61 years ago today, June 20, 1963, the final episode of Leave it to Beaver aired. It ran for six full 39-week seasons (234 episodes), had its debut on CBS on October 4, 1957. The following season, the show moved to ABC, where it stayed until completing its run on June 20, 1963. During the whole of the show's run, the series was shot with a single camera on black-and-white 35mm film. The show's production companies included comedian George Gobel's Gomalco Productions (1957–1961) and Kayro Productions (1961–1963) with filming at Revue Studios/Republic Studios and Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California. The show was distributed by MCA TV.
The still-popular show ended its run in 1963 primarily because it had reached its natural conclusion: In the show, Wally was about to enter college and the brotherly dynamic—at the heart of the show's premise—would be broken with their separation.
Contemporary commentators praised Leave It to Beaver, with Variety comparing Beaver to Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Much juvenile merchandise was released during the show's first run, including board games, novels and comic books. The show has enjoyed a renaissance in popularity since the 1970s through off-network syndication, a reunion telemovie, Still the Beaver (1983) and a sequel series The New Leave It to Beaver (1985–89). In 1997, a movie version based on the original series was released to moderate acclaim, and, in October 2007, TV Land celebrated the show's 50th anniversary with a marathon. Although the show never broke into the Nielsen ratings top-30 nor won any awards, it placed on TIME magazine's unranked 2007 list of "The 100 Best TV Shows of all-time."
According to Tony Dow, "if any line got too much of a laugh, they'd take it out. They didn't want a big laugh; they wanted chuckles."
In 1957, radio, film and television writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher developed a concept for a TV show about childhood and family life featuring a fictional suburban couple and their children. Unlike The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Father Knows Best and other sitcoms and domestic comedies of the era, the show would not focus upon the parents, but upon their children, with the series being told from the kids' point of view. Working titles during the show's gestation period included It's a Small World and Wally and the Beaver. The pilot aired April 23, 1957 as "It's a Small World" on anthology series Heinz Studio 57.
Pilot stars Casey Adams and Paul Sullivan (as father and son Ward and Wally Cleaver) were replaced as series production neared. Six months after the pilot's broadcast, the series debuted on CBS on Friday October 4, 1957 as Leave It to Beaver with the episode third in production order, "Beaver Gets 'Spelled". The intended premiere, "Captain Jack", displayed a toilet tank (which didn't pass the censor's office in time for the show's scheduled debut) and aired the week following the premiere. "Captain Jack" has claimed its place in television history as the first American TV show to display a toilet tank. In 1997, it was ranked #42 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
Remington Rand was a potential sponsor during the show's conception, and counseled against the show's suggested title, Wally and the Beaver, believing viewers would think the show was a nature program. The show was ultimately sponsored by Ralston Purina, with General Electric and Chrysler Corporation sponsoring the later seasons (Ward Cleaver was often seen driving a Plymouth Fury during the opening credits or coming home from work. In the first season Ward drove a 1957 Ford).
Episodes were budgeted at $30,000 to $40,000 each ($250,592.88 to $334,123.84 in 2015 dollars), making the show one of the most expensive to produce at the time. High production costs were in part due to many outdoor scenes. The most expensive single episode, "In the Soup" (in which Beaver gets stuck in an advertising billboard with a gigantic make-believe cup of soup, curious as to how "steam" came out of the cup), was budgeted at $50,000. Two billboards were built for the episode: one outside on the back lot, and the other inside the studio.
In its first season on CBS (1957–1958), Leave It To Beaver received only fair Nielsen ratings and CBS canceled it. ABC then picked up the program, and although the series never entered the list of the top 30 television shows, its ratings warranted a five-year run. By the start of the 1962-1963 season, the show was reaching an impasse. The series was still popular with audiences, but Jerry Mathers wanted to retire from acting at the end of the sixth year to attend regular high school. As a result, Leave It To Beaver ended its network run on June 20, 1963. The series' final episode, "Family Scrapbook", The episode is directed by Hugh Beaumont, written by Connelly and Mosher, and is regarded as being one of the first sitcom episodes written expressly as a series finale.
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