Beaverisms

THE SECOND EPISODE. of Leave It to Beaver was something of a history maker. Answering an advertisement in the back of a "Robot Men of Mars" comic book. Beaver and Weekly mail off $2.50 for a "Genuine Florid Alligator "But when the critter arrives, the two realize they have no where to keep it and are forced to slash it in the toilet tank.

The only problem was that in the 1950s television censors did not allow toilets to appear on the screen. But with true Beaver like perseverance the show's producers kept arguing and were able to get special dispensation from CBS On October 1952 Leave It to Beaver became the first series to show a toilet during prime time.

Beaver may have made a grant leap for making that day. But in general the series was much more a reflection of the values that banned the Privey than a force of social change. It never tried to be. Honest and unpretentious, Leave It to Beaver was the 1950s far more than Happy Days, Grease or any of the other nostalgia pieces that sprang up in the last decade. The show's six-year run began in the cases twilight of the Eisenhower Administration and ended two and a half months before an angry man with a title climbed to the top of a Dallas warehose.

In The World According Le Beaver. Irwyn Applebaum captures the essence of the show for its millions of undying fans fawning tributes to television shows tend to be unsatisfying because there usually is little the author can add-we've seen all the same shows, the rest of us just didn't bother to take notes. But Applebaum does a much better than average job by letting the show do most of the talking. The best part of the book is the central section which consists of dialogue vignettes from the show's 234 episodes.

Reaver If I get married, I'm not gonna take my wife any where not even to Disneyland.

June Beaver, why would you say a thing like that.

Beaver. Well, just cause you're married, that doesn't mean you gotta like girls.

For the true fanatic, the last third of the book consists of plot summaries of all the shows. Applebaum spices up what might otherwise be a dry catalogue by including collections of Beaverisms on topics like girls, brothers and dogs. For example, what does Beaver's father do for a living. We know he drives to the office every day, prepares a lot of reports, and occasionally goes on a business trip, but the show never exactly tells us who signs old Ward's paychecks.

It's easy to make fun of Leave It to Beaver, but its just as easy to sit through the half hour show--maybe easier. The key to the show's enduring popularity was its simplicity. Field year old boys still hate baths and girls and still get in trouble when they break a window. Some of the Beaver predicaments may seem silly, but most of them could have and offer did happen to most of us.

It is noteworthy that the show has been more successful in reruns than it ever was during its original run when it never cracked the top 20. It was slightly anachronistic in heyday. Beaver's parents. Ward and June, were a little too perfect. But we always knew what to expect from them, and the lessons they taught Beaver and Wally are as valid today as they were 25 years ago.

Currently, one of the most popular television shows among the grade school set is improbably a cartoon adventure series rather heavy-handidly depicting the battle between good and evil. At the end of each episode He-Man turns to the camera and says. "Today's lesson, kids, is that no matter how bad they are, everyone deserves a second chance," or whatever. The Cleavers never had to be so blatant--their familiar daily dramas spoke for themselves. John R. Boughman