But the season did not break into the Nielsen Top 20.
MISS CANFIELD ON LEAVE IT TO BEAVER TV
TV Guide dubbed the show "the sleeper of the 1957-58 season". The opening season sees the only holiday (Christmas) related episode in the series, "The Haircut", and, even then, the holiday only marginally enters the proceedings.Ĭritics of the period were generally favorable to Leave It to Beaver. Both boys have encounters with first girlfriends in the opening season (Wally with Penny Jamison, Beaver with Linda Dennison), and those encounters are somewhat sour. First season plot motifs include money-making schemes for the boys, relationships within the family, and school problems. The first season follows the Cleaver boys as they get in and out of boyhood scrapes and face their father for moral lectures (or more serious discipline) regarding their mistakes and misadventures. He is a sensitive but gullible boy of above average intelligence and abilities trying to make sense of the adult world around him while often being led astray by schoolmates and chums. Beaver's character is established in the first season and remains essentially unchanged in the following seasons. The Cleavers live in a two-story frame house in fictional Mayfield. Their father, Ward, is a white collar office worker and their mother, June, a stay-at-home wife and mother whose specialities are unconditional love and wholesome meals. Grammar School while his brother Wally is thirteen years old in the eighth grade at the same school (thus assuming Grant Ave.
When the show opens, Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver is a seven-year-old boy in the second grade at Grant Ave. The writing team of Dick Conway and Roland MacLane (who would write many later seasons episodes) make their debuts in the first season. Most of the scripts are the work of the show's creators, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, with occasional contributions from other writers. Other acting veterans making first-season appearances are Phyllis Coates, Herb Vigran, William Fawcett, William Schallert, Karl Swenson, John Hoyt, Lyle Talbot, Will Wright, John Hart, and Maudie Prickett.Īll first-season episodes (with the exception of "The Broken Window") are directed by Norman Tokar, a director distinguished for his ability to work well with children.
MISS CANFIELD ON LEAVE IT TO BEAVER SERIES
Buchanan makes two appearances later in the series as Ward's uncle, Billy.
Veteran film and television actor Edgar Buchanan makes his first appearance on the show in "Captain Jack," the episode second in air-date order. Rusty Stevens as Larry Mondello, Jeri Weil as Judy Hensler, Burt Mustin as Gus the Fireman, Tiger Fafara as Tooey Brown, Buddy Hart as Chester Anderson, Patty Turner as Linda Dennison, and Madge Kennedy as Aunt Martha all make their debuts as recurring characters in the first season. Rayburn, and Stanley Fafara as Whitey Whitney are introduced in the first season and remain as recurring characters through the series' six-season run, appearing in every season.ĭiane Brewster plays Miss Canfield, Beaver's second grade teacher, in four first-season episodes and then leaves the show. Richard Deacon as Fred Rutherford, Frank Bank as his son, Clarence ("Lumpy"), Ken Osmond as Eddie Haskell, Pamela Baird as Mary Ellen Rogers, Doris Packer as Mrs. The show's four stars - Barbara Billingsley, Hugh Beaumont, Tony Dow, and Jerry Mathers - appear in all first-season episodes. Both sequences are accompanied by the show's theme tune, "The Toy Parade". The closing sequence exhibits the credits against a simple, dark background.
The opening titles feature a drawing of a sidewalk, viewed from above, displaying the credits in wet concrete. The prologues are retained in the first-season DVD release but are omitted in airings on TV Land. There are no multi-part stories in the season nor in the complete series.įor season one, a voice-over prologue by Hugh Beaumont precedes each early episode's opening credits, providing a background to that episode's theme, and always concludes with "And that's our story tonight on Leave It to Beaver." The voice-over prologues are discontinued mid-season and replaced with a short scene extracted from the episode at hand. Very occasionally a reference is made to a previous episode but episodes can easily be viewed out of air-date order. The first season consists of 39 black-and-white, full-screen, half-hour episodes (without ads) recorded on 35mm film.Įpisodes are picaresque stand-alones with no episode-to-episode continuity of storyline. The first season completed its run on Jwith "Cat Out of the Bag". (EST) In the second season, the show would move to ABC. Mid-season, the show was rescheduled to Wednesdays at 8:00 P.M. (EST) on CBS with " Beaver Gets 'Spelled". Leave It to Beaver debuted Friday, Octoat 7:30 P.M.