Ed Bark |
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Leave it to DVDs to give us the best of the Beav
Pristinely preserved in invigorating black-and-white, Leave It to Beaver is home at last on DVD. The first season's 39 episodes – now they make barely half that many in a season – can be yours in a limited edition collector's lunch box for a pretty stiff $69.98. Or you can buy the conventionally packaged three-disc set for $20 less. Either way you're getting a classic, mom-dad-and-the-kids comedy whose theme song and central characters still resonate 48 years after the series' long ago, far away 1957 premiere on CBS. Has any TV sprout before or since been any cuter than Jerry Mathers as second-grader Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver? No, although Fred Savage made it a contest as Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years. The first episode of Beaver finds "the Beav" hiding up in a tree after thinking he was in real trouble at both school and home. "I'm gonna stay here until I die. And then you'll be sorry," he tells mom June (Barbara Billingsley), dad Ward (the late Hugh Beaumont) and big brother Wally (Tony Dow). As proof that the best steal from the best, Ted Koppel ended his last Nightline Tuesday by telling viewers that they'd better give the show's new anchors a fair chance or "the network will just put another comedy show in this time slot. And then you'll be sorry." Leave It to Beaver's parental units were integral to the show's success. But principal writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher were more intent on telling stories from the ground up. Seen but not heard much in previous TV comedies, kids had the best lines and moments in Leave It to Beaver. The Cleaver boys' upstairs bedroom doubled as their indoor tree house, a relatively safe haven where Wally felt free to say, "When you're an older person, you don't have to have a reason to be mean." Their pals were perfectly cast, led by TV's first street punk, Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond). He buttered up Mrs. Cleaver, sucked Wally into his con-man schemes and ridiculed the Beav as "Squirt." Eddie makes his first appearance in Episode 5 while hapless Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford (Frank Bank) arrives in Episode 16. One of Beaver's core buddies, Hubert "Whitey" Whitney (Stanley Fafara), is briefly seen and heard in the first episode. "A picnic is where you go out in the country and eat food off the dirt," he says in a pithy classroom discussion. Larry Mondello (Rusty Stevens), Gilbert Bates (Stephen Talbot) and Richard Rickover (Richard Correll) later would become key members of Beaver's evolving posse. Everyone specialized in getting into trouble, with Ward's climactic lectures having their desired effect until the next week's episode. The Beaver DVD set has just one notable extra, an unaired pilot episode titled "It's a Small World." The indispensable theme song is missing, and so is a laugh track. But it's far more jarring to see two imposters as Ward and Wally: actors Casey Adams and Paul Sullivan. The late Mr. Adams had a serviceable acting career, last appearing as "Grandpa Fred" in 1984's Sixteen Candles. But he was woefully miscast as Ward, and in fact looked a little spooky. The first Wally was almost twice as tall as the Beav and had a giant pompadour, too. A total absence of chemistry didn't help either. This abandoned first effort also features Harry Shearer as a pre-Eddie wise guy named Frankie. For what it's worth, you can see him call Beaver a "creep" instead of a squirt. Luckily, Leave It to Beaver regrouped and recovered from this first false start. Now comes its long overdue DVD debut. The show has never looked better. E-mail ebark@dallasnews.com This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow. This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow.
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