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Leave it to Beaver
Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation
comedy about an inquisitive but often naïve boy named Theodore
"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-twentieth 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 games, novels, and comic books. 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."
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