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A Titillating Horror Sit-Com

A 2007 Titillating Horror SitCom
Where Psycho meets The Beaver

Leave It to Beaver hit the airwaves in 1957. The show from which these video clips were taken was the Pilot and never aired. Jerry Mathers played Theodore 'Beaver' Cleaver

Barbara Billingsley was June Cleaver, his Mom.
Hugh Beaumont would be Ward and Tony Dow, Wally Cleaver, after the pilot. For the first, unaired show, Casey Adams played Ward. And another actor played Tony. Ken Osmond as Eddie Haskell did not show in the pilot, let alone Larry Mondello. I think I saw Dennis the Menace's neighbor in there too... !

So I asked myself, "Wouldn't it be interesting to blend Alfred Hitchcoc's Horror / Thriller into that sit com?"'

"No?" you say. Uh Ohhh - you must thus sit this one out for that's what I did anyway

I combined Anthony Perkins as crazy Cleaver neighbor, Norman Bates - along with Janet Leigh as the other beaver, Marion Crane.

Enjoy !

Bill Stoll
StollCo Video - 2007

~~~

Plot summary for Psycho (1960)

Phoenix officeworker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother. Written by Col Needham {col@imdb.com}
For Marion Crane, it's been quite an eventful day. The day before, she had stolen $40,000 from her employer's client, packed her bags and driven all day on her way to join her paramour several hundred miles away. Now, she is taking a relaxing hot shower after her long day's journey. The remoteness of the motel suit her purposes perfectly. The only sounds heard are the chirping of the crickets, the splashing of the water, and her humming contentedly as the hot needles of water caress her aching shoulders. Written by filmfactsman

Plot summary for Leave It to Beaver (1957)
The Cleavers are the 1950's 'All-American Family' in this 'feel-good' family sitcom. Parents Ward and June, and older brother Wally, try to keep Theodore ('the Beaver') out of trouble. However, Beaver continues to end up in one kind of jam or another. Unlike real life, these situations are always easily resolved to the satisfaction of all involved and the Beaver gets off with a few stern moralistic words of parental advice. Instigator and troublemaker Eddie Haskal is an older kid who always manages to avoid being caught.

~~~

Quentin Tarantino - Where are ya when we need you. The perfect art for your team is this...

Leave It to Beaver

Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy about an idealized American family of the 1950s.

CBS first aired the show on October 4, 1957, but decided to drop it within a year. ABC picked it up and ran it for another five years, from October 2, 1958 to June 20, 1963. It was produced by Gomalco Productions (1957-1961) and by Kayro Productions (1961-1963), and distributed by Revue Studios.

Premise

The show is built around young Theodore Cleaver (Jerry Mathers) and the trouble he gets himself into while navigating his way through an often-incomprehensible, sometimes-illogical world. When he was a baby, his older brother Wally (Tony Dow) mispronounced "Theodore" as "Tweedor". Their firm-but-loving parents, Ward (Hugh Beaumont) and June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley), felt "Beaver" sounded better.

Beaver's friends include the perpetually apple-munching Larry Mondello (Rusty Stevens) in the early seasons, and, later, Gilbert Bates (Stephen Talbot), as well as the old fireman, Gus (Burt Mustin). His sweet-natured-but-no-nonsense elementary school teachers are Miss Canfield (to whom Beaver declares his love in the episode entitled "Beaver's Crush") (Diane Brewster) and Miss Landers (Sue Randall); Mrs. Rayburn (Doris Packer) is the principal. In the early seasons, Beaver's nemesis in class is Judy Hensler (Jeri Weil).

His brother Wally is popular with both peers and adults, getting into trouble much less frequently. He letters in four sports and has little difficulty attracting girlfriends, among them Mary Ellen Rogers (Pamela Baird) and Julie Foster (Cheryl Holdridge). His pals include the awkward Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford (Frank Bank) and smart aleck Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond), the archetype of the two-faced wiseguy, a braggard among his peers and an obsequious yes man to the adults he mocks behind their backs. Eddie often picks on the Beaver.

The family lives in the fictional town of Mayfield. Beaver attends Grant Ave. Grammar School, and Wally, Mayfield High School (after graduating from Grant Ave. in season one).

Cast

=List of Leave It to Beaver cast members
Jerry Mathers as Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver. The casting directors noticed that Mathers was uneasy and asked him where he'd rather be. Mathers replied that he'd rather be at camp. That boyish youthfulness got Mathers the part of Beaver.[citation needed]
Tony Dow as Wally Cleaver
Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver. Before he made Ward Cleaver his acting trademark, Beaumont sometimes played villains in film and television. Most familiarly, he played a former convict, Dan Grayson, struggling to go straight for the sake of his wife and son, in 1953's "The Big Squeeze" episode of Adventures of Superman, a few years before Beaver. He directed a number of Leave It to Beaver episodes in the last two seasons, including the final one, the retrospective "Family Scrapbook". Beaumont was an ordained Methodist minister, who from 1974 until his death, sold live Christmas trees.
Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver. Billingsley has said that June Cleaver's wardrobe was more than a fashion statement. The pearl necklace hid neck shadows and high-heeled shoes were employed to offset the boys' growing height.
Ken Osmond as Eddie Haskell. Osmond became a cop, serving eighteen years with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Diane Brewster as Miss Canfield
Sue Randall as Miss Landers
Stephen Talbot as Gilbert Bates. Talbot works as a reporter for PBS' Frontline.
Rusty Stevens as Larry Mondello
Richard Correll as Richard Rickover
Stanley Fafara as Whitey Whitney
Jeri Weil as Judy Hensler
Burt Mustin as Gus the fireman
Frank Bank as Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford
Richard Deacon as Fred Rutherford, Lumpy's pompous, demanding father and Ward Cleaver's equally pompous, smug co-worker. Deacon was working a second job for much of the life of Leave It to Beaver; he was concurrently Alan Brady's (Carl Reiner's) brother-in-law/producer and Buddy Sorrell's Morey Amsterdam's foil on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Buddy Hart as Chester Anderson
Tiger Fafara as Tooey Brown
Pamela Baird as Mary Ellen Rogers
Cheryl Holdridge as Julie Foster

Cultural influence

Leave It to Beaver often aimed toward a moral lesson and is referenced even now as an emblem of simpler American times. Ward stated that his father "had a fine sense of values",[1] and if Ward himself sometimes seemed possessed of the gentility of a man of the cloth, it may have come from Beaumont's own background: he had become an ordained minister before he took up an acting career. June Cleaver, likewise, became a model of the archetypal suburban 1950s mother who wanted nothing more than to stay at home and take care of the family.

The show strongly promoted the importance of family. The recurring themes expounded parental expectations for children, while the moral messages stressed the importance of teaching children proper behavior. Proper parenting techniques and methods for resolving problems and achieving consensus were demonstrated.

The pervasive influence of the show was the subject of a theory proposed in 1965: that a prime cause of the Watts Riots was "Television Kitchens." A study was done of they types of kitchens that appeared in TV commercials for cleaning products and in sit-coms, like Leave It to Beaver. Those shown on TV belonged in houses worth far more than the average house at the time. But these kitchens were being shown over and over, day after day, to people whose own kitchens did not match up. The implicit comparison was obvious: "That's typical, and this is what I've got?" [2]

Episodes

The pilot episode, which aired on April 23, 1957, was entitled It's a Small World.[3] It featured Max Showalter as Ward Cleaver, and Paul Sullivan as Wally Cleaver. TBS re-aired the pilot on Sunday, October 4, 1987, to commemorate the show's 30th anniversary.

Syndication

After 234 episodes, Leave It to Beaver ceased first-run production; however, the show didn't stay off the air for very long: reruns were part of CBS affiliates' lineups in the mornings for several years to come. TBS showed it for many years in the late 1980s, and now it airs on TV Land—where it has been shown since July 1998. Today, NBC Universal Television owns the syndication rights and all properties related to the series.

Spinoffs

A made-for-television reunion movie, Still the Beaver, appeared in 1983. The main original cast appeared, except for Beaumont, who had died the previous year. Ward Cleaver was still a presence, however: the film's story used numerous flashbacks to the original show, as it followed young-adult Beaver's struggle to reconcile divorce and newly-minted single fatherhood, straining to cope by what his father might or might not have done, while facing the possibility of his widowed mother selling their childhood home. June Cleaver is later elected to the Mayfield City Council.

Its reception led to a new first-run, made-for-cable series, The New Leave It to Beaver (1985--1989), with Beaver and Lumpy Rutherford running Ward's old firm (where Lumpy's pompous, demanding father — played by Richard Deacon in the original series — had been the senior partner), Wally as a practicing attorney and expectant father, June having sold the old house to Beaver himself but living with him as a doting grandmother to Beaver's two small sons. Eddie Haskell runs his own contracting business and has a son, Freddie, who is every inch his father's son — right down to the dual-personality.

Feature film

1997's movie adaptation of the series starred Christopher McDonald as Ward, Janine Turner as June, Erik von Detten as Wally, and Cameron Finley as Beaver. It was panned by many critics, except for Roger Ebert, who gave it a three-star rating. It flopped at the box office, earning only $11,713,605. Original TV co-stars Barbara Billingsley, Ken Osmond, and Frank Bank made cameo appearances in the film.

The Cleaver house

The Cleavers' address for the first two seasons was 485 Mapleton Drive, Mayfield. In the season-one episode "Beaver's Old Friend", Beaver states that the teddy bear (the "old friend") was given to him by his aunt at their old house, which implies that the Mapleton Drive was their second home. The family moved to 211 Pine Street, also in Mayfield, in season three. This house can still be seen at Universal Studios, though with the facade built for the 1996 production of the Leave it to Beaver movie — the original facade sits in storage elsewhere on the Universal lot (it was replaced in 1988 by the Klopek house for the following year's The 'Burbs) and is not shown on the tour. In 1969, it was used as the house for another Universal-produced television hit, Marcus Welby, M.D..

Musical theme

The show's playfully-bouncy theme tune, which became as much of a show trademark as Beaver's baseball cap or Eddie Haskell's false obsequiousness, was "The Toy Parade," composed by David Kahn, Melvyn Leonard, and Mort Greene. For the final season, however, the song was given a jazz-like arrangement by veteran composer/arranger Pete Rugolo. The lyrics to the theme song are:

Hey! Here they come with a rum-tee tum they're having a toy parade.
A tin giraffe with a fife and drum is leading the kewpie parade.
A gingham cat in a soldier's hat is waving a Chinese fan,
A plastic clown in a wedding gown is dancing with Raggedy Ann.
Fee fie fiddle dee dee they're crossing the living room floor
Fee fie fiddle dee dee they're up to the dining room door.
They call a halt for a choc'late malt or cookies and lemonade
Then off they go with a ho ho ho right back to their toy brigade.

DVD releases

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has begun releasing Leave It to Beaver on DVD Region 1. They have released Seasons 1 and 2 thus far, and it is expected the remaining four seasons will follow.

DVD Name Ep # Release Date

The Complete First Season 39 November 22, 2005
The Complete Second Season 39 May 2, 2006
The Complete Third Season 39 TBA
The Complete Fourth Season 39 TBA
The Complete Fifth Season 39 TBA
The Complete Sixth Season 39 TBA

Urban legends

In the mid 1970s, Mathers appeared on The Tomorrow Show hosted by Tom Snyder. Snyder pointed out that he hadn't worked for a long time and that there was rumor going around that he had been killed "in the war in Southeast Asia". Mathers politely replied that he had heard that rumor and that he had no idea how it got started. The earliest appearance of the story in print was in a student newspaper at the University of Kansas in 1972. Later the author admitted that she had only heard the story from someone who had heard it a party in Omaha, Nebraska earlier that year. The paper printed a retraction but by then the story had swept the nation and this silly rumor joined the rest of the legends of Americana. The story was later attributed to a member of a defunct Omaha comedy improv group whose hobby was concocting outrageous stories and then convincing people they were true. "Beaver died in Vietnam"[1] was a classic urban legend, memorable for its juxtaposition of prelapsarian 1950s imagery with the chaos and violence of the 1960s.

Another urban legend was that actor Ken Osmond (Eddie Haskell) became porn star John Holmes. Holmes took Osmond's name and did several movies satirically under the name "Eddie Haskell". It started because there was some facial resemblance between the two men, which porn distributors exploited by using the name Eddie Haskell in advertising Holmes's films. "It was a pain in my butt for eleven years," says Osmond,[citation needed] who brought a defamation suit against porn houses, producers and distributors. Mr. Osmond launched a $25 million suit. The suit went all the way to the California Supreme Court. The court ruled for Mr. Holmes, saying the name was protected as a satire. This case set a precedent in the matter, and is still referred by other cases in California today.[4]

In a Rolling Stone interview with rock singer, Alice Cooper stated that he was "Eddie Haskell" as a child. He was speaking metaphorically, yet some readers interpreted him literally.[citation needed]

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