NEED TO KNOW
- The episode that was originally intended as the Leave It to Beaver pilot was flagged by sensors
- The network had to fight for a resolution that made sense with their storyline
- Leave It to Beaver aired from 1957 to 1963
Leave It to Beaver‘s first episode sparked concerns with network executives.
What was supposed to be the pilot episode of the beloved sitcom, which aired from 1957 to 1963, was shelved for a week after CBS pushed back against one of the plotlines. The episode, titled “Captain Jack,” shows Wally and Beaver try to order themselves an alligator, only to be sent an eight-inch baby alligator.
In seeking out information on how to care for the reptile, they learned he needed to be in water, but were keeping him a secret from their parents, Ward and June. The boys decided to keep him in the toilet tank, where he could be safe, but undetected.
Showing bathrooms on TV was frowned upon in that era, Jerry Mathers explained in a 2010 interview with the Television Academy. Mathers played the titular son, Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver.
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“At that time, you not only couldn’t show a toilet, you couldn’t even show a bathroom on television,” Mathers told Fox News in 2014.
“It was prohibited. And so they fought with the sensors, and that was our very first show, and they said, ‘Well, they could show it in the back of the toilet, the tank, so that was some way that Leave It to Beaver actually set some precedent for the television industry.”
Hugh Beaumont played father Ward Cleaver and Barbara Billingsley played mother June Cleaver. Tony Dow rounded out the foursome as older brother Wally Cleaver.
Recalling his time with his TV parents, Mathers told PEOPLE that the set was a very positive and friendly atmosphere.
“Hugh Beaumont was basically a very nice man, but he was also a minister,” he said of his on-screen father, who died in 1982 at 73. “So he kept everybody pretty much on the straight and narrow.”
That meant that while the set was still “a good time” and “a lot of fun,” the crew on the show was people who “weren’t out drinking every night and coming in drunk,” according to Mathers.
Mathers’ relationship with Billingsley, who died in 2010 at 94, continued to grow after the series. “She did a lot of charity work,” he remembers. “Every once in a while, she’d call me up and say that maybe she was not feeling so well that day, could I help her? And I’d go around different places that I’d never been before and help out with whatever organization she worked with.”
Mathers was just 8 years old when he joined the series, which continues to run to this day in syndication.
“It was fun all the time. I could have had to go to school and stuff like that, but it was just a lot of fun and a lot of nice people, so there wasn’t really any bad part to it,” Mathers added.
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