Leave It To Beaver coming in 2005!!! (1 Viewer)

[David Von Pein]

Oh, heavens yes! "Gloria Cusick"/"Julie Foster" was a real catch for Wallace. ....



.... But Wally ended up marrying Mary Ellen instead, who wasn't exactly yesterday's meat loaf herself in her younger years. Does this make me officially a "dirty old man", via these lusty comments about Wally's young babes? ......

 

[David Von Pein]

Hi Mike F. ........

Yeah, I thought the $50 MSRP was a tad high myself -- however, I guess we must consider the fact that LITB was a series which made a gob of eps. each season (39 per)....so that's extra content right there I guess we could say. Plus: Universal's putting a 40th show on the S.1 set (the Pilot for the series), which adds a little more to the $ figure.

So, I can certainly live with a $34.99 take-home Beaver (which would be my guess as to what Amazon will sell it for during "pre-order" mode. (Unless we can squeeze out a 35% discount out of them, which is possible for some releases.)

However, Hitchcock Presents S.1 is being offered with only a $39.98 MRP, and that set will have exactly the same number of episodes as LITB (39), plus a Hitch featurette too, which should make the content of that set nearly identical in # of minutes to The Beav. So...how they decide what to charge is a mystery to me. ~shrugs~

DDD has the Beaver-1 set up already -- $36.00 for the regular set. .....

http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/dvd.cfm?itemID=MCA029113

 

[Greg_S_H]

You probably wouldn't have gotten the wild and wooly Ward of episode 5 later on:

"Gee, dad. A guy could get in a lot of trouble kissing a married lady."

(Ward gets a dreamy look): "He sure could."

 

[David Von Pein]

Yes, you are so right, Greg.

That quote you mentioned is from "The New Neighbors", when Beaver fears that that "mean old Mr. Donaldson" is bound and determined to chop Theodore up with his hedge clippers.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Youse guys are killin' me with these quotes and other info/pix!

I LOVE this show. I cannot tell you how many times I referenced situations from them to my kids while they were growing up (actually, still ARE growing up: ages 19 & 15).

 

[David Von Pein]

Here's a little tidbit that I heretofore had never even heard of (something I noticed via the Universal webpage for the upcoming LITB DVDs) ----

Something called "SDH Subtitling" (Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing).

SDH involves a distinct color for each type of dialogue or sound effect, etc.

How they work:

The subtitles are positioned directly underneath/above a person in order to help identify who was talking.

The following color schemes are also used:

White = Dialogue.
Yellow = Voice-overs (the person speaking is not seen).
*Yellow (preceeded by an asterisk) = Used for transmitted voices (telephone, loud speaker).
Red = Sound effects.
Purple = Musical score.

------------

Interesting. I don't think I've ever come across this "SDH" feature on any DVDs. And prior to perusing the new Universal Home Video "Leave It To Beaver" DVD webpages, I've never even seen it advertised for a DVD release.

Are these "SDH" type subtitles on any other recent products?

 

[Mike Frezon]

BTW, Barbara Billingsley in Season 1 is what it's all about, dudes.

 

[David Von Pein]

"Who's Cornelia Rayburn, Ward? And when did she see YOU off your feet?!" -- JUNE CLEAVER (Premiere Episode of LITB; Oct. 1957)

 

[Greg_S_H]

The show was much more racy than it is credited as being.

That SDH stuff sounds pretty cool. If it has existed before, I haven't encountered it.

 

[KeithJP]

David VP, the earliest I can remember seeing SDH was on the Brazilian discs of the Classic Monster Collection, about two years ago. Since they don't use closed captions, I've noticed the subtitles on other region DVD's tend to be more descriptive than region 1 subs. On the region 1 Hulk DVD, subtitles turn green when Banner finally changes into Hulk. The recent Daimajin re-releases use SDH. I'm used to seeing SDH on foreign and domestic discs, so I couldn't narrow the search down except to maybe 90 discs that I would have to check. I've seen asterisk, italicized and different color for off-screen dialogue/sounds, same side of the screen for person speaking, heightened to indicate interruptions, etc. I would prefer it if subtitles were as detailed as closed captions. CC covers too much of the screen.

 

[David Von Pein]

Thanks Keith.

I don't have one single DVD labelled with "SDH" on the case. Are some just simply not labelled as SDH, but really are? (I really wouldn't know {entirely}, since I rarely activate the subtitling.)

 

[Carlos Garcia]

I too love the entire run of the show, but have a special place in my heart for the last season. Even though Beaver did act like somewhat of an ass on occasion, the episodes focusing on Wally, Eddie and Lumpy always have me ROFL.

On another note, does anyone know whether the public service episode will appear as an extra? I've heard very little about it, does anyone have any info on this episode? I know TV shows used to film US savings Bonds episodes, I remember seeing "Stamp Day For Superman" on The Adventures of Superman as one of these specials. However, I'm not familiar with the Beaver episode. Does anyone (David VP?) have any info to share with us on this episode?

 

[David Von Pein]

Carlos -- As an avid Beaver fan, I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I have no knowledge of any such "public service episode" at all.

You say it's a full-length (half-hour?) episode of LITB? No...you surely didn't mean that did you? You mean it's a P.S. ad of some kind, probably 5 minutes long (or so)?

Puts me in mind of the "Atomic Safety" civil-defense ads that Hugh Beaumont made in the mid-'50s (not as "Ward" though). You know, the "duck & cover" stuff, etc.

 

[Carlos Garcia]

David, maybe I am wrong, I don't know. Or maybe I misunderstood and confused "public service" for "Pilot". I was always under the impression that "Beaver" had done both. I may be wrong.

 

[Carlos Garcia]

Doing a little googling, I've become even more confused over this Beaver mystery. Someone on another messageboard posted that a 15 minute mini-episode on investing exists, however, by his plot discription, it sounds an awful lot like "Wally's Present", the episode where Beaver is supposed to buy Wally a birthday present, but Larry convinces him to buy a bow and arrow set for himself instead, and of course the Beav breaks it and winds up giving Wally a cheap paddle and ball. Anyway, here's a link to that post.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/...ead.php?t=6694

If anyone knows anything about this supposed 15 minute episode, and whether it does indeed exist, please let us know. Maybe we can still hold hope that Universal may include it in a future LITB season set.

 

[Greg_S_H]

There are some great episodes in the last season. I love the one about the lock-in, where Wally has to convince his girl's father about the most ridiculous series of events imaginable! And, the one where Beav is supposed to go on a double date with Wally. The season before, we got the great sight of Gilbert taunting Eddie while Eddie was caught on a mountainside, and that big rat Lumpy playing PT Boat with Ward's car.

 

[Paul Sandhu]

I can't wait for November.

I would love to see a retrospective documentary from the surviving cast members.

Maybe even tributes to those that have passed on. I do kind of wished they did the artwork sort of like how they did with Lucy.... those have cool looking artwork. And we know there will be a season set with the famous "Beaver in a cup" scene. I can't wait to see pilot.

 

[David Von Pein]

We'll have to wait until Season 4 for that one -- "In The Soup" (Ep. #149; the most expensive LITB ep. ever filmed -- approx. $50,000).

I picked up an interesting hunk of Beaver trivia in Jerry Mathers' book --- Did you know that an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was filmed in the Cleaver living room? Jerry doesn't say which ep. it was. I'll have to keep an eye peeled in future AHP DVD sets.

 

[KeithJP]

David VP, here's what I've noticed about labeling in the US: It used to be "Closed caption/subtitles for the deaf", then it was "Closed caption/subtitles for the hearing-impaired" and now it's "Closed caption/subtitles". Maybe the studios are afraid people might be offended by words like "deaf" or maybe they realized captions/subs are also used by people who can hear. The language/subtitle setup menus on the disc tend to be more detailed than the back cover. At least Europeans don't seem insulted by their covers. They use "Subtitles for the deaf" or "Subtitles for the Hard of Hearing". If you see those phrases in addition to the regular "Subtitles" box on the back cover, the hearing subs are usually a different, more detailed stream than the regular subs of the same language. Some US releases also do that, and some don't. Either way, I've found captions and subtitles to be addictive.

 

[Rodney]

Carlos and David:

Go back in this thread, and you can read a discussion I had with Mark about this very episode.

LITB Savings Bonds

I hope this will be a bonus on one of the season sets.
Oh, and someone brought up Miss Canfield. Oh yeah.:wink: