Leave It to Beaver

Jerry Mathers has claimed that the family name 'Cleaver' actually originated from writer Joe Connelly's WWII shipmate nicknamed 'The Beaver,' rather than from the in-universe explanation that baby Theodore's brother mispronounced his name as 'Tweedor'.

Jerry Mathers reportedly got the role of Beaver because casting directors noticed he seemed uneasy during auditions; when asked where he'd rather be, he said his Cub Scout den meeting, and his boyish honesty won him the part.

The pilot episode, 'It's a Small World' (aired April 23, 1957), featured different actors in the roles of Ward and Wally Cleaver: Max Showalter (credited as Casey Adams) played Ward, and Paul Sullivan played Wally, before Hugh Beaumont and Tony Dow took over for the series proper.

The intended pilot episode 'Captain Jack' had to be altered because censors would not allow a toilet to be shown on screen; the crew compromised by only showing the toilet tank, where Wally and Beaver kept their pet alligator, and Jerry Mathers claimed it set a precedent for the television industry.

Barbara Billingsley revealed that June Cleaver's pearl necklace was actually used to hide a hollow in her neck that would have created unwanted shadows on camera, and she wore high heels to help offset the growing height of the boy actors.

The Cleaver family's house set moved from 485 Mapleton Drive to 211 Pine Street for season three; the house was later reused for the TV series Marcus Welby, M.D. in 1969, and its façade was replaced in 1988 for the film The 'Burbs and again for the 1997 Leave It to Beaver movie.

In the mid-1970s a false rumor spread that Jerry Mathers had been killed in the Vietnam War, apparently originating from a wire service error confusing him with a Sgt. Steven Mathers who died in 1968; actress Shelley Winters allegedly repeated the claim on The Tonight Show, and Tony Dow even sent condolence flowers to Mathers' parents believing it was true.

An urban legend claimed that actor Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell, was secretly porn star John Holmes; Holmes exploited a facial resemblance by performing in films under the name 'Eddie Haskell,' prompting Osmond to file a $25 million defamation suit that went to the California Supreme Court, which ruled against him on satire grounds, setting a legal precedent still cited today.