Leave it to Beaver premiered on CBS television on this date in 1957, the brainchild of a Jewish screenwriter, Bob Mosher, and his non-Jewish creative partner, Joe Connelly, who eventually became the show’s executive producers. Mosher and Connelly were also screenwriters for Amos and Andy and The Munsters, among other dopey (and sometimes controversial) comedy classics. Leave it to Beaver ran for six full seasons (39 episodes each) and never made the transition to color or to more complicated production techniques (it was shot with a single camera). The show became the embodiment of suburban, middle-class morés and values in the late 1950s. It carefully avoided social issues of the day (only one African-American character — a maid — had a speaking role in the entire series, in its final season), but focused on children’s struggles with good and bad behavior, truth-telling, responsibility, teasing, and the like. For young baby boomers, the show was a strangely compelling mix of corny humor, straight-laced messages, and sensitive parental guidance that seemed more and more antique as America stepped across the threshold of the tumultuous 1960s.
“Wally, if your dumb brother tags along, I’m gonna — oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Cleaver. I was just telling Wallace how pleasant it would be for Theodore to accompany us to the movies.” —”Eddie Haskell,” Leave it to Beaver