Leave It To Beaver
 1 9 5 7 - 1 9 6 3 (USA)
When Theodore Cleaver (Jerry Mathers) was just a baby in his
crib, older brother Wally (Tony Dow), a mere toddler in those
days, couldn't get his little mouth around the name Theodore. The
best he could do was "Tweeter," which parents Ward (Hugh
Beaumont) and June (Barbara Billingsley) morphed into
"Beaver", and thus a legendary title was born.
Leave It to Beaver, which creators and former Amos 'n
Andy radio writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher conceived of as
a show related through the eyes of children (a new idea when it
launched back in October 1957), was a solidly put-together
series.
Though self-proclaimed cynics took it to task for its
baseball-mom-and-apple-pie tone just a few years after it went off
the air in 1963, its innocent humour holds up today.
The show was good, clean fun through and through. Whereas a
child star interviewed today simply oozes industry savvy, young
Master Mathers came off as the same aw-shucks kid as he did when
playing the Beav. Matter of fact, that's what got him the part.
 "We
picked Jerry Mathers as The Beaver from over 100 applicants,"
Mosher said in 1958. "Most of the kids came in with typical
actor haircuts . . . their mothers pushing 'em on. "
"But this one
kid showed up in a Cub Scout uniform and kept fidgeting uneasily
until I asked him what was wrong. He said gee, he wanted to get to
his scout meeting. That ended the audition right there as far as
we were concerned. He got to his meeting and he also got the
job."
Mosher and Connelly based many of their storylines on the
real-life antics of their own kids (They had eight between them).
When one of their kids took a pair of scissors to his own locks,
the Leave It To Beaver episode 'The Haircut' was born.
Mosher's kids clipped out a coupon for a baby alligator and
received one from Florida. Bingo! - so did the Beaver kids.
Even Beaver's way of speaking was written into the script:
"It's just a matter of dropping the first syllable of a
word," Mosher explained, using the night he asked his son
where his books were as an example. "I 'most got 'em,"
his son replied, leaving Mosher and his wife baffled until the
child explained that he said he almost forgot them.
The Cleaver's lived at 211 Pine Street, Mayfield, USA.
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