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Hugh Beaumont found himself in a real-life episode of Leave It to Beaver when his son came home with a black eye
Beaumont was educated at the parenting school of Ward Cleaver.
We should all be so lucky to have a father as great as Ward Cleaver, but since we all can't, those who grew up watching the family patriarch learned a thing or two that came in handy when they became fathers.
One such lucky father was Hugh Beaumont himself. It makes perfect sense; you don't play a character for years without picking something up here and there. For Beaumont, his Ward Cleaver parenting style came in handy when his son arrived home one day with a black eye after getting into a fight with a bully.
If you're experiencing deja vu, you're not alone. You might remember an episode of Leave It to Beaver where the Beav faces a similar dilemma and looks to his father for advice.
It's an episode that was fresh in Beaumont's memory, as they had just finished shooting it a few weeks ago before he became confronted by this real-life dilemma. Beaumont recounted the memory to The Morning Call and explained that in advising his son, he quickly found himself filling Ward Cleaver's shoes.
He said, "I found myself asking my son Martin lines direct from the script, and even the advice I offered had a very familiar ring to it."
It's a strangeness that Beaumont found himself embracing, and even finding the humor in. He continued, "I was so confused, I was almost tempted to call the script writer for some canned advice."
It's certainly helpful that instead of mirroring those bumbling fathers we love to laugh at on some sitcoms, Ward Cleaver is a father we might aspire to be, rather than poke fun at. Beaumont himself said, "I'm glad the creators and writers of our series, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, made Ward Cleaver the head of the family — the man who earns the bread and solves the problems of his dependents."
He continued, "Our country grew and prospered under this kind of man and I'm sorry to see fathers losing the respect of their children. That's one of our biggest problems today... and a lot of it can be traced to the downgrading of fathers for the sake of a slapstick laugh."
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72, when he died. Feb. 16, 1910-May 14, 1982. He was 47 when 'Beaver" started (on Oct. 4, 1957--the same date Sputnik 1 was launched by the USSR, first artificial satellite; burned up reentering the atmosphere on Jan. 4, 1958), and 53 when it ended on (airdate) June 20, 1963.
