It never finished any of its six seasons ranked in the Top 30 in primetime. In fact, it was canceled by its initial network, CBS, after just one season. Yet, the classic comedy Leave It to Beaver is synonymous with the idyllic middle-class family model. And today we celebrate 66 years to the day that the fictional clan named Cleaver was introduced.
Built around young Jerry Mathers as Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, Leave It to Beaver offered a slice of life we all craved. More specifically, featured were those picture perfect parents Ward (Hugh Beaumont) and June (Barbara Billingsley), older brother Wally (Tony Dow), and a potpourri of friends (including Ken Osmond as smarmy Eddie Haskell, Frank Bank as Clarence “Lumpy” Rutherford, Rusty Stevens as Larry, Stanley Fafara as Whitney, and Stephen Talbot as Gilbert).
“Eddie is so polite, it’s almost un-American,” Hugh Beaumont as Ward once commented.
In a typical episode of Leave It to Beaver, rambunctious Beaver, who was 7 when the sitcom began, gets into some sort of trouble and then faces his parents. There was no yelling, just respectful conversation between parent and child. And, unlike the then typical type of storytelling on family comedies like Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Leave it to Beaver was told from the from the kids’ point of view.
Remember that bad haircut Beaver got, or that goofy outfit his aunt bought that he was embarrassed to wear, or when he gets stuck in an advertising billboard with an enormous make-believe cup of soup? By episode end, Beaver would face his parents – stern but sensible Ward and ladylike June. And, poof…the problem is solved!
Sometimes, the formula on Leave It to Beaver was reversed, with Ward or June making a parenting mistake and having to figure out how to make up for it. Regardless, there was always a happy ending, and when Leave It to Beaver did officially end on NBC after a six season run in 1957 it was the first TV series historically to have an official ending (as the family looked at an album leading to flashbacks over the course of the series).
Unlike other shows where cast members came and went, Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow, Hugh Beaumont and Barbara Billingsley each appeared in every episode of Leave It to Beaver.
Leave It to Beaver, of course, has never actually left the airwaves. It can currently be seen weekday mornings on MeTV. And the cast (minus Hugh Beaumont, who passed away in 1982), reunited in 1983 for CBS made-for television movie Still the Beaver.
Now an adult, Beaver, not surprisingly, is still getting into messes (only more serious ones and with only one parent present to help rectify the situation). He and his two sons (Kip and Oliver) move back home to fictional Mayfield after his wife kicks him out. Wally is married to a lawyer named Mary Ellen and has a daughter named Kelly and later a son named Kevin. And good ol’ Eddie Haskell, who has a young son who is just like him (karma is a bitch!), and other characters we have come to know from Leave it to Beaver are back. That’s right…even Beaver’s perfect teacher Miss Canfield!
With viewers in droves returning for a revisit with the Cleaver clan, the sitcom was revived as The New Leave It to Beaver (also known as Still the Beaver). It aired on Disney Channel from 1984 to 1985, and then on TBS from 1986 to 1989.
Sadly, Jerry Mathers, now 75, is the last of the surviving quartet of core cast members from Leave It to Beaver. But Mathers, Tony Dow, Hugh Beaumont and Barbara Billingsley are cemented in pop culture as the quintessential family. And today, 66 years later, we celebrate the Cleavers and company.
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