Where To Watch
Barbara Billingsley said she raised her sons like June raised Wally and Beaver
A Cleaver family secret? It was closer to home than you think.
Art often imitates life, but every so often, life imitates art right back.
Critics of Leave It to Beaver have sometimes viewed the Cleaver family as "too good to be true." But fans of the classic sitcom may be surprised to learn just how much of June Cleaver’s family life mirrored Barbara Billingsley’s own.
In a Gannett News Service interview, Billingsley revealed that there were plenty of similarities between her family and the Cleavers.
Watch Leave It to Beaver on MeTV!
Weekdays at 8 & 8:30 AM, Sundays at 1 & 1:30 PM
*available in most MeTV markets"There wasn't an awful lot of difference in the way I raised my boys, Drew and Glenn, and the way June raised Wally and Beaver," Billingsley said.
Billingsley didn’t just share June’s approach to motherhood. She also saw plenty of similarities between her sons and the Cleaver boys.
"My boys are comparable ages and a lot of the situations I'd encounter at home were similar to the things we'd done on the show," Billingsley said.
And Billingsley wasn’t the only Leave It to Beaver cast member to see a little real life reflected on screen.
Series creators Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher frequently drew from their own families when developing storylines, while cast members Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers found pieces of themselves in Wally and Beaver.
For Billingsley, the connection between her real family and her TV family was especially clear.
"A lot of things that happened to all of us with our children ended up on the show in one way or another," Billingsley said.
Related
