On the occasion of the death of Tony Dow, Decider sums up the appeal of Wally, in "'Leave It To Beaver's Tony Dow Was The Big Brother Every Baby Boomer And Gen Xer Looked Up To."
The Cleavers were the best of the TV families. I remember fantasizing at the time: If you could pick one TV family to be yours, mine would be the Cleavers. It was the first one that sprang to mind and it was, after thinking of all the other possibilities, the final choice. Ward and June were the best parents, and who wouldn't want Wally for an older brother? We were all Beaver, making mistakes, getting into trouble, and loved and appreciated all the more for our ridiculousness.
A nice collection of Wally clips here.
Last line: "You know something, Dad, I don't think I'll ever be a cool guy.... Good night."
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If you could pick one TV family to be yours, mine would be the Cleavers.
I would have said Rob and Laura Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show. It wasn't so much that I wanted them to be my parents. It was more that I wanted to live in their world. They had fun. They were lively. You could learn lessons from their show, but they weren't preachy, and to a child's eye they looked sophisticated.
Ward, you were kind of hard on the Beaver last night.
Ward, don't you think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night? - favorite probably bogus quote from June.
Also Kinky Friedman Somethin's Wrong with the Beaver lyrics, the performance has been purged from youtube.
Beaver for pussy came in with the book Ball Four, which was probably after the series. [looks] 1970 vs 1957-1963. So the series had no warning.
The clips were great. I forgot what a consistently great character Wally was. Kinda the rock of the teens.
Ozzie & Harriet. Ozzie was funnier than Ward, less judgmental, and spent way more time at home. Harriet had an edge June lacked.
A beloved actor has died, and your first impulse is to repeat a 50-year-old joke. Too bad I can't have Ward lecture you.
Eddie Haskell was the best character on the show. "That's a lovely dress you have on, Mrs. Cleaver." Obama always reminded me of him. "Clean, articulate," and evil below the surface.
I don't think it was a guy show. It's like being lectured by a girl.
The expression "beaver shot" is much older than 1970.
Oh, Hello Mrs. Althouse. Is Laurence at home?
Step back for a moment and ask the question: Why was Wally (and Beaver, in his own way) such an outstanding young man?
Discuss.
Don't overlook the early years. Before he was a teenager, the Wally character articulated a more cynical view of the way the world worked to his younger brother Beaver, especially how things were for kids vis-a-vis adults. Fearful advice taken to heart that often led Beaver astray. Spoken in a higher pre-pubescent register, you just had to wonder about the deep well of experience the slightly older brother Wally drew upon to conjure the broad ranging "kids can't win" advice that comprised some of the funniest lines Dow delivered.
>If you could pick one TV family to be yours, mine would be the Cleavers.
I would have picked the Bradys... Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! :)
I was just a little too old for Leave it to Beaver. We had already been watching Donna Reed, My Three Sons and Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie really was droll.
Same with the Flintstones. Never watched it but would watch Rocky and Bullwinkle all day.
I feel so alienated.
How far from the world of the Cleavers we have come. I kind of grew up in that world but without the articulate and sensitive Dad. I loved the show because everyone’s intentions leaned to the good. Even Eddie knew he was breaking rules and typically bowed before the good.
I’m reminded of Dylan’s lyric: “They’re breaking down the distance between right and wrong.” There was that clarity and distance in Leave It To Beaver. Postmodernism does not believe in right or wrong. Only your personal views of them, sort of an animal’s view of survival. That’s how we get to a world of carnage in Chicago every week with no shared outrage. Kind of like an animal’s world.
#BeavWatch2022
To this day, there are some neighborhoods that trigger my memory. Don't Wally, and the Beaver live around the corner??
“Beaver for pussy came in with the book Ball Four, which was probably after the series. [looks] 1970 vs 1957-1963. So the series had no warning.”
“table pussy”… “scunion”… “mullion”…
Except for the first one - means top shelf - I’ve forgotten what the last two of Bouton’s invented words describe. The guy was quite a piece of work.
Father Knows Best!
What… no “Westward Ho!”?
Whoops… make that “Guestward Ho!” from 1960.
I agree with Ann. Of all the families, from the late 50s to early 60s, the Cleavers were the best. June was always a lady and dressed like one. Ward was a no nonsense father who's love for his family emanated through his flinty exterior. Wally and Beaver were the best of brothers and pals. All the other characters on the show were just icing on the cake of this idealized all-American family.
The entertainment value of this show is priceless.
It's one that has endured.
Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow have toured together up until 6 weeks ago, appearing at large gatherings of fans who are still fans of the show. They have attracted many new ones. 60 years after the last show was broadcast it's fame and popularity endures, not unlike I Love Lucy.
Jerry Mather's Facebook page is followed by thousands with news and nostalgia.
It's funny that folks still have a hunger for the brand of stories and characters the show portrays.Especially when so much wokeness abounds in the tv series of recent decades.
RIP Tony Dow aka Wally.
When Beaver leaves, it will be sadder still.
The Cleavers were the best of the TV families
Ward was an obnoxious self-promoted jerk. Joe Biden would make a good Ward in a remake.
Last episode I watched, Larry convinced Beaver that they should smoke tobacco from a gift pipe that Ward received. When Ward discovered the pipe had been used, he hollered at Wally for smoking. Wally of course didn't know what he was talking about. Then Ward got angry at Wally for lying.
Later Beaver confessed. Ward NEVER apologized to Wally.
Ward was always like that.
Clearing skies and drying eyes, now I see your smile.
Darkness goes and softness shows a changing style.
Just in time, words that rhyme, well bless your soul.
Now I'll fill your hands with kisses and a Tootsie Roll.
Reality, it's not for me and it makes me laugh.
But fantasy world and Disney Girls, I'm coming back.
Patti Page and summer days on old Cape Cod.
Happy times and making wine in my garage.
Country shade and lemonade, guess I'm slowing down.
It's a turn-back world with a local girl in a smaller town.
Open cars, and clearer stars, that's what I lack.
But fantasy world and Disney Girls, I'm coming back.
Mom, hi, Rick and Dave, hi, Pop, well good morning, Mom!
Love, get up! Guess what? I'm in love with a girl I found.
She's really swell cause she likes church bingo chances and old time dances.
All my life I spent the nights with dreams of you.
The warmth I missed for the things I wished are coming true.
I got my love to give and a place to live, guess I'm gonna stay.
It'd be a peaceful life with a forever wife and a kid some day.
It's early nights and pillow fights and your soft laugh.
But fantasy world and Disney Girls, I'm coming back.
Bruce Johnston
>>June was always a lady and dressed like one.
Sure, you go ahead and believe that. I think she had a dark side that Ward never suspected.
Where do you think she learned to speak Jive, huh? Who was she hanging with while Ward was at work?
I have my suspicions...
Eddie, "Hello, Mrs. Cleaver, how's the Beaver?"
Sorry to hear Dow died. Yeah, I liked Wally too. He was a cool without being fake or a goody-too shoes. I think having Eddie Haskell & Lumpy as friends helped.
A lot of the Boomers never got over "Leave it to Beaver", even today they think they're being "witty" and "Subversive" by mocking it or pointing out it wasn't a 100 percent reflection of reality. Pathetic, no?
Its not 1962 anymore dude.
I was born the year it came out, I remember it slightly, but probably from reruns. I do know we watched the Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show weekly and then summer reruns daily.
Don't forget, the kind of kid that parents wanted their daughters to date.
Is he actually dead?
You could start a whole new meme a la Generalissimo Francisco Franco...
For fans of useless trivia, "Beaver" was the first television series in which a toilet was shown. The toilet tank, anyway.
And the first toilet flushing sound on television? Norman Lear knows.
I just looked at a list of 60 TV families. The problem is that a LOT of these families are one-parent families (e.g. Andy Griffith, Family Affair, My Three Sons, Beverly Hillbillies, Courtship of Eddie's Father). In the others, one or both of the parents are wacky. There are very few that are normal, regular families.
I'm having a hard time recalling the shows, and what impression they made on me at the time. As weird as my own situation was, I never thought wistfully about a different set of parents or different widowed mother--only that my asshole older brother would die. (He did, too many decades later.)
A Family Affair I recall as another show we sometimes watched, with a different model of family; the Petries were of course the coolest and funniest TV family.
We watched some shows in the '90s when our son was growing up--Pete and Pete, Malcolm in the Middle . . . They were generally funnier than the '60s stuff, I think, more creative and less bent on pointing a moral.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary — https://www.etymonline.com/word/beaver — Etymonline, "beaver" — meaning "female genitals, especially with a display of pubic hair" — goes back to at least 1927. It was "British slang, ultimately from beaver" — the animal — "perhaps transferred from earlier meaning "a bearded man" (1910), or directly from the appearance of split beaver pelts."
"Don't overlook the early years. Before he was a teenager, the Wally character articulated a more cynical view of the way the world worked to his younger brother Beaver..."
Yes, all the clips in the montage I linked to are from later episodes where Wally is kind of a lesser Dobie Gillis. It's much better in the earlier days when Wally was younger and Beaver was really cute. I don't like when Beaver is too big and his voice is deeper! Jerry Mathers was a very cute kid, but he didn't grow into a good-looking teenager or adult. And his head is so much larger than Tony Dow's that you lose the feeling of older brother/younger brother. They just don't look like brothers at all.
The way many boomers were raised:
"What are we going to do Ward?"
"What we always do: sit tight and wait for the explosion."
Yeah, the vagina jokes were lame the first time decades ago. I'd be embarrassed to say them, but less keep on making them (and think that you're being original in doing so).
'Harriet had an edge June lacked.'
But June was a pioneering MILF...and came equipped with a pearl necklace...
"Leave it to Beaver" came out after the teenage angst movies of the 1950s with their dysfunctional families (e.g. Rebel Without a Cause). So it is not surprising that LITB should feature the boys struggling with adults and teachers and parents in growing up.
'I would have picked the Bradys... Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! :)'
I was always a Jan kid myself.
'Jerry Mathers was a very cute kid, but he didn't grow into a good-looking teenager or adult.'
One of the biggest gaps ever in terms of kid-to-adult attractiveness.
But I've only heard that he is a nice guy, so he's got that going for him...
Carol @8:08: Agree. Got to meet the great June Foray once.
"If you could pick one TV family to be yours ..."
The Clampetts. Except, I would have had a problem treating Ellie May like a sister.
To me the best character on the show, that is, the most realistic and closer to kids I knew was Larry Mondello. Larry was selfish, an unhesitating liar, insecure, unhappy at home and yet was Beaver's good friend. They would quarrel and fight but then make up.
Has Dow's death been confirmed? I read that his wife announced his death but then retracted it.
Mark introduces the concept of "normal, regular families."
Raise your hand if you grew up in a normal, regular family.
I am genx; I watched the show in reruns and all my friends new the characters. But to suggest that Wally was some sort of idol or hero to genxers is silly.
I didn't hear of beaver until quotes from Ball Four, and then it was everywhere, owing its amusing aptness.
"I would have had a problem treating Ellie May like a sister."
The Clampetts were from the Appalachian mountains, so treating Ellie May like a sister would be no problem at all.
Lost in Space. I wanted the Robot for a friend so badly. Now, I'm a little concerned about what that says about me.
So much television these days offends me as conscious progressive propaganda. I then ask myself: wasn't the television I watched as a child (such as Leave it to Beaver) a type of propaganda? I have to concede that the Cleaver characters were put forward as models for emulation. But they weren't advocating for change, nor were their actions outside preexisting norms. They reinforced intuitive decency, and intuitive decency can't possibly get too much reinforcement. They were genuinely entertaining, too. Somehow, those factors take Leave it to Beaver outside the propaganda category.
RIP Tony Dow, you made the world better.
If you grew up in the Puget Sound region, you'll clearly remember the Leave It to Beaver episodes on KISW in the early '80s
Let's just say they were slightly off-color.
Going on three hours for you normal, regular family people to reveal yourselves. Or maybe the Prof is napping.
>>"I would have had a problem treating Ellie May like a sister."
If she's not good enough for her family, she's not good enough for mine.
Don't forget the Addams Family.
Morticia probably didn't have the parenting skills of June. But Morticia was hot!
The Clampetts were from the Appalachian mountains
Ummm ...
"Gee, Wally . . . you're dead."
But seriously: I liked the show, even if I enjoyed seeing Eddie Haskell more than I enjoyed te Cleaver kids. I also liked "Still the Beaver," the 1980s sequel show. One touching moment in that show was when Wally himself became a father. and was sitting with the newborn infant, trying to lull the baby to sleep. He said, "I'm going to sing the song my father would sing to me when I was a baby"--and he began softly singing "The Toy Parade" (i.e., the Leave it to Beaver theme song). As I recall, it got me verklempt.
"That's a lovely dress you have on, Mrs. Cleaver." Obama always reminded me of him. "Clean, articulate," and evil below the surface.
I don't know about the 'evil below the surface' bit but not a man bonum et honestum, noble in his integrity etc. At the back of my mind this is whose ghost Mr Obama always summoned but I had never made the connection. Eddie Haskell, indeed.
"Why was Wally (and Beaver, in his own way) such an outstanding young man?"
Because he was surrounded by a group of realistic underperformers, led by Eddie and Lumpy. The Cleavers' Mayfield was a rich setting for a sitcom, the equal of Hooterville, Springfield, or Seinfeld's version of New York.
Favorite Wally quote:
Beav has attempted a self-haircut with predictable results.
"Gee Wally, you think you could clean it up for me?"
Some time passes.
"Gee Wally, are ya done yet?"
"Well I don't know, but I think i better quit!"
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