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I think of a larger midwestern town where there was more going on than the small towns I grew up in in the 70's. There were no Gilligan's running around with bongo drums, or hoards of gold digging teenage girls trying to hustle you like on Dobbie Gillis. What about some of those fun plots from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Peter Gunn, or the constant array of gangsters found on 50's TV, a constant parade of them.
But what about Leave it to Beaver ? You mean the one where Larry Mondello stole money out of his mom's sowing basket, so he and the Beaver could go squander it at the carnival ? Or the one where Ward hired the alcoholic to paint his house, and he gets the Beave to get him a bottle of brandy out of the liquor cabinet for him ? Or that one time where they find a bum, bring him back to the house while their parents are gone, and let him grab a shower and steal one of Ward's good suits ? The many episodes where Beaver or Wally's friends are trying to scam them in some way, a most dishonest lot of friends to say the least.
Let me think a moment here....there was the one about the kid that stole Beaver's bike, an episode about the two kids at Friends Lake that broke into the boathouse and swiped a boat, then met Larry and Beaver and gave the boat to them to use......until the cops showed up to arrest them for stealing a boat. The one where the kid was busting out windows, got caught but told the cop he was Beaver.........yep, cops coming for Beaver again. A couple episodes about kids stealing at school, or the one where Eddie and Wally are working at the ice cream plant, and the guy that played Major Hocksteader from Hogans Heros gets them to load up ice cream into his truck so he can sell it to stores and rip off the ice cream company.
The constant mail order scams the boys are victims of.....the perfume, the record company, the one about the movie projector, the one about the accordion that comes rolling down the stairs when Ward is having his conversation with the bill collector at the door. The one where this woman kites a check to the Beaver for lawnwork. The one where the kid comes to visit, and the do a whole debbie downer episode about his parents being divorced and how that was tearing him up. Lets not forget the episode where Wally had a thing for the woman he played tennis with, she was using him to make her boyfriend jealous. So Wally had to have a talk with dad about how he was involved in a love triangle. But Ward was an awesome dad, June would often make snide little insults to Ward in fun, but Ward never gave her the backhand or anything, pretty tolerant guy. Fred Rutherford would just pop you in the mouth, or when Larry Mondello's dad came back he would beat him up for all the stuff he did while he was away. Remember Beaver and Larry toking on Ward's pipe......WOW.....Just WOW !
Stay away from Mayfield........it's full of peril. Giant soup bowls that trap you, fences that grab your head and won't let go, bullies that pick on you, including girl bullies like the one that beat up the Beaver, steam rollers that run over your books and lunchbox as you are trying to skip out on school. Kids that turn other kids into rocks...........BEWARE !
Leave it to Beaver was filmed at the Studio lot. Wonder Years was filmed in Culver City. The Wonder Years film site still looks similar to when the show was filmed. People live in those houses for real.
I was in high school at the Leave it to Beaver era. Everything resonated credibly with my life. But I lived in a small Midwestern town, and Beaver obviously lived in a big city where it is always summer. presumably southern California. Little kids were just like Beaver, who obeyed their parents and spoke respectfully to them. Bigger kids were just like Wally and some of them having rough edges like Eddie.
My mother got dressed every morning as if she were going out, even if all she did all day was housework. My dad didn't wear a suit and tie to work, but men who did felt comfortable in them around the house, too. There were only one or two channels on TV, and people got their news from a morning paper that was thrown on their doorstep at 5 am by a kid who had to be at school by 8 and never missed a day, and was paid a penny a paper. Why do people now have so much resistance against believing that that's the way things actually were?
The street I lived on had a stop sigh at both ends of the block, but few cars except people who lived there, and we knew them all. Today, there is probably less than a car a minute on the street where my bus stop is -- that hasn't changed, and most Americans still live on a street with very little traffic.
When I was Beaver's age, kids played outside unsupervised, riding their bikes to swimming holes our parents didn't know about, and were expected to be home (covered with leeches) at dinner time. When I was 14, we took our allowance and paper route money to the bus station and rode the Greyhound to Milwaukee and then a local bus to a Braves game, just a couple of kids, no parental supervision, although we told out parents we were going. What's the big deal?
By the way, no parents then were afraid of the Russians or the Cold War turning hot. They had Polio to worry about which was a genuine and potentially disastrous threat.
I'm of Beaver's generation, and I lived in LA, but I felt like he lived in my world. I knew everyone three/four blocks over. I played with friends and mom wore dresses. I don't think I would have noticed is she 'dressed up' but little girls had play dresses then and didn't wear pants. Even when I was in my teens, my friend and I took off for the store on foot without anyone worrying about us. We tended to be barefoot in the summer and I don't know how we did it now, but those must have been some tough feet.
My parents were afraid of the cold war turning hot. My dad worked for Locheed in Arerspace, but he knew about their other side. He stayed home and so did I when Cuba blinked in case they didn't.
But its interesting that I don't remember anything about McCarthy, though mom spoke of it much later. My Grandfather was involved in Hollywood so it was a matter she would have followed. And I distinctly remember going to get that first polio shot. I didn't have a clue how scared the adults were and how much of a blessing it was to us. The year I was born had the highest amount of new cases in the entire epidemic which that shot ended. I was in the last generations with friends who had not escaped it.
Maybe that's because we had a string of President's who had not shirked their duty during times of war. Truman, Ike, Kennedy, Johnson (like most of Congress, he ran off to the war and was compelled to return against his will), Nixon and even Carter, who served in the peacetime Navy.
Since then, we've had only one President who didn't deliberately avoid military duty or find a place to hide out from the war, and that was G. H. W. Bush.
Ronald Reagan also served in the military. He held the rank of Captain.
I grew up in the late '40s, '50s, & '60s, graduating high school in 1962.
Couldn't totally relate to LITB because my Dad was an Army officer...so we were stationed in different places, some of which were 3rd Woeld countries with no TV.
When we were Stateside we did enjoy the show, but preferred Ozzie & Harriet.....and Gunsmoke.
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