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I fear that in the first decade of television too many of us still bear the scars of not having a family like the Cleavers. They were in fact the All American ideal of the Eisenhower years. All that was needed was a pet and I'm sure there were episodes in which the Beaver must have dealt with acquiring a pet.
What a family they were, the hard working and wise father who always had time for his kids and their problems, the pretty mom who never looked tired after a day of housework without a thought of being anything other than wife and mother, and two model kids whose occasional problems were really trivial stuff. This kind of family was satirized so brilliantly in Pleasantville.
Tony Dow as Wally the older brother got to be a teen heartthrob, one of the very first created by television. Jerry Mathers in the title role of Theodore 'Beaver' Cleaver was just shy of heartthrob status when the show ended its run. They were cute, but I don't think they were the heart of the show.
Two things made it stand out. One was Hugh Beaumont, a father of strength and stability who was NEVER made out to be an idiot even if he occasionally got it wrong. I think the Dads out there might have learned some parenting skills from him. Of course that presumes their kids were like Wally and the Beaver. And he certainly didn't have experience with being the father of girls. That's a whole other mindset. But you can see why Barbara Billingsley fell for this guy.
I think Leave It To Beaver would have sank without a trace if it hadn't been for Ken Osmond as Wally's friend Eddie Haskell. That accomplished tongue licker of the inner rear cavities fooled absolutely no one, but it was great to see him do his act every week. It was Eddie who inevitably got Wally and their other friend Clarence 'Lumpy' Rutherford in trouble every week. By the way Frank Bank was perfectly cast as a character named Lumpy, a good natured goof who just went along.
Beaver had several different pals along the show's run. He had one teacher through grade school though, Sue Randall as Miss Landers. Good thing she taught grade school before these kids hit their puberty. I NEVER had any grade school teachers looking like that. She was also full of wisdom and could sense problems intuitively in her class.
The Cleavers, the perfect All American family for the time.
score 6/10
bkoganbing 23 March 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2041869/ |
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19-10-2020 02:17:08