8 minor mistakes and tiny errors made in 'Leave it to Beaver'

We're a little worried about the Beaver messin' these little details up.

From 1957 to 1963, Leave It to Beaver painted an ideal world, where the beds are always made, the faces are always smiling and everything always turns out all right in the end.

However, even in a perfect world, we know by Beaver's prime example, we all make mistakes every now and again. The time has come today to look at the cracks in the walls of the Cleavers' lovely home.

Below, we've found tiny errors you likely overlooked while following Beaver's pint-sized adventures. From technical discrepancies to missteps in character details, these are some of the few bumps we could find in Leave It to Beaver's otherwise smooth sailing storylines.

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1. The age difference between Wally and Beaver changes.

When Leave It to Beaver starts, it's established that Wally is 12 years old and in the 8th grade. Beaver is "almost 8" and in the second grade. But somewhere in those six seasons, while Beaver aged at a normal pace, Wally's growth seemed to slow. By the final season, Wally is a senior in high school (which puts him five years down the road), and Beaver is graduating 8th grade (6 years past his second grade start). The math seems a little off, but who's counting?

2. A car gets towed that's clearly the Cleavers' car from the opening credits.

For the episode "The Parking Attendants," Wally and Eddie are serving as valets, and Eddie parks a car that is supposed to belong to Mr. Rutherford in a tow zone. When the car gets towed later in the episode, it has the exact same license plate as the car we always see parked in the Cleavers' driveway in the opening credits. Unless there's some offscreen car theft occurring, we're guessing they just hoped we wouldn't notice.

3. June's using an old calendar.

June Cleaver's picture-perfect home is invoked any time someone wants to call to mind the good old days, but it seems in at least one episode, June was running her family home off a past-due calendar. In "The Poor Loser," the 1963 episode opens up with a shot of June marking this calendar, but unless the episode happens to be arbitrarily set two years prior in 1961, the days are off to reflect to correct episode year. It's a nitpick, but hey, it could also explain why Beaver and Wally's ages can't be kept straight!

4. Eddie messes up his favorite author's name. Twice.

In the episode "Summer in Alaska," Eddie gets a summer job working on a fishing boat in Alaska, thanks to his uncle's connections. While he's boasting about all he knows about the open sea, Eddie twice references the book Two Years Before the Mast, citing the author as Charles Dana. The actual author's name was Richard Henry Dana Jr.

5. June mixes up authors, too.

But Eddie isn't the only one who gets his pop culture mixed up. In "Beaver Sees America," June Cleaver is looking over the itinerary for Beaver's upcoming trip and she notes aloud that he'll be visiting Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. This is cool, June insists, because that's where Scarlett O'Hara was born. But the character from Gone With the Wind actually wasn't born there. Instead, it was the author of the novel Gone With the Wind who June is thinking of, Margaret Mitchell. She wasn't born on Peachtree Street, either, but it is where she reportedly wrote her famous story.

We can hardly blame June, though—it's not like there was a '50s equivalent of Google to double-check!

6. You can see a string attached to the bee Beaver swats.

Here's one you may have picked up on. In "The Silent Treatment," there's a great shot of Beaver outside painting a door, when a bee starts zooming around his face. Look closely at the string and you can definitely see the nylon string the bee was attached to.

7. Record players didn't work like that, Beaver.

This minor mistake is a technicality that record fans likely chuckled about back in the day. For the episode "The Party Spoiler," Beaver's playing lots of pranks during a party Wally throws because he's feeling left out. The grand finale is a prank involving a interrupter Beaver plants on the record player to start and stop the music and make sure the dance party never really gets going.

Beaver puts the interrupter in the plug of the record player, suggesting the technology worked by cutting the power source. Yet the music stops and starts in the right place very quickly. Record players back then would've required at least some time for the belt to get the record up to the right speed, so while the effect in the episode is awesome, it requires a bit of a stretch of the imagination.

8. These girls can't help but laugh with Beaver, too.

There's a slightly vicious episode of Leave It to Beaver where a girl named Shirley decides she's going to start calling Beaver "Sheep Dog." The insult shakes Beaver up, especially since Shirley's best friends are always there to back her up by laughing at Beaver and making it worse.

When Beaver finally decides to call Shirley a name back, the girls playing her best friends are accidentally shown laughing at Beaver's remarks before they cut to the part where they console their now-crying friend. It's a minor goof, but also proof that kids can be so cruel, even in Beaver's ideal world!

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87 Comments

Torriatte 10 months ago
I just caught this one. In “Beaver Runs Away” he and Larry drill 2 holes in Ward’s garage wall. At the end of the episode award is repairing and filling the holes. BUT later in “The Boat Builders” , Ward is hearing Wally and friends inside the garage and goes to inspect. We can clearly see that the two holes are still there. Whoops. Maybe Beaver redrilled them??
carfle77 13 months ago
On Leave it to beaver, the English test episode, Mr.Blair called Gilbert Mr. Harrison but Gilbert's last name is Gates.
Kzadad carfle77 12 months ago
Good observation. He was Gilbert Gates in the first episode with Gilbert, then became Gilbert Bates. He was Gilbert Harrison in at least 2 episodes. See S04E24. So maybe it was intentional, but he for some reason he went back to Gilbert Bates. Would be interesting to know the story behind that.
LadySnake 14 months ago
Even then, 50s tv cracked me up. It was the Donna Reed Syndrome…all the women were housewives, cleaning their houses in nice dresses with pearls (non even “pop beads”!) & pumps. In my house, my mum wore pants & no jewellery, save her engagement & wedding rings, which never came off til my dad died. Now, my grandmothers wore housedresses, but they were funky dresses & flat shoes
Glovers67 14 months ago
Has anyone counted the heck’s and gee’s and dears between Ward and June even when they’re arguing. Every line between them began or ended in dear.One show Wally didn’t leave the room or ended the conversation with no less than 10 gees and about 8 heck mom it was on the verge of disrespectful
Glovers67 14 months ago
I find it odd that they would choose June to go hard on Beaver over Brussels sprouts and was always asking Ward about going easy on him when he disobeyed like signing up for modeling or getting a pet monkey or they couldn’t tell him they had to sell the sports car he won instead of just explaining he’s too young and the money is better .There we’re just so many episodes where they should’ve used tough love or the old fashioned tool shed as Ward would say but not the Brussels sprouts episode.Beaver and Larry smoking a pipe and as much as they talked about getting clobbered or hit by their folks they never got so much as a spanking
Glovers67 14 months ago
Anyone noticed the parking attendant episode where Mr Landry was this big time business guy with valet parking and a maid who put on this lavish wedding for his daughter to the cheating golfer who couldn’t pay a 500 dollar bet and what about Violet Rutherford lumpy’s sister was only talked about in two episodes but never interacted with Lumpy and then she turned into Peggy as Beaver’s date yet although as both Violet and Peggy she was referred to as his classmate yet the Peggy episode was the only time she was ever seen in school….hmmm and was never spoken about since
Glovers67 14 months ago
I know it’s only tv but the chucky shoes episode the lady had some nerves to expect her neighbors she barely knew to take her kid shoe shopping when she could have dropped her husband off and went to the store afterwards and the silent treatment episode where Beaver gets mad because he has to get groceries I wonder if Eddie and Wally could have taken Beaver to the store and waited on him instead of letting him walk back they could have still had him along to help them install the radio and everyone would have been happy 😆
Glovers67 14 months ago
Anyone ever wondered how Beaver was allowed to hang out late night with no supervision and was always running away like how did he find an adoption agency or that lawyers office when he was being sued . For a little kid with no money sure got around and today his parents would have been cited for child neglect and I know different times back then but he could have been kidnapped
Glovers67 14 months ago
Anyone noticed Judy Foster was the ice cream girl who talked Wally into giving her free ice cream and chucky was the little boy who also tricked Wally into giving him ice cream without paying yet he was called little boy
Glovers67 14 months ago
Have anyone noticed how any of the kids could never come up with a dime or any money less than a dollar and how it was such a big deal to pay back a dollar to their parents and on the next episode Beaver had enough money saved to pay Wallys ice cream money when he was short a few dollars or how when Beaver loans money to Larry a measly quarter to get a notebook and Ward gives him a dollar and told him to make sure it gets his change and the whole episode was about getting change of a dollar
Glovers67 14 months ago
Have anyone noticed the first season episode about the baby alligator and the guy that sells beaver the alligator turned out to be uncle Billy in the 4th season ?
Kzadad Glovers67 12 months ago
Also the alcoholic that painted their house was also the band teacher, and an English teacher 😁.
rbyers65 15 months ago
I suppose when these shows were made they didn’t think about people watching them with the technology that we have today (to pause, zoom in, rewind, etc.) so they prob didn’t sweat the small stuff. I’ve always wondered I believe they’ve said that Mayfield is in Ohio so why didn’t they ever have winter snow etc… They also never had any holiday episodes.
Madvinmryk 19 months ago
I suspect there are a lot of these editing errors through the LITB years, but in Season 1 episode 15 (the party) the opening scene in the brothers’ bedroom, the shots of Beaver looking for his other shoe has a couple of books on the floor near the dresser but the shots including Wally who is looking for his arithmetic book have no books in that location, happening several times in the scene? of course indicating that it wasn’t a continual conversation.
MrHaney 19 months ago
Mr. Haskell's name is George, but in the episode where Eddie goes home in a huff but is scared to stay in his house by himself, Ward calls Mr. Haskell "Frank" on the phone.
carfle77 MrHaney 13 months ago
I noticed that too
Kzadad MrHaney 12 months ago
George Haskell was prominent in early episodes, then disappeared for years until that episode, where he was replaced with a different actor. I guess after all that time they forgot his name, but they figured it out afterward. George was seen in a few episodes after.
manofawholebunchofvoices 19 months ago
In the episode where Uncle Billy is getting a shave and the barbers are making odd faces at each other because they know Uncle Billy is telling lies, Beaver sees this and relays it to Ward. Beaver says "They were laughing at him without using their faces" I have always thought that was an error because they WERE using their faces. I think Jerry Mathers meant to say: "They were laughing at him without using their voices." Or "They were laughing at him without using their mouths." That is my take on the matter.
RobinOrlowski 21 months ago
There were only 3 networks back then, limited broadcast hours, not everybody did have a tv--so I'm sure most of this was inconsequential.
RetroT 22 months ago
Here's a minor critique of the critique: #7. The record players on the set of LITB would not have belts. They had idler wheels. Yes, with an idler wheel, there would still be drag when the record started back up, but not because of a belt. Belt-driven turntables started to be sold in the U.S. in the late 60s as component units, but even then, portable record players and consoles still used idler-driven turntables into the 70s.
1960sRule 24 months ago
During the Season 5 intro, June Cleaver comes out the front door carrying a full pitcher of an ice beverge and glasses on a tray. If you look closely, while June moves on the porch, the beverage and ice in the pitcher move around; however, the beverage and ice in each of the glasses does not move at all.
EveningSkye 1960sRule 20 months ago
And WHO opened and CLOSED the front door for her?
SoCalTVFan 24 months ago
You really need to remove--or at least clarify--#5 because, as @TBH711 correctly pointed out, June was talking figuratively about where Scarlett O'Hara was born, i.e., she came out of Margaret Mitchell's brain while the author lived on Peachtree Street.
thingmaker67 28 months ago
I always wonder, why do Wally and Beaver totally stare down the car that passes them in the closing credits? Like, "hey you want a piece of us?!"
No1spcl55 thingmaker67 8 months ago
Because it was their father coming home in that car.
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