by James Wallace Harris, 7/17/24
Susan and I are watching the entire run of Leave It to Beaver. We’re currently in the sixth and final season, about to finish all 234 episodes. We watch two episodes a night, so that means we’ll complete six years of the original broadcast in 117 days. Back then they had thirty-nine episodes per season.
We’ve watched Jerry Mathers (Beaver) and Tony Dow (Wally) grow up. When the series begun in 1957, Beaver was seven and in second grade. Wally was thirteen in the eighth grade. Six years apart, but six years later, Beaver was in the eighth, but Wally was in the twelfth, four years apart. Evidently, the producers didn’t want Wally going off to college. Mathers and Dow were only three years apart in age in real life. Dow was born in 1945, and Mathers in 1948.
Leave It to Beaver premiered on October 4, 1957, the same day that Sputnik I went into orbit. I had just entered first grade and was five. I don’t remember seeing Leave It to Beaver as a kid in the 1950s. It wasn’t until sometime in the 1960s that I saw an episode, and I didn’t see it often. Susan didn’t watch it as a kid either.
In other words, we’re not watching Leave It to Beaver for nostalgic reasons. I’m not sure why we got hooked on it. We were just looking around for something to watch, and I suggested the show as something pleasant we both might like. Susan doesn’t like shows with violence (although I’ve got her to watch the Fargo series recently). I think I picked Beaver because Susan loved watching Andy Griffith so much.
I do have nostalgic memories of family shows like Make Room for Daddy, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and My Three Sons from the late 1950s and early 1960s, so it’s odd we picked Leave It to Beaver. We even signed up for Peacock with no ads so we could watch it without ads.
I can’t promise that Leave It to Beaver is one of the greatest TV shows ever. It’s pleasant. We like the actors and characters. The stories are quite simple, very pro-family, very didactic. The stories are also repetitive. For example, there are several episodes about Beaver getting a pet he can’t keep, including an alligator, rat, donkey, and a very ugly monkey. There were many shows where Beaver friends convince him they should all go to school wearing something weird, like a sweatshirt with a horrible monster on it, or show up for a special event not wearing a coat and tie, and Beaver shows up as the gang planned but the others don’t, making him look stupid. Another common plot was for Beaver’s friends to talk him into doing something he shouldn’t.
Most of the episodes had a message. Often it was: When your parents tell you something it is for your own good. But fairly frequently, there were shows about how parents should listen to their kids sometimes, because sometimes their kids knew better.
I remember Leave It to Beaver being about only the kids, sort of like Peanuts. But half the show is about Ward and June. I guess as a kid I just didn’t pay attention to adults, either in real life or on TV.
One of my favorite episodes has Beaver getting in an argument with a bigger kid and uses a cuss word. Of course, the school bell rings when Beaver says the word, but his teacher, Miss Landers, heard what he said. Miss Landers is shocked and sternly informs Beaver he’s in big trouble. Miss Landers tells Beaver to bring a guardian to school to meet with her. Ward is off on a business trip, and Beaver can’t bring himself to tell June what he said, so he convinces Wally to come to school as his guardian. Miss Landers accepts Wally because she doesn’t want Beaver to tell June what he said either.
Even though we time travel back to the 1950s and early 1960s when we watch Leave It to Beaver, it doesn’t feel nostalgic. It feels more archeological. The show just reminds me of how things were so different back then.
I thought I’d find episodes I would remember but I haven’t. The closest any episode felt like I had seen it before was the one when Beaver and Wally play the stock market. I do remember as a kid watching a TV show where the kids learn about the stock market, but I can’t swear it was on Leave It to Beaver. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.
Quite often while watching other old TV shows I’ll tell Susan, “Oh, I’ve seen this one.” But that’s never happened with Beaver. But the intros and closing credit scenes to all six seasons seem burned into my memory, but not the stories themselves. I guess I remember the visuals and not the plots.
It’s weird to watch a show from the first to the last episode. I’ve done that several times now. It’s also kind of painful. Older TV shows depended on every episode being entirely self-contained. This approach leant itself to formulaic scripts, which was true with Leave It to Beaver. I’ve read that Beaver was the first show to have a finale, which was a unique episode. But for the most part, there was a commonality to every other episode.
As far as I can remember every episode featured the staircase. Most featured front or back door meetings, breakfast table meetings, dinner table meetings, doing the dishes together, sitting around the bedroom, living room, or den. For most seasons we saw Ward and June kiss in each episode. That seemed to fall off in the last couple of seasons. All four of the main actors had standard facial expressions and used specific body language in every show.
One thing I remembered wrong was the Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond) character. I remember him as a juvenile delinquent, the bad boy. But the show portrays him as a sympathetic loser, on the pathetic side, one who tries too hard, has too much ego, and probably has bad parents.
Beaver had very few guest stars, which was what I enjoyed when watching the entire nine years of Perry Mason. However, a few of the actors, like Miss Landers (Sue Randall) I’ve seen on other shows. I saw her on Perry Mason. Of course, Fred Rutherford (Richard Deacon) went on to be Mel on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Watching old TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s reveals an alternate reality that we all observed back then. The Beaver often mentioned the TV shows that were on when Leave It to Beaver was on the air, even making inside jokes about the competition. And to a degree it makes fun of other pop culture of the 1950s and 1960s. But it was very gentle. I even saw a science fiction magazine a couple of times. I’ve often wondered when science fiction was first mentioned in pop culture.
The show covered the phases of childhood and adolescence that kids were going through back in the 1950s and early 1960s. Leave It to Beaver went off the air in 1963, before the famous Sixties began. This photo meme on Facebook conveys that stark change perfectly.
Watching Leave It to Beaver explores the times before that cultural shift.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
I watched LEAVE IT TO BEAVER as a kid. It was far from my favorite TV show–that was PERRY MASON. My favorite character was the swarmy Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond) who taught me a few lessons about lying and cheating.
I have watched the entire show. Certainly it’s not cutting-edge or complex, but one does not go to a 1957 family sitcom expecting that. But it’s well-done, funny and touching at times. Quite innocent and relaxing, from a less cynic time.
Ward is the ideal TV parent, with authority but also understanding and with a sense of humor. Wally is a really good older brother too, with a lot of patience.
Eddie Haskell is a great character, but as a friend Wally deserved better. Yes, from an adult point of view he is kind of a harmless and pathetic figure, but from a little kid’s point of view, he is bad news. Not quite a bully, but self-serving and always trying to play a mean joke or make fun of younger kids.
I agree, Leave It to Beaver was touching at times. And I enjoyed seeing two episodes every night. I just don’t know if people used to 21st century TV will find it appealing. If you grew up with shows like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, Leave It to Beaver might be too simple and quiet.
I’m curious if 21st century kids growing up today would like it, before they hooked on current shows.
.
I started watching at about age 9 and kept going until probably 1963 (?) – Kennedy shot. I thought Leave it to Beaver was realism. I had 2 parents but Dad worked (away from home a lot). I that was life as it was meant to be – and mine was close although I had 5 siblings. After 11/22 (JFK)
I meant to mention that in the essay. Beaver ended before Kennedy was shot. I think 11/22/63 was when the 1960s went into hyperdrive. 1964 was the year of The Beatles and the British Invasion. It was very exciting, but still not THE SIXTIES. We should say THE SIXTIES began when Dylan went electric in 1965, and with the song “Like a Rolling Stone.”
As I remember, rKennedy was killed on 11/22/1963 and although they had been scheduled to play Ed Sullivan in December of that year, the Beatles were postponed until February 7 of 1964 (about 6 weeks) because it just seemed inappropriately soon. Actually I’d been hearing them at the “Y dances” (with disc jockeys) since December and was none too fond of I Wanna Hold Your Hand or whatever one it was. – I liked surfin’ music – Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Righteous Brothers, etc. I liked Mo-Town (another genre of 1960s Rock).
Anyway, right between those two hits on the time-line I turned 16 in early January. LOL – And then in August we moved from Fargo to California. Imo, that was going to be the home of the Beach boys but alas – I was in Okie- land – land of Okies – only “in” California but still “of” Oklahoma. Oh well …
Moving on I was in LA (Whiskey-a-GoGo) by June of 1966 and then in San Francisco by March of 1967 – and until “Wake Up Maggie I really got something to say to you…. It’s late September and I really should be back in school.” – Ahhhh…. And then came the death of the Hippie in October (?) He died in effigy and his coffin was hand-transported up Haight Street while the Dead played on.
Oops – I forgot the Monterrey Jazz Festival – Was that also September? – But never mind – Charlie Manson left San Francisco with his family of lost girls in September – 1967 still, I believe it was. Woodstock was in August of that year – –
But it wasn’t until December 6th that the calendar year of the Sixties ended – and so did some lives at the Altamont Speedway when The Rolling Stones played with the Hell’s Angels. That was the end (death?) of the Sixties.
There was and epilogue – because we didn’t find that out until the La Bianca – Tate murders – a couple years later – 1969 – and that was the end of the hippies. the end of the Sixties. The shortest decade imo. But the longest Sixties decade went from 1955 through 1975. – That was the gawd awful War in Vietnam. (And it’s a 1, 2, 3 What are we fighting for?”). https://tinyurl.com/4jy3ymcs
I’ve watched Leave It to Beaver on a regular basis a number of times, so I definitely remember many episodes. I especially like it for bedtime viewing because it’s so easy on the brain.
Barring poor misguided Eddie, I find all the characters likable for different reasons … ok, not so much June, she played an annoying part and as the years have gone on and women’s lives have changed so much, she’s become especially difficult to watch without hollering at her in frustration. I want to tell her to find her voice. To speak to her from my side of the tv screen so I can tell her “June! Please! You don’t need to always let I’m-so-wise-Ward have the first, second and third word!”
No shade on Ward though; I wish I’d had a dad like him. My stepfather was a doozy of a parent and not in a good way. I’m sure that’s part of my affection for the show; I’ve always known it was an idealized portrayal of a family but that’s part of its charm.
I just went and looked around online and found some interesting info about the actor who played Lumpy. It seems funny to picture Lumpy sitting on set reading WSJ.
He was a real-life version of Alex P. Keaton. Like the Family Ties character played by Michael J. Fox, from his youth Bank was intrigued by the business world and the allure of making money. On the set of Leave It to Beaver, Bank once recalled, he read the Wall Street Journal the way that the other actors perused Daily Variety. After leaving acting, Bank became a successful stockbroker, and by age 30 was pulling down $300,000 a year at a Los Angeles-based investment firm.
He managed the Cleaver family’s investments. According to a 1992 Associated Press article, Bank’s client list included Jerry Mathers (Beaver), Tony Dow (Wally Cleaver) and Barbara Billingsley (June Cleaver), in addition to Ken Osmond. “Frank is certainly brighter than Lumpy Rutherford, and a very good stockbroker,” Billingsley told People in 1998.
He was pretty low-key about his former stardom. As Bank told Orange Coast magazine in 1989: “Beaver wasn’t a part of my life for many years. I never watched the reruns. I didn’t have anything to do with it, until my children were old enough to say, ‘Dad, what did you do?’ And then, they were so proud, I became proud.”
I meant to write more about Ward and June. Ward gets to be the wise dad in the show. But poor June is seen repeatedly washing dishes, stacking dishes, doing housework, vacuuming, fixing breakfast, fixing dinner. Barbara Billingsley must have gotten awful tired of doing a limited number of routines for 234 episodes.
You can see videos on YouTube about all the various actors from the show. I saw one about Frank Bank last night.
You mentioned the episode Sweatshirt Monsters, where Beaver was sent home from school for wearing a shirt depicting a cartoon monster. Ward gave Beaver a trite lecture about how “Wrong is wrong, even if everybody says it’s right”. Instead, he should have taken Beaver’s side and told the teacher that sending Beaver home because of a shirt is beyond idiotic. How would that same teacher have reacted to seeing his students attired in late 1960s fashion?
Leave it to Beaver reflects bedrock American values. Family, stability, morality. Satan didn’t have the grip he has today