1955 Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
film, The Desperate Hours, a story about three escaped convicts terrorizing and holding hostage a four-member family.
In 1969, the Pine Street house was reused for another Universal-produced television hit, Marcus Welby, M.D.
Marcus Welby, M.D.
Marcus Welby, M.D. is an American medical drama television program that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969, to July 29, 1976. It starred Robert Young as a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner, and was produced by David Victor and David J. O'Connell...
This house can still be seen at Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, though the original façade was replaced in 1988 for the following year's The 'Burbs
The 'Burbs
The 'Burbs is a 1989 American black comedy thriller film directed by Joe Dante starring Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Rick Ducommun, Corey Feldman and Henry Gibson. The film was written by Dana Olsen, who also has a cameo in the movie...
and sat in storage elsewhere on the Universal lot. The façade was replaced again for the 1996 Leave It to Beaver movie. The house and the street it sits on are currently used as the main exterior set for Wisteria Lane of Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...
, and was previously used as the Pearson family house on The Bill Engvall Show
The Bill Engvall Show
The Bill Engvall Show is a sitcom which ran on TBS from July 17, 2007 to September 5, 2009. The series starred comedian Bill Engvall and was written and created by Engvall and Michael Leeson...
.
Format and content
Leave It to Beaver is light drama with the underlying theme that proper behavior brings rewards while improper behavior entails undesirable consequences. The juvenile viewer finds amusement in Beaver's adventures while learning that certain behaviors and choices (such as skipping school or faking an illness in order to be the recipient of "loot" from parents and schoolmates) are wrong and invite reprimand. The adult viewer enjoys Beaver's adventures while discovering tips for teaching children correct behavior and methods for successfully handling common childhood problems. Parents are reminded that children view the world from a different perspective and should not be expected to act like miniature adults. The writers generally emphasized permissive child rearing techniques and urged parents to serve as moral role models.A typical episode generally follows a simple formula: Beaver or Wally (or both) get into trouble and then face their parents for a lecture regarding the event. Lectures sometimes take the form of fables, with Ward allowing the boys to discover their moral meanings and applying those meanings to their lives. Occasionally, when offences are serious, punishments such as being grounded are dealt the miscreants. The parents are sometimes shown debating the best approach to the situation. Other episodes (especially in earlier seasons) even reverse the formula, with Ward making a parenting mistake and having to figure out how to make up for it.
While the earlier seasons focus on Beaver's boyhood adventures, the later seasons give greater scope to Wally's high school life, dating, and part-time work life. Several episodes follow Wally's acquisition of a driver's license and a car. The show's focus is consistently upon the children, however: no episodes examine the marital concerns of June and Ward who are depicted from one episode to the next as an untroubled, happily married couple.
Themes
Education, occupation, and marriage and family are presented in Leave It to Beaver as requisites for a happy and productive life.Beaver and Wally both attend public schools and are encouraged to pursue college educations as a means to prepare for their futures. Ward and June attended prep school and boarding school respectively and both attended college. Their sons are expected to do the same. While both boys consider prep school educations, Wally at the Bellport Military Academy and Beaver at an eastern school called Fallbrook, both remain at home and attend Mayfield High with their friends. School and homework are the bane of Beaver's existence. In "Beaver's Secret Life", the boy decides to become a writer in adulthood because "you don't have to go to school or know nothing ... You only have to make up adventures and get paid for it." Beaver's attitude toward education provides comic counterpoint to the backgrounds, values, and ambitions of his parents.
Occupation is presented as important to the happy life with Ward representing the successful, college-educated, middle-class professional with a steady but obscure office job, and June the competent and happy homemaker. When Beaver expresses interests in lower class occupations (such as trash collector), his parents understandably squirm with embarrassment and discomfort.
A happy marriage is the cornerstone of successful middle class life, and June and Ward represent the warm, happily married, successful middle class couple. In contrast, the parents of Beaver's friend Larry Mondello are a husband frequently out of town on business and an exasperated wife struggling singlehandedly to raise a son and sometimes depending on Ward to help discipline him. Spinsters like prim Aunt Martha are shown as out-of-touch and irksome while bachelors like globe-trotting, yarn-spinning Uncle Billy, free-loading Jeff, the tramp, and Andy, the alcoholic handyman are shown to be untrustworthy. The one episode dealing with divorce understandably shows it as having negative effects on children and family life.
June and Ward are conscientious parents, keenly aware of their duty to impart traditional, but proven, middle class family values to their boys. They do so by serving as examples in word and deed, rather than using punitive means. Ward and June are models of late-1950s, conscientious parenting. Stay-at-home June maintains a loving, nurturing home and Ward consistently supervises the behavior and moral education of his sons. While the series portrays the world through the eyes of a young boy, it sometimes dealt with controversial and adult subjects such as alcoholism and divorce.
June Cleaver remains calm amid household tumult, providing crucial guidance to her sons while shielding them from nefarious outside influences with a matronly force of will. Her protection is frequently needed against the pernicious intrigues of Eddie Haskell. He engages in impulsive, selfish, disruptive, and malevolent schemes, almost evil personified. For crafty Eddie, each day is one more step toward the twilight of the adults, which will herald his ascension to neighborhood ruler.
Ward Cleaver is a Solomon-like figure of quiet dignity who dispenses parental justice tempered with understanding. He sometimes finds himself punishing his sons for deeds he admits he committed as a child himself. He often finds himself learning the most in the episode from something his sons or sometimes his wife says.
Signature show elements
Slang
The show employs contemporary kid-slangSlang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
extensively. Wally and Beaver both use "gyp" (to swindle), "mess around" (to play), and "hunka" (meaning "hunk of" in relation to food portions such as "hunka cake" or "hunka milk"). "Junk", "crummy", "grubby", "rat", and "creep" are frequently heard. The word "beef" was also used at times (mostly by Wally) over the course of the show's run, meaning "disagreement" (as in contemporary hip-hop). Ward and June disapprove. Wally uses "sweat" to his mother's annoyance; she prefers "perspiration" and asks him not to use the slang word "flip". "Goofy" is one of Beaver's favorite adjectives, and it is applied to anything that lies outside the bounds of 1950s conformism. "Giving me/you/him/her the business" was a phrase used to describe a character being sarcastic with another character.
Punishment
Physical punishment looms large in the boys' imaginations but such punishment is never seen. Though Ward tells Beaver he has never physically punished him, Beaver reminds his father of past incidents when he did. Both boys use the phrase "Dad's gonna clobber you!" (meaning to spank, or hit) when assessing the other's misdeeds. Ward himself mentions being the victim of his father's belt and Larry's homelife is described as one of being "hollered" at and hit. In one episode, Larry begs, "Don't hit me! Don't hit me!" when his mother discovers him reading his sister's diary. Punishment in the show is restricted to being grounded, spending time in one's bedroom, losing movie-going or television privileges, or pulling weeds in the yard.Beaver's speech habits
Beaver has several speech habits peculiar to himself—dropping first syllables, for example (forgot becomes "'got", expelled becomes "'spelled", aggressive becomes "'gressive"), and malapropismMalapropism
A malapropism is an act of misusing or the habitual misuse of similar sounding words, especially with humorous results. An example is Yogi Berra's statement: "Texas has a lot of electrical votes," rather than "electoral votes".-Etymology:...
s (consolation prize becomes "constellation prize", amulet becomes "omelette"). Grammatical errors are frequent. When Miss Canfield asks Beaver if "Beaver" is his 'given name', Beaver tells her, "My brother given it to me." Beaver uses the phrase "kinda-sorta" to mean "somewhat" throughout the first season. Beaver's speech habits were based on those of Joe Connelly's son, Ricky. Connelly carried a notebook to record the conversations of his sons and their friends, and then incorporated his notations into Beaver's character and the content of the show. As the more educated Beaver grew into a young teen, his errors with the English language diminished significantly, putting an end to one source of mirth for the viewer.
Cleanliness
Recurrent humor is generated on the show by contrasting the 'squeaky-clean' habits of June and Ward with the 'grubby' ones of Wally and Beaver. While Ward and June stress cleanliness, bathing, and good grooming (ordering both boys to wash their faces, hands, and fingernails before dinner), both boys generally prefer being unwashed and dressed in dirty clothes. In the premiere episode, Wally and Beaver fake bathing by rumpling towels and tossing "turtle dirt" in the bathtub. In "Cleaning Up Beaver", June and Ward commend Wally on his neat appearance and chide Beaver for his untidiness. When Wally calls Beaver a slob, Beaver moves into the guest room where he can be his own dirty, messy self without comment or criticism from others. Frightening shadows in the room force him back to his old bedroom and the safety of being with his brother. The two boys strike a middle ground: Beaver will be a bit tidier than he usually is and Wally will be a bit sloppier.Bathrooms
Leave It to Beaver is unique in 1950s television sitcom history for its extraordinary number of bathroom scenes. Beaver and Wally have a bathroom adjoining their bedroom, and, from the very beginning, scene after scene is set in their bathroom. One early episode, "Child Care" is set almost entirely in their bathroom. Other episodes include major scenes set in the boys' bathroom. Additionally, in almost every scene set in the boys' bedroom, the bathtub, shower curtain, or vanity can be seen through the open bathroom door. Beaver uses the bathroom countless times to escape his brother when angry, slamming the door to express his emotions. At such times, June and Ward are called upon to order Beaver to vacate his refuge. In "Beaver's Good Deed", a scene is set in Ward and June's bathroom. A tramp takes a bath in their tub and slips away wearing one of Ward's suits and a pair of his shoes. In the "Captain Jack" episode, Wally and Beaver try to hide a baby alligator they bought by keeping it in their bathroom's toilet tank. (Networks censors, who were uncomfortable about showing a toilet on television, compromised by only having the tank visible in the scene.)Beaver and girls
Beaver's attitude toward girls is a thread that runs throughout the series, providing comic contrast to his brother's successful dating life and his parents' happy marriage. Beaver tells off his female classmates, telling Violet Rutherford she drinks gutter water, calling Linda Dennison a "smelly old ape", and threatening to punch Judy Hensler if she gets "mushy" on him. Though loathing girls his own age, Beaver develops crushes on schoolteachers Miss Canfield and Miss Landers—motherly women—and in one episode says he's going to marry a "mother" when the time comes. Beaver disparages marriage saying, "just because you're married doesn't mean you have to like girls." In the later seasons, Beaver has adjusted his outlook somewhat and dates a few girls. The dates, however, turn sour and Beaver never enjoys the kind of success with the opposite sex his brother does.Final episode
First televised June 20, 1963, the series' final episode, "Family ScrapbookFamily Scrapbook (Leave It to Beaver episode)
"Family Scrapbook" is the final episode of the iconic American television series Leave It to Beaver. It first aired on ABC on June 20, 1963. It was the 39th episode in the show's sixth and final season, and the 234th episode in the complete series....
", offers a retrospective look at the show's six seasons as the Cleavers leaf through an old scrapbook while recalling past moments. The episode closes the series at milestones in the lives of the Cleaver boys: Wally readying himself for his first year of college, and Beaver leaving grammar school for high school. The episode is directed by Hugh Beaumont, written by Connelly and Mosher, and is regarded as being one of the first sitcom episodes written expressly as a series finale. Leave It to Beaver was not renewed for the 1963–64 season. My Three Sons moved into its time slot.
Cast appearances on Lassie
Lassie (1954 TV series)
Lassie is an American television series that follows the adventures of a female Rough Collie named Lassie and her companions, human and animal. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was televised from September 12, 1954, to March 24, 1973...
. Hugh Beaumont had yet to snag his signature role as Ward Cleaver when he appeared in "The Well", one of the two pilots filmed for the series. The episode was filmed in color and aired monochromatically in the series' first season (1954). In 1968, Jerry Mathers appeared in "Lassie and the 4-H Boys", an episode about two teen brothers quarreling over the disposition of a prize-winning bull, while, the same year, Tony Dow appeared with Jan-Michael Vincent
Jan-Michael Vincent
Jan-Michael Vincent is an American actor best known for his role as helicopter pilot Stringfellow Hawke on the 1980s U.S. television series Airwolf .-Early life:...
as a hippie-type character in a three-part story called "Hanford's Point". Stephen Talbot (Gilbert) was featured in two episodes of "Lassie" in 1959, "The Flying Machine" and "Growing Pains." Before their commitments to Leave It to Beaver, "Tiger" Fafara appeared in one Lassie episode while Madge Blake made appearances in two episodes. In the 1960–1961 season, Richard Correll played Steve Johnson, one of Timmy Martin's Calverton friends in two episodes. Ken Osmond played a delivery boy in a second season episode and a smart-aleck kid whose carelessness causes a forest fire in the fourth season episode "The Cub Scout". One Lassie episode is titled "Leave It to Lassie and the Beavers".
Reunion telemovie (1983)
Except for Beaumont, who had died in 1982, and Stanley Fafara, who was replaced as Whitey by Ed Begley, Jr.Ed Begley, Jr.
Edward James "Ed" Begley, Jr. is an American actor and environmentalist. Begley has appeared in hundreds of films, television shows, and stage performances. He is best known for his role as Dr. Victor Ehrlich, on the television series St...
, the main cast appeared in the reunion telemovie Still the Beaver (1983). The film followed adult Beaver's struggle to reconcile his recent divorce and single parenthood, while facing the possibility of his widowed mother selling their childhood home. June Cleaver is later elected to the Mayfield City Council.
Sequel series (1984–1989)
Its reception led to a new first-run, made-for-cable series, The New Leave It to BeaverThe New Leave It to Beaver
The New Leave It to Beaver is an American sitcom sequel to the 1950s and '60s series, Leave It to Beaver. The New Leave It to Beaver began with the 1983 CBS TV movie Still the Beaver, and was picked up in 1984 as a Disney Channel series with the same name; however, it only lasted one season...
(1984–1989), with Beaver and Lumpy Rutherford running Ward's old firm (where Lumpy's pompous, demanding father—played by Richard Deacon
Richard Deacon (actor)
Richard Deacon , born in Philadelphia, was an American television and motion picture actor.-Career:The bald and usually bespectacled character actor often portrayed pompous or imperious figures. He made appearances on The Jack Benny Show as a salesman and a barber, and on NBC's Happy as a hotel...
in the original series before his death in 1984 — had been the senior partner), Wally, who married his high school girlfriend Mary Ellen Rogers, as a practicing attorney and expectant father, and 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 two sons; eldest son Freddie (played by Ken Osmond
Ken Osmond
Ken Osmond is an American actor. Beginning a prolific career as a child actor at the age of four, Osmond is best known for his iconic role as Eddie Haskell on the 1950s television situation comedy Leave It to Beaver, and for reprising the role on the 1980s revival series The New Leave It to...
's real-life son, Eric Osmond), who was every inch his father's son—right down to the dual-personality, and a younger son, Eddie, Jr., aka "Bomber" (played by Osmond's younger real-life son, Christian Osmond), who was often away at military school, but would periodically come home to visit.
Broadcast history
The show proved to be a scheduling headache for CBS and ABC, airing on four different evenings (Wednesday through Saturday) during the series' run.CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
first broadcast the show on Friday, October 4, 1957, at 7:30 pm (EST) opposite Saber of London
Saber of London
Saber of London is a half-hour 1950s detective television series about a British police captain named Mark Saber, who works, in the original version of the program, in the homicide department of a large American city. Tom Conway portrayed Mark Saber from October 1951 to June 1954...
on NBC and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin is an American children's television program which originally aired in 166 episodes on ABC from October 1954 until August 1959. It starred child actor Lee Aaker as Rusty, a boy orphaned in an Indian raid, who was being raised by the soldiers at a US Cavalry post known...
on ABC. In March 1958, Beaver was moved to Wednesdays at 8:00 pm opposite Wagon Train
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...
, then on NBC.
CBS dropped the show after one season. ABC picked it up and ran it for another five seasons, from October 2, 1958, to June 20, 1963. In his memoirs, Jerry Mathers states the move was the decision of the sponsor, Ralston Purina, who arranged a better deal with ABC than with CBS.
On ABC, the show saw several time slots over its run. From October 1958 to June 1959 it aired on Thursdays at 7:30 pm (EST), with summer 1959 reruns airing at 9:00 pm. From October 1959 to September 1962 the show was televised Saturdays at 8:30 pm, and during its last season (1962–1963) the show aired Thursdays at 8:30 pm.
Reruns of the show became part of CBS affiliates' lineups in the mornings for several years to come. CBN Cable Network
ABC Family
ABC Family, stylized as abc family, is an American television network, owned by ABC Family Worldwide Inc., a subsidiary of the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company...
(now ABC Family) aired it in the early 1980s. TBS and WGN showed it for many years in the late 1980s (TBS sometimes running it back-to-back with the New Leave It to Beaver on occasion), and briefly on Nick at Nite
Nick at Nite
Nick at Nite is the nighttime Cable network that broadcasts over the channel space of Nickelodeon on Sundays from 8.p.m.-7.am., Monday through Fridays from 9 p.m.-7 a.m. and Saturdays from 10 p.m.-6 a.m. . Though it shares channel space with Nickelodeon, A.C. Nielsen Co...
from July 12, 2002-August 10, 2002 as part of TV Land Sampler. It currently airs on TV Land
TV Land
TV Land is an American cable television network launched on April 29, 1996. It is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, and networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon...
, where it has been shown since July 1998. Today, NBC Universal Television
NBC Universal Television
NBCUniversal Television Group is an American and global television production/distribution company and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal.The company is composed of six divisions: Universal Television , NBC Universal Television Stations, NBCUniversal Television Distribution, NBCUniversal...
owns the syndication rights and all properties related to the series.
The show started airing on the digital TV network Antenna TV
Antenna TV
Antenna TV is an American digital broadcast television network, primarily featuring classic television series from the 1950s to the 1990s, along with some feature films. It is owned by Tribune Broadcasting, a division of the Chicago-based Tribune Company...
on October 3. 2011.
Marketing and merchandise
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
s was generated for the juvenile market. With the show's renaissance in popularity decades later, merchandise produced was aimed toward the adult babyboomer/nostalgia collectors market and included pinback buttons, clocks, greeting cards, calendars, non-fiction books about the show's production, memoirs, and miscellaneous items. In 1983, Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow appeared on boxes of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. In 2007, one of the cereal boxes realized $300 at auction. Promotional photographs from the studio, autographs, original scripts, copies of TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
and other magazines from the period featuring articles about the show are all collectibles. Props and costumes from the show with documentation establishing provenance are highly prized.
Books
During the series' run, Little Golden BooksLittle Golden Books
Little Golden Books is a popular series of children's books. The first 12 titles were published on October 1, 1942:#Three Little Kittens#Bedtime Stories#Mother Goose#Prayers for Children#The Little Red Hen#Nursery Songs...
published Leave It to Beaver (1959), an inexpensive storybook for young children. Distinguished children's author Beverly Cleary
Beverly Cleary
Beverly Cleary is an American author. Educated at colleges in California and Washington, she worked as a librarian before writing children's books. Cleary has written more than 30 books for young adults and children. Some of her best-known characters are Henry Huggins, Ribsy, Beatrice Quimby, her...
published three softcover novels based on the series, Beaver and Wally, Leave It to Beaver (1960), and Here's Beaver (1961). Whitman Publishing printed Leave It to Beaver: Fire! (1962), a hardcover novel by Cole Fanin. In 1983, The Beaver Papers (ISBN 0-517-54991-3) by Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones was published. The book is a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of a lost season comprising twenty-five episodes written in the style of various authors such as Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
.
Dell comic books
Dell ComicsDell Comics
Dell Comics was the comic book publishing arm of Dell Publishing, which got its start in pulp magazines. It published comics from 1929 to 1973. At its peak, it was the most prominent and successful American company in the medium...
published six Leave It to Beaver comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s with photo covers of Beaver, Beaver and Wally, or Beaver and Ward. The first comic book (Four Color No. 912) is dated June 1958 and the last (Four Color No. 01-238-207) May–July 1962. In 2004, all six Dell Leave It to Beaver comic books in 'Near Mint' condition were valued in excess of two hundred dollars each.
Hasbro board games
Three Leave It to Beaver juvenile board games were released in 1959 by toymaker HasbroHasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
. The games were typical roll-and-move track games for two to four players. All three game box covers feature photographic portraits of Jerry Mathers as Beaver.
"Leave It to Beaver Money Maker Game" suggests one of the show's recurrent themes—Beaver's attempts to make money. Equipment includes a center-seamed board with illustrations of Beaver and Ward. One player distributes and collects money as "Father".
"Leave It to Beaver Rocket to the Moon Space Game", rather than using dice or a spinner to advance players along the track, employs a rocket-shaped cone that is flipped onto a board to determine the number of spaces to be moved. "Leave It to Beaver Ambush Game" is a track game with an Old West theme.
Feature film adaptation
1997's movie adaptation of the series starred Christopher McDonaldChristopher McDonald
Christopher McDonald is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore, Tappy Tibbons in Requiem for a Dream, and Mel Allen in the HBO film 61*.-Personal life:...
as Ward, Janine Turner
Janine Turner
Janine Turner is an American actress who starred on the prime time television show Northern Exposure from 1990 to 1995. From 2000 to 2002, she appeared on the Lifetime original series Strong Medicine...
as June, Erik von Detten
Erik von Detten
Erik Thomas von Detten is an American actor. He is known for his roles in Escape to Witch Mountain, Toy Story, Brink!, The Princess Diaries, and So Weird.-Personal life:Von Detten was born in San Diego, California...
as Wally, and Cameron Finley
Cameron Finley
Joseph Cameron Finley is an American former child actor.Finley was born in Garland, Texas, the son of Lexa Iann , a spiritual healer, and Charles David "Chuck" Finley, a software developer. He has two siblings, Taz and Stopher. When he was three, he was taken by his parents to an acting seminar...
as the Beaver. It was panned by many critics, except for Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, who gave it a three-star rating. It performed poorly at the box office, earning only $11,713,605. Barbara Billingsley, Ken Osmond and Frank Bank made cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
s in the film.
DVD releases
Universal Studios Home EntertainmentUniversal Studios Home Entertainment
Universal Studios Home Entertainment is the home video division of Universal Pictures...
has released the first two seasons of Leave It to Beaver on DVD in Region 1. Season one was released in two versions: an inexpensive cardboard slip-cased collection, and a costlier version in which the DVDs were contained in a retro-styled, plastic photo album tucked inside a plaid metal lunch box displaying portraits of the cast on its exterior.
On January 26, 2010, it was announced that Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an entertainment company founded in 2003 that was started by Richard Foos , Bob Emmer and Garson Foos initially as a specialty music label...
had acquired the DVD rights to the series (under license from Universal
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Universal Studios Home Entertainment is the home video division of Universal Pictures...
). They have subsequently released seasons 3–5 on DVD as well as a complete series box set. The sixth and final season was released on March 1, 2011.
| DVD Name | Ep # | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| The Complete First Season | 39 | November 22, 2005 |
| The Complete Second Season | 39 | May 2, 2006 |
| Season Three | 39 | June 15, 2010 |
| Season Four | 39 | September 14, 2010 |
| Season Five | 39 | December 14, 2010 |
| Season Six | 39 | March 1, 2011 |
| The Complete Series | 234 | June 29, 2010 |
| 20 Timeless Classics | 20 | January 31, 2011 |
Ratings
In spite of solid and consistent ratings, Leave It to Beaver never climbed into the Nielsen's top-30 though similar sitcoms of the period like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed ShowThe Donna Reed Show
The Donna Reed Show is an American sitcom starring Donna Reed as the upper middle class housewife Donna Stone. Carl Betz appears as her pediatrician husband Alex, and Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen as their teenage children Mary and Jeff. The show originally aired on ABC at 10 pm from September...
, The Real McCoys
The Real McCoys
The Real McCoys is an American situation comedy co-produced by Danny Thomas' "Marterto Productions", in association with Walter Brennan and Irving Pincus's "Westgate" company...
, and Dennis the Menace managed to do so.
Leave It to Beaver faced stiff competition in its time slots. During its next to last season, for example, the show ran against The Defenders, a program examining highly charged courtroom cases about abortion and the death penalty. In its final season, the show was up against Perry Mason and Dr. Kildare but was in the ABC line-up with television greats The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show, and My Three Sons.
Critical reviews
Critical reception was generally favorable. In the New York Herald Tribune, John Crosby stated the show was "charming and sincere" and featured "the wonderful candor and directness with which children disconcert and enchant you." Variety favorably compared the premiere episode with the classic Tom Sawyer and noted at the fourth season's opening that the show had "never been a yock show in the sense of generating big and sustained laughs, but it has consistently poured forth warmth, wit and wisdom without condescension or pretense." TV Guide dubbed the show "the sleeper of the 1957–58 season" and later noted that the show was "one of the most honest, most human and most satisfying situation comedies on TV." The New York Times, however, found the show was "too broad and artificial to be persuasive."A comparison of how children interact with their brothers and sisters on such 1950s situation comedy television programs as Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best with those on such 1980s programs as The Cosby Show and Family Ties found that children interacted more positively in the early period but were important and central—if more conflictual—to the main story action in the 1980s.
Awards and nominations
The show received two Emmy nominations in 1958 for Best New Program Series of the Year and Best Teleplay Writing—Half Hour or Less (Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher) for the premiere episode, "Beaver Gets 'SpelledBeaver Gets 'Spelled (Leave It to Beaver episode)
"Beaver Gets 'Spelled" is the premiere episode of the iconic American television series Leave It to Beaver . The episode aired on CBS on October 4, 1957. The episode is the first episode in the first season, and the first episode in the complete series...
". In 1984, Jerry Mathers was awarded the Young Artist's Former Child Star Special Award
Young Artist Award
The Young Artist Award is an accolade bestowed by the Young Artist Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1978 to recognize and award excellence of youth performers, and to provide scholarships for young artists who may be physically and/or financially challenged.The Young Artist...
, and in 1987, Ken Osmond and Tony Dow were both honored with the Young Artist's Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003, Diane Brewster was nominated for TV Land's Classic TV Teacher of the Year Award while, in 2005, Ken Osmond was nominated for TV Land's Character Most Desperately in Need of a Timeout Award. Leave It to Beaver placed on Time's "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-Time" list. Bravo ranked Beaver 74th on their list of the 100 greatest TV characters.
External links
- "Golly, Beav, We’re Historic," by Neil Genzlinger, New York Times, June 25, 2010
- episodes of Leave It to Beaver on TVLand.comTV LandTV Land is an American cable television network launched on April 29, 1996. It is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, and networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon...
(USA only)