Leave It to Beaver (season 1)
| Leave It to Beaver Season 1 | |
|---|---|
| Country of origin |
 United States
|
| No. of episodes | 39 (black-and-white, full screen, approx. 25 minutes) |
| Release | |
| Original network | CBS |
| Original release | October 4, 1957 – July 16, 1958 |
| Season chronology | |
The first season of the American television situation comedy Leave 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.
Leave It to Beaver debuted Friday, October 4, 1957 at 7:30 P.M. (EST) on CBS with "Beaver Gets 'Spelled". Interestingly, that was also the day that Sputnik 1 was launched. 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 (without ads) 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.
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".
The show's four stars — Barbara Billingsley, Hugh Beaumont, Tony Dow, and Jerry Mathers — appear in all first-season episodes.
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