From the book After The Fact?

Question

What were the three major sitcomes of the 1950's? Describe the aspects of one in detail.

Answer 1

1. "I Love Lucy", - one of the few aired in 1951 that lasted more than two years.

2. "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" - Domcoms, such as, "Father Knows Best" and the longest running sitcom in history, "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" illustrated traditional family values. These domcoms, which were distinguished by the middle-class, suburban family, "filled with peace, love, and laughter."

3. "Leave it to Beaver"- Sitcoms began to decline due to an increase in other forms of programming. Western and adventure shows attracted the attentions of all little boys and girls in America, which led to a decrease in ratings for the sitcom genre. One of the few sitcoms to survive the first "depression" was Leave it to Beaver. It took a basic nuclear family, complete with clever children, and loving parents. In the Cleaver family, they always had dessert immediately after dinner, with Ward reading the paper in the study and June cleaning up the dishes. Sometimes, Eddie Haskel would stop by after to compliment June and to involve the boys in some kind of "trouble." This is a good example of how sitcoms reflected the time in which they aired. Traditional family roles in the 1950’s held the father as the head of the household and major breadwinner, and the wife as the classic domestic housekeeper. Sitcoms of the 1950’s emphasized and exemplified good values and conveyed them throughout the half –hour, in which they aired.
The 1950s-1960s family sitcom "Leave It To Beaver" had never been made available to fans via any kind of major studio release on home video throughout all these many years of home-video formats (Beta, VHS, LD, or DVD) -- until the long-awaited date of November 22, 2005, when Universal Studios Home Entertainment released "Leave It To Beaver: The Complete First Season" on DVD.

And the first 39 "Beaver" episodes look just terrific here. The video quality for these black-and-white programs is extremely good, and the audio is very good too (by way of the very pleasant and clean-sounding Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtracks that faithfully reproduce each episode's original Mono audio).

Thankfully, Universal has done a bang-up job with the digital transfers here, and these shows (which were originally photographed on film, not videotape) look and sound fabulous on these DVDs.

There is, however, a good deal of fine "film grain" contained within a lot of these episodes, but I'm assuming that is simply inherent to the type of film stock that was used for this series. The grain isn't very distracting (at least I don't have a major problem with the grain speckles that exist here). Interestingly, though, I've noticed that many scenes in these episodes don't seem to have any "grain" in them at all, while other scenes contain a lot more. The "outdoor" shots look almost completely grain-free.

Another very pleasing thing to me personally is the fact that all these DVDs pass the "freeze-frame test" with flying colors (i.e., when pausing or freezing an image on screen, the video doesn't "blur" at all; it stays rock-solid and clear while in "pause" mode; which, IMO, is a sign of a good film-to-DVD transfer).

All things considered, I could not be happier with the way these episodes look on these DVDs! And thus far I have no complaints about the performance of the sometimes-temperamental two-sided discs that Universal insists upon using for its TV-DVD releases. Nary a hitch has been experienced while playing these discs.

According to the stats on the packaging, the episode running times here average out to exactly 26 minutes per program (including the 40th episode in the set, the Pilot), which indicates to me that the following pleasing terms apply here: "Full"/"Complete"/"Uncut"/"Unedited"! And this is great to see, because the syndicated versions of this series that have aired on commercial TV for decades have all been hacked to pieces, with each episode having at least a few minutes sliced out of it due to commercial time restraints.

I did a "time check" for each of the seven LITB shows on Side A of Disc #1. The results made me smile (in an "uncut" and "complete" sort of fashion). Here are those run times (not counting the 22-second Universal fanfare and logo that's included prior to every episode, which can be quickly bypassed via the Chapter button):

"Beaver Gets 'Spelled" -- 25:48.
"Captain Jack" -- 25:48.
"The Black Eye" -- 25:49.
"The Haircut" -- 25:44.
"New Neighbors" -- 25:44.
"Brotherly Love" -- 25:37.
"Water, Anyone?" -- 25:44.

So I think it's safe to say that when fans view any of these 39 programs, they will probably be seeing them uncut for the first time since their original network TV airings in the late 1950s. I'm guessing that everyone who buys this DVD set will be seeing some scenes in a lot of these episodes that they had never seen previously. That fact kind of serves as an "added value" item all by itself.

I'm also glad to see that these DVDs retain all of the "Previews" (or "Teasers") for the first-season "Beaver" programs. These brief preview clips were shown just prior to the opening titles and give an overview of what's coming up in that episode. These pre-show snippets, which last about 20 to 30 seconds each, were only done for the first season. Hugh Beaumont served as "narrator" for the teasers on the first 16 episodes. For the year's final 23 shows, however, Hugh's voice is not heard, with just an episode clip provided (sans any voice-over narration).

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Good luck