Thursday, October 1st, 2009
A Little Hard on the Beaver
They could never imagine a world with a "pause" button.
As a kid, Leave It To Beaver was one of my absolute most favourite shows. It was corny, not particularly funny and seemed to exist in a completely different world than the small town Canadian suburbs of the late 1970s where I watched it from.
But still, the tame and lesson filled adventures of Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver resonated with me. Maybe it was the strangeness of the fake 1950s setting. Maybe I found the show’s earnestness more palpable than the cloying kids of more modern shows like The Brady Bunch. Or perhaps I dug Hugh Beaumont’s suits and suave demeanor – he was, after all, the original Don Draper. Dunno.
Anyhow, it was on a second season episode that Beaver brought home a letter from his teacher to give June and Ward. Recently, the good people at Shorpy were thoughtful enough to freeze their DVD on the one brief glimpse of the letter and transcribe it’s contents.
“My typing is lousy, but the typewriter isn’t so hot either. After all, why should I
take the blame for these mechanical imperfections, with which all of us must contend. Lew Burdette just hit a home run and Milwaukee leads seven to one in the series.”
The letter is clearly the work of some poor schlub on set – probably a production assistant of some kind or other – pulled away from his duties one day to craft the letter Mrs. Rayburn sent home with the Beav. It’s awesome and it’s here.
