Beaver's baby picture popped up elsewhere in Sixties television
Baby Beaver was also… Baby Davy Jones?!
In "The Picture Frame," a 1967 episode of The Monkees, the boys in the band head to Mammoth Studios for what they think is a casting call. Only these phony "movie" folks are criminal masterminds who want to hire the Monkees to "play" bank robbers. As part of this "casting," the two shady fellows in berets and turtlenecks ask for headshots. Davy Jones hands over a photograph — and it's a baby photo of him in the buff.
Astute TV viewers might have recognized the naked baby. It was none other than Beaver Cleaver!
Nearly a decade earlier, on Halloween evening in 1959, the same photo appeared in a fan-favorite Leave It to Beaver episode, "Baby Picture." If you recall, Beaver and his classmates have to bring in baby pictures for a class project. The kids have their baby snapshots pinned to a corkboard. Judy Hensler claims her baby pic looks just like Shirley Temple.
June Cleaver submits a shot of Beaver in the nude, much to his embarrassment. Ward eventually steps in and cuts out a headshot, removing the bare bum, saving his son.
As you can see above, the Beaver baby photo held in Wally's hand is the exact photo carried by Davy Jones in The Monkees. (Oddly, the same exact shot would appear again, six episodes later, in the opening scene of "Monkees Marooned," held by Peter Tork.)
So the big question is: Who is that baby?
Unfortunately, we have no definite answer. Television junkies have spotted the picture in other shows, and have speculated that it might indeed be Jerry Mathers. Leave It to Beaver did use real photographs of its other cast members, so it is possible. It does kind of look like him.
Have you spotted this baby picture in other shows? Do you know who it is? Who do you think it might be?
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Actually the photo looks like stock, and either had to do with baby food back in the day, or some kind of ultra soft detergent. I remember seeing it in magazines. I doubt that any mother (even a stage mother) would permit a personal photo of their child to run in perpetuity on a syndicated TV series.