I'm at a little loss in terms of my Leave It To Beaver expertise, since I never watched an episode of the show - so the cast in the pilot could have been Martians or they could have been the regular cast for all I know.
My '50s were different than other people's '50s. The myth didn't permeate our world, 'Donna Reed' and all that. I longed for that, I wanted to be like other normal families on TV.
People stopped me on the street and said 'I can't live up to you.' Of course, they're referring to June Cleaver.
Well, when I was growing up it was Ozzie and Harriet on TV - nobody's parents were like that.
'Leave It to Beaver,' which ran from 1957 until 1963, was one of the strangest, sweetest, most distinctive domestic sitcoms of television's celebrated Golden Age.
'Leave It To Beaver' is a fairly famous show in America, but I don't think it travelled. It was one of those typical '50s family comedies. I was in the pilot episode as sort of the dark presence: my character was called Eddie Haskill.
I grew up on a set. The guys I hung around with were crew guys: the camera department, the prop guys. I was like the third kid through the door when I was a kid actor on Leave It To Beaver. I was always one of five guys who would have a couple lines. I was a journeymen actor in my first career, so I was appreciative of the journeymen on the set.
My parents were like June and Ward Cleaver; there was nothing dysfunctional about them.
We've all grown up with 'Ozzie and Harriet,' 'Father Knows Best,' 'Eight Is Enough.' White families have always represented the universal family.
Revisiting 'Leave It to Beaver,' and seeing it in the pristine visual clarity of digital restoration, are mood-altering if not quite mind-altering experiences, very much for the better.
I have to tell you that June Cleaver had a job in 'The New Leave It to Beaver.' She did. Sure, she was a council woman. She went to work. She wasn't a sit-at-home grandma. She went out, got a job.
We lived a lovely, middle-class, suburban life in Philadelphia. And I really thought that the TV programs of the '50s, like 'Father Knows Best' and 'The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet' Nelson were documentaries filmed with hidden cameras in our neighborhood.
