Ward Cleaver sat sipping coffee with his wife, June, in their suburban kitchen and mentioned, “When I was in the Seabees, I got into a fight over a picture of Lana Turner.”
It’s not something we expect of Ward, but little droplets of his life through the series, before he came The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and his children’s go-to guy for getting them out of trouble, were fascinating. More than his children realized, he was the epitome of the Greatest Generation and what happened to them after the war.
This is my entry into the 12th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon, hosted by Terence over at his wonderful A Shroud of Thoughts blog. I look forward to this blogathon every year because it gives me a chance to showcase performances by actors from classic films who took guest spots, or sometimes took their entire careers, over to the small screen.
Hugh Beaumont, who played Ward Cleaver, the father on Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963), was one such actor who began his film career in 1940 (we covered his role in The Blue Dahlia – 1946 here), and played a variety of supporting roles in big films, starring roles in B-movies, and lots of uncredited parts. He was in his late forties when Leave it to Beaver gave him steady work, made him a household name, and for generations afterward, made him the number one dad on TV.
One of the most well-remembered shows of the era—largely because succeeding generations have grown up with reruns, featured Beaumont, Barbara Billingsley as his wife, June; Tony Dow played their older boy, Wally… “and Jerry Mathers as The Beaver.” The show was well-written, often quite funny, and Jerry Mathers was probably one of the most natural child actors of the day. The boys were average kids revealing the world of postwar childhood to their occasionally baffled elders, and each episode ended with some kind of lesson—but often not for the boys, rather, for their parents. This represented a sea change in TV sitcoms and reflected the growing importance, and perhaps coddling, of The Baby Boomers. (Though to be accurate, Wally, who was supposed to be 13 years old when the show started in 1957, would have been born during World War II, and therefore, technically not a Boomer.)
When television dawned in the living rooms of (some) American homes at the end of the 1940s and early 1950s, popular shows were geared more to the Greatest Generation, the ones who were buying the TV sets. After a day of work, they would unwind with comic Milton Berle on The Texaco Star Theater, Jackie Gleason on The Honeymooners, or the brilliant, Your Shows of Shows with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Imogene Coca, and a cast that couldn’t be beat.
These were mostly sketch comedies, but even The Honeymooners, which could be considered a sit-com, did not feature children in the cast. These were shows for grownups, the stars were their contemporaries, and though kids could enjoy them, the shows did not spotlight their experience, their world.
As the fifties progressed, more family sit-coms appeared,
but even Make Room for Daddy, centered more on star Danny Thomas than on
his children. One could say Robert Young
of Father Knows Best, at least got equal time with his kids, mostly. By the time Leave it to Beaver
appeared in the fall of 1957, television began more and more to showcase, and
to market to, the young Boomers.
Hence, we have Ward Cleaver, a likable, intelligent man with a likable intelligent wife, taking a backseat to the adventures of their kids. We don’t know much about Ward and June. Hints drip out once in a while about her boarding school, his growing up on a farm, their meeting in college. They have social engagements only once in a great while with friends they otherwise never discuss.
The wonderful boor Fred Rutherford, who works in Ward’s office, is seen more as a pain in the neck than a friend.
Even Beaver and Wally never seem to know much about their
parents and are always surprised they had a life before the kids came
along. The Boomers usurped the Greatest
Generation in part due to their parents’ doting on the kids, and also living in
the moment after what were likely difficult childhoods in the Great Depression
and the world blowing up when they came of age.
They were forward-looking people, who wanted orderly quiet now, and as a result, unless their children
were persistent in asking about “the old days,” they might never know.
As a child, I liked the boys and their exploits—though it annoyed me that they were such terrific liars. Nice boys, to be sure, but in each episode, they lied about something and thereby needing to be rescued by dad. Unlike their parents, we got to meet all the kids’ friends (and most of them really funny). Oddly, all the kids’ friends were backstabbers. Truly, a strange dynamic at work here. (Although all Larry Mondello would have to do would be to enter a room and I’d crack up.)
I was drawn more to the adults. I even liked Fred Rutherford. I liked Mrs. Rayburn, the principal. I still do.
She’s one of my favorites on the show.
Ward served in the U.S. Naval Construction Battalions, called
“CB” or Seabees. Formed in 1942, it supported
Navy and Marines, and is now the U.S. Naval Construction Forces.
Ward’s mention of getting into a fight over a photo of Lana
Turner was in season 6, episode 29, “Eddie's Sweater.”
In “The Visiting Aunts” (December 18, 1958, season 2,
episode 13), Ward recollects wryly of
Aunt Martha and her friend, whose husband is always referred to as “The General,”
came to their wedding and was surprised that June was marrying a Seabee, as if
that wasn’t good enough for an Army man.
In “The Perfect Father” (March 14, 1958, season 1, episode 22), Ward puts up basketball hoop over the garage for the boys. He muses “I must have put up hundreds of those all over the South Pacific when I was in the Seabees.” June teasingly responds, “I guess we all contributed to victory in our own way.”
June, we learn in “Mother’s Day Composition” (April 30, 1960,
season 3, episode 31), volunteered at a USO during the war and served
coffee and donuts. This was not quite as impressive as Beaver’s friend Richard’s
mother, who was a WAC private, then a corporal, and eventually became a captain. In
“Kite Day” (June 10, 1961, season 3, episode 37) we learn his father flew a
P-38 in the war. Beaver scoffs, “Ah,
those are so old, they don’t even make models of them anymore.”
So much for past glory.
Even Eddie Haskel (Ken Osmond was great in this memorable role) suffered
shame when in “Summer in Alaska” (May 9, 1963, Season 6, episode 33), Wally
recalls that when they were kids, Eddie bragged that his father was a
three-star general in the war, but they found out otherwise when they discovered
Mr. Haskel’s air raid helmet in a closet, proving he was a civilian air raid
warden during the war.
During the war, anyone doing his bit was considered
patriotic, but to the kids growing up later in peacetime, only the most heroic
actions would be worth bragging about.
We come to “Beaver’s Hero” (April 9, 1959, season 2, episode 28), when
the boys discover the secrets of their father’s wartime footlocker.
Mr. Willet (played by Wendell Holmes) is Beaver’s substitute teacher (Miss Landers is sick) and he tells the class about the world war. Wally asks The Beav, “Which world war?”
Beaver replies, “You mean there was a lot of them?”
“There’s two of them that I heard about.”
Beaver responds, “I think it was the one that President
Eisenhower was in.”
“Yeah, that’s the one Dad was in, too.”
Beaver asks his mother, “Was Dad and Mr. Eisenhower in the
same war?”
June says yes and Beaver replies, “It’s something having
your father in the same war with the president.”
This, his ignorance, I found stretching credulity as a
child, as those of us who had parents in World War II certainly knew about the war, because being only 20 or 25 years ago was still part of the social memory. Also, we watched Combat when we were kids and took turns
playing Vic Morrow and Rick Jason. I can
recall wearing plastic World War II-style helmets and throwing plastic grenades
over a fence into a neighbor’s yard, and the bunch of us running to “hit the
dirt” on someone else’s front lawn, covering our heads and making “ka-pow”
noises. When it was safe to stand, we had
to climb over the fence into the neighbor’s yard to retrieve the plastic
grenades. Something which I never saw
Vic Morrow or Rick Jason do, by the way.
So there were times I found Wally and Beav’s self-involved ignorance
rather frustrating. But, to continue…
Back in class, Judy Hensler (played by Jeri Weil), brags
that her father was a hero who flew his own plane in World War II. Gilbert’s uncle was a Marine sergeant who was
“almost a general.”
(I like how the teacher calls the kids by their surnames and
“ladies and gentlemen.” I didn’t run into
that until college.)
Beaver tells the kids his father was a hero, that he has a trunk in the garage full of guns and grenades, “and all kinds of stuff he took off of enemy guys.” Judy accuses him of being a liar, which makes her very smart, because he is.
Wally and Beaver look at the trunk in the garage with the Seabees insignia. Their mascot emblem was a fighting bumblebee with a machinegun, a wrench, and a hammer. Wally assumes the reason the bumblebee is carrying a hammer is so that if they “miss the guys with the gun, then they can hit him with a hammer.” There are photos of young June pasted on the lid of the footlocker, starlet photos of Barbara Billingsley. Beaver has to be told that this is his mother and that she was ever that young.
He finds a T-square and thinks it’s a sword. There is a tripod for surveying, that he
thinks is the “bottom of some kind of machine gun,” and a transit, which Beaver
thinks is a gun barrel. With each item,
Beaver spins a fantasy narrative, but Wally has his doubts, and Ward
interrupts. He laughs at an old photo of himself the boys have dug out of the
trunk. He and a buddy, both bearded, are
wearing grass skirts on some South Pacific island base and mugging for the camera. My dad had a couple silly photos of his pals,
too. He sent a grass skirt home to my mother.
I still have it. Generations have used it for costumes. My sister
labeled the bag it’s in, “Mother’s Grass Skirt,” which, provocative-sounding,
makes me laugh every time I see it.
“How many guys did you kill in the war, Dad?” Beaver asks, finally getting to what is the
meat of the matter for him.
Ward tells him he didn’t kill anyone. Explains the Seabees,
and that his primary job was building airfields and bases.
Beaver wonders, disappointed, “Gee, Dad, was all you did in
the war was see if the ground was level?”
Ward answers, with a somewhat weary tone in his voice,
remembering, “I sure did a lot it, Beaver.
Acres and acres.”
Now Beaver has a dilemma; his friends will know he is a
liar, and also find out that his dad was not a war hero, which is probably the
bigger shame for him. He tells Wally, “How
was I supposed to know that all Dad did in the war was measure dirt.”
Mr. Willet calls and asks Beaver to bring his father’s war souvenirs
to class, but not to bring anything dangerous.
“You’d better check with your father.”
Good idea.
To help cover for the Beav, Wally writes a false letter from
Ward to June, dating it from the war period, to document his bravery, which is
typically funny. It’s not the first phony note Wally has written for him. “Dear Mom…”
“Wally, he calls her June.”
Wally writes Ward’s position from Wake Island, because he
cannot spell Guadalcanal. He writes how
Ward captured 65 prisoners, and the general said, “Good goin’, Ward.”
Ultimately, Beaver decides not to use it and throws it
away. Ward finds the letter and calls
Mr. Willet to explain, and the teacher, with great delicacy, decides to change
the focus of the class to the Louisiana Purchase and move off World War II. Nice guy.
Ward tells Beaver, “There were thousands of us in the service who weren’t heroes.”
Beaver answers, “Yeah, but a guy likes to think his father
was.”
“Well, you see Beaver, they put a man where they thought he
could do the best job. Now, I was an
engineer, so I could do a better job with tools than I could with guns. There were lots of fellows in the Seabees who
were heroes, but I just didn't happen to be one of them.”
Beaver responds, considerately, “You know, Dad, I’ll bet you were the best
dirt leveler in the whole Seabees.”
I’ll bet he was,
when he wasn’t hanging up basketball hoops for his bearded buddies.
Hugh Beaumont was
actually a Methodist minister, who was a conscientious objector during World War
II, and served as an Army medic. As
mentioned previously on this blog, Lew Ayres, who was also a conscientious objector,
volunteered for the U.S. Army Medical Corps and served as a medic and
chaplain’s aide in the South Pacific under fire, earning three battle stars. I
don’t know if Beaumont served stateside or overseas. Even during the run of Leave
it to Beaver, he served part-time in various churches as a lay minister.
Richard Deacon, our
beloved Fred Rutherford, also served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and had studied
medicine in college before turning to acting.
Too bad the school principal, Mrs. Rayburn wasn’t in this episode. Doris Packer, who played her, served in the U.S. Women’s Army Corps, a WAC like Richard’s mother. She entered as a private and reached the rank of Technical Sergeant.
The war touched everyone in that generation, in one way or
another. Most of them put it aside
pretty quickly and moved on, just as they'd put the Great Depression behind them, like Ward and June, in their comfortable suburban
home, trying to make the kids' childhoods easier than theirs, and two boys who didn’t know how lucky they were.
Have a look at some other terrific posts in the 12th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon over at A Shroud of Thoughts.
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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.
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From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books. From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.
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