I don’t consider myself particularly prudish, but I’m horrified by some of the things I see on TV these days. While I don’t remember the specific details, I do recall seeing a razor commercial a few years ago that doubled down on language and images regarding shaving your most intimate parts, and all I could think was: What would my grandparents say about this?
Of course, I look back at their day and how strict some of the rules for television were and laugh. Married couples couldn’t sleep in the same bed. Kissing scenes could only last for a limited number of seconds, and you couldn’t have alcohol in “respectable homes.” You couldn’t even say the word “pregnant,” even though without the concept, none of us would be here.
When Lucille Ball became pregnant while filming I Love Lucy, they had to use the word “expecting” and apparently had to get approval from a approval from a priest, a rabbi, and a minister to make sure the storyline was appropriate for viewing audiences. I can’t imagine my grandmother was too offended by that. She was actually “expecting” my dad at the same time and has told me stories about how much she enjoyed being able to relate to Lucy and laugh at the show’s shenanigans surrounding the birth of Little Ricky.
Well, as it turns out, one of those crazy rules almost kept one of my favorite old shows — Leave It to Beaver — off the air. Yes, even something a wholesome as that went a little too far according to CBS censors.
“Captain Jack” was supposed to be the show’s pilot episode. Fans will remember it as the one where Wally and Beaver save their money to order a real live alligator from Florida. What arrives is a tiny baby lizard, and in order to hide it from their parents, Ward and June, but still ensure it has water access, the boys put it in the toilet tank.
But there’s only one problem: Showing a bathroom, especially the toilet, was frowned upon when the show debuted in 1957.
Apparently, CBS refused to air the episode and demanded the bathroom scene be removed. In its place, they aired “Beaver Gets ‘Spelled,'” an episode in which Beaver’s teacher, Miss Canfield, sends a note home to his parents, asking if he can play Smokey the Bear in a school pageant. Beaver gets scared that he’s in trouble, so Wally writes a note back to the school, pretending to be June, saying that Beaver has been punished for whatever he did wrong, and confusion and chaos ensue. Originally, it was meant to be the third episode in the series.
Eventually, the censors and showrunners worked out a deal where they could show the toilet but only the tank, and “Captain Jack” became the show’s second episode, but not without a lot of heated fights, according to Jerry Mathers, who played Beaver.
📺On October 11, 1957, ‘Leave It To Beaver’ aired U.S. network television’s first toilet. The episode had been delayed after CBS censors demanded that the toilet scene be removed. Eventually, a deal was reached that allowed only the tank to be shown pic.twitter.com/wl93fPOexq
— RetroNewsNow (@RetroNewsNow) October 11, 2025
People have always referred to Leave It to Beaver as a symbol of a perfect 1950s-1960s life, so it’s kind of funny that it was so controversial back then and, as Mathers put it, “set some precedent for the television industry.” It’s even more so when you realize that Hugh Beaumont, who played Ward, was a minister, and, as Mathers said, “kept everybody pretty much on the straight and narrow.”
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