Before he was the Beaver, Jerry Mathers was Little Ricky on 'I Love Lucy.' An uncredited Mathers appeared on Lucy's lap in "Ricky's Old Girlfriend," This is a dream seqence.
Leave It to Beaver is an American television sitcom broadcast between 1957 and 1963 about an inquisitive and often naive boy, and his adventures at home, school, and around his suburban neighborhood. Leave It to Beaver is one of the first primetime sitcom series written from a child's point of view. Like several television dramas and sitcoms of the late 1950s and early 1960s (Lassie and My Three Sons), Leave It to Beaver is a glimpse of middle-class American boyhood. In a typical episode, Beaver gets into some sort of boyish scrape, then faces his parents for reprimand and correction. Neither parent was omniscient or infallible; the series often showed the parents debating their approach to child rearing, and some episodes were built around parental gaffes. Leave It to Beaver ran for six full 39-week seasons (234 episodes). The series had its debut on CBS on October 4, 1957. The following season, it moved to ABC, where it stayed until completing its run on June 20, 1963. Throughout the show's run, it was shot with a single camera. The stars of the pilot were Casey Adams and Paul Sullivan (as father and son Ward and Wally Cleaver). They were replaced as production of the series neared. In an episode "Captain Jack" has claimed its place in television history as the first American TV show to display a toilet tank Episodes were budgeted at $30,000 to $40,000 each, making the show one of the most costly to produce at the time. High production costs were in part due to 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 as to how "steam" came out of the cup). At one of many auditions, Mathers wore his Cub Scout uniform and told casting personnel he was eager to leave for his den meeting. Connelly and Mosher were charmed with Mathers' innocent candor and cast him in the title role.
As Leave It to Beaver was premiering on CBS on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union was celebrating the launch of its Sputnik 1 satellite.
Mathers was the first child actor to get a cut of the merchandise revenue.
The family was forced to move, In the middle of the series, the Cleavers move from 485 Mapleton Drive to 211 Pine Street. The facade of the original home was located on the Republic Studios lot, the show switched its production to Universal. The Pine Street home was also used in Marcus Welby, M.D. and Desperate Housewives.
Theodrore "the Beaver" Cleaver (Jerry Mathers) - Beaver wants and tries to do the right thing, but cannot help going astray and usually faces a moral lecture from his father at the end of each episode
Wally Cleaver (Tony Dow) - Wally acts as a bridge in the show between his parents and his brother, often translating parental communications into kidspeak for Beaver's benefit.
June Evelyn Bronson Cleaver ( Barbara Billingsley) - She is a full-time homemaker and mother, often seen tidying the house, preparing meals in the kitchen, or tending her family.
Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont) - Ward is a good-natured, understanding man who is often called upon to give his sons some moral instruction regarding their choices and behavior.
Beavers Friends - Gus (Burt Mustin) the fireman, Miss Canfield (Diane Brewster), teacher, Alice Landers (Sue Randall), Larry Mondello (Rusty Stevens), Hubert "Whitey" Whitney (Stanley Fafara), Judy Hensler (jeri Weil)
Wally's friends - wise-guy Eddie Haskell ( Ken Osmand), Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford (Frank Bank), Chester Anderson (Buddy hart)
June's formal attire wasn't just about style. She wore pearls and high collar to hide a surgery-inflicted hollow in her neck She switched from flats to high heels to appear taller as the boys grew. A rumor during the '70s that Jerry Mathers had been killed in action during The Vietnam War. Mathers never served in Vietnam . He did try to enlist in the Marines, but fear of the negative publicity should anything have happened to him. He servied stateside in the Air National Guard instead. Dow and Mathers also appeared briefly on an early episode of Saturday Night Live, Mathers joked that he had started the rumor fearing people were starting to forget about him. Dow responded, "Gee Beav, you big goof. I oughta slug ya!"
The line was:
June: "Ward..."Don't you think you're being a bit hard on the Beaver? He's been through a great deal today.'"
Ward: "What's the sense of going through a great deal dear, if you don't learn something from it?"
But hearing people say "Ward you were really rough on the beaver last night" is funny!
Congratulations to soxfan0915 for the first to find and Big Read on the second to find.