The first season of the American television situation comedyLeave It to Beaver premiered on October 4, 1957 and concluded on July 16, 1958. It consisted of 39 episodes shot in black-and-white, each running approximately 25 minutes in length. This was the only season that the show originally aired on CBS.
Production
Leave It to Beaver debuted Friday, October 4, 1957 at 7:30 P.M. on CBS with "Beaver Gets 'Spelled". Mid-season, the show was rescheduled to Wednesday nights at 8:00 P.M. In the second season, the show would move to ABC. The first season completed its run on July 16, 1958 with "Cat Out of the Bag". The first season consists of 39 black-and-white, full-screen, half-hour episodes recorded on 35mm film. Episodes are picaresque stand-alones with no episode-to-episode continuity of storyline. Very occasionally a reference is made to a previous episode but episodes can easily be viewed out of air-date order. There are no multi-part stories in the season nor in the complete series.
Opening and closing sequences
For season one, a voice-over prologue by Hugh Beaumont precedes each early episode's opening credits, providing a background to that episode's theme, and always concludes with "And that's our story tonight on Leave It to Beaver." The voice-over prologues are discontinued mid-season and replaced with a short scene extracted from the episode at hand. The prologues are retained in the first-season DVD release but are omitted in airings on TV Land. The opening titles feature a drawing of a sidewalk, viewed from above, displaying the credits in wet concrete. The characters are not shown. The closing sequence exhibits the credits against a simple, dark background. Both sequences are accompanied by the show's theme tune, "The Toy Parade".
All first-season episodes are directed by Norman Tokar, a director distinguished for his ability to work well with children. Most of the scripts are the work of the show's creators, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, with occasional contributions from other writers. The writing team of Dick Conway and Roland MacLane make their debuts in the first season.
''Leave It to Beaver'' universe
When the show opens, Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver is a seven-year-old boy in the second grade at Grant Ave. Grammar School while his brother Wally is thirteen years old in the eighth grade at the same school. Their father, Ward, is a white collar office worker and their mother, June, a stay-at-home wife and mother whose specialities are unconditional love and wholesome meals. The Cleavers live in a two-story frame house in fictional Mayfield. Beaver's character is established in the first season and remains essentially unchanged in the following seasons. He is a sensitive but gullible boy of above average intelligence and abilities trying to make sense of the adult world around him while often being led astray by schoolmates and chums. The first season follows the Cleaver boys as they get in and out of boyhood scrapes and face their father for moral lectures regarding their mistakes and misadventures. First season plot motifs include money-making schemes for the boys, relationships within the family, and school problems. Both boys have encounters with first girlfriends in the opening season, and those encounters are somewhat sour. The opening season sees the only holiday related episode in the series, "The Haircut", and, even then, the holiday only marginally enters the proceedings.
Reception
Critics of the period were generally favorable to Leave It to Beaver. TV Guide dubbed the show "the sleeper of the 1957-58 season". But the season did not break into the Nielsen Top 20. It was in the first season, however, that the show received its only Emmy nominations in its history: the first nomination, for Best New Program Series of the Year, and the second, for Best Teleplay Writing - Half Hour or Less for the premiere episode, "Beaver Gets 'Spelled".
