"Leave It To Beaver: Season 1" -- A Personal Review - Page 3

"You never can tell, Beaver .... maybe women like to smell like old catcher's mitts."

Merry Christmas to you too, Mike. (And everyone.)

And I, too, Greg, would send that talking TV packing due to its horrid taste in sitcoms. A shocking lack of Beaver appreciation!

I take it, then, Greg, you don't want to hear about my multi-angled proposal for an episode involving June up at Friends Lake, when, to Ward's utter delight, she unveils her brand-new 2-piece bikini bathing suit in all its slinky glory?

You're dang straight that's a good price. The best deal right now on-line is $36+. You should have grabbed two or three.


But (as I eluded to in my mile-long review) please do note how utterly pristine and crystal-clear ALL of the "out-of-doors" scenes are in every single episode. Not a speck of grain can I find in any outdoor shots at all. And there are usually at least a couple "outdoor" scenes in every LITB episode...which I think kind of makes up, sort of, for the grainier scenes elsewhere.

Or -- I suppose it might have the opposite effect on some viewers; i.e., they might see the grain-free outdoor shots and then say "Gee, dad, I sure wish all the indoor scenes looked as grain-free as this. Don't you, Beav? Give me a hunk o' milk as I ponder this situation, will ya?"


For just a second (when I saw "review" here in your post) I thought that perhaps it was I who had foolishly put such inaccurate info in my review here. But then I saw that you were referring to somebody else.

Yes, that person is definitely mistaken re. the pilot. I've had it on homemade VHS since about 1988 or so.

JUNE -- "Ward, why don't you ever bring me flowers?"

WARD -- "I'm the kind that says it with seat covers."

I have no idea about the "Film" dates with regard to LITB, or the "Small World" pilot. But the pilot aired for the first time (in syndication) in April 1957, so it was either filmed in very early '57 or late '56 even.

Some Additional Casual Beaver Observations & Hunks O' Trivia..........................

Anybody notice something somewhat unusual about the TV series Leave It To Beaver (in general terms that is)?........

This something "unusual" hit me recently when watching the Season-One LITB episode "The Paper Route", which is a top-notch ep. featuring The Beav and The Wallace getting a job delivering newspapers to earn money for a new bicycle.

Unlike most other TV sitcoms from this 1950s-1960s era that I have seen, Leave It To Beaver has many scenes shot out-of-doors, instead of the "fake outdoors" method employed by I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show, and many others, where the "outdoor" scenes are obviously filmed inside the more-controllable environment of the studio soundstages.

But in Beaver, "outdoors" is really outdoors, which I think adds even more of a realisitic and authentic feel to this TV series. In the "Paper Route" episode, about half of that program was filmed in the sunny outdoors at "Revue" Studios in California. And the outdoor scenes look absolutely wonderful and crystal-clear on the DVDs (as I previously mentioned in the review for the S.1 set). And it makes me wonder if a different type of film stock (with less or no grain) was utilized for those out-of-doors scenes, because they are definitely much less grain-filled than the indoors scenes.

The Andy Griffith Show was another show from this era that filmed a lot of stuff outside, which is definitely a good thing IMO. It's hard to imagine Beaver and Andy without all those "real" outdoors scenes. A fake blue-screen background just wouldn't cut it for either of those shows.

Jerry Mathers, in his 1998 self-authored book "...And Jerry Mathers As 'The Beaver'", even makes mention of how unusual it was for a TV series' production crew to film a lot of outdoor scenes......

"'Leave It To Beaver' was shot on 35mm film, like a movie. We used one camera, and much of the show was filmed outside. It took four days to shoot. The full crew had to be there every day we worked. The show was edited like a movie. In its day, the $45,000 per week 'Leave It To Beaver' production cost was considered expensive. In comparison, the one-camera {1985-} 1989 version of {The} 'New Leave It To Beaver' {aka 'Still The Beaver'} cost $800,000 per week to shoot." -- Jerry Mathers; circa 1998

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LITB Trivial Anecdotes:

Also relating to "The Paper Route" ep. -- June pays $6.20 to deliver Beaver's papers in a taxicab one night.....and she pays by check. Does anyone know of any cab driver who will accept a personal check from somebody for a cab ride? LOL.

But, then too, perhaps June just turned on her magnetic charm and had the poor sap of a cab driver eating out of her hands. (Who knows what favors she might have promised the poor schnook! )

More Meaningless, But Kinda Neat, "Paper Route" Trivia .............

The check that June made out to the cab company, btw, was Check #436 .... and was made out to the order of "City Cab Co." on March 7th, 1958. I'm sorry, but the account number is not visible on the check when you freeze the episode in question at the 12:21 mark on the Digital Versatile Disc.

There's a verifiable error uttered by Ward Cleaver in that "check" scene of the episode too. Ward says that the check was dated "last Tuesday", which is impossible....since March 7, 1958, was a Friday....not a Tuesday. (Perpetual calendars are great, aren't they?)

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Post-Script Trivia:

Barbara Billingsley ("June Cleaver") turned 90 years young on December 22nd, 2005!

This following stat seems somewhat incredible to me -- Barbara B. is 5.5 years older than the late, great actor Richard Deacon (aka "Fred Rutherford"). Doesn't seem quite right, huh? (It must be Deac's ever-present Chrome Dome that just made him seem older than he was. He was only 36 during the first season of LITB.)

Heck, somebody's gotta do it. You apparently aren't gonna.

Leave It To Beaver Season 2 -- Coming May 2nd, 2006! ........

http://tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=5024