Leave It to ****** is an American television sitcom that follows the misadventures of a suburban boy, his family and his friends. It starred Barbara Billingsley, Hugh Beaumont, Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers.

CBS first broadcast the show on October 4, 1957, but dropped it after one season. ABC picked it up and aired it for another five years, from October 2, 1958, to June 20, 1963. It proved to be a scheduling challenge for both networks, moving through four time slots (Wednesday through Saturday evenings) over the course of its run.[1] The series was produced by Gomalco Productions from 1957 to 1961, and then by Kayro Productions from 1961 to 1963. It was distributed by ***** Studios.

While Leave It to ****** never broke into the Nielsen Ratings top 30 in its six-season run, it proved to be much more popular in reruns. It also led to an unsuccessful 1997 film of the same name.

Premise
The show is built around young Theodore "******" Cleaver (Jerry Mathers) and the trouble he gets himself into while navigating an often-incomprehensible, sometimes illogical world. Supposedly, when he was a baby, his older brother Wallace "Wally" (Tony Dow) mispronounced "Theodore" as "Tweedor". Their firm-but-loving parents, Ward (Hugh Beaumont) and June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley), felt "******" sounded better. Conversely, Mathers has said that the real reason for the name "******" is that one of the show's writers, Joe Connelly, had a shipmate named "The ******" in World War II; from that came the family's name, "Cleaver."[2]

******'s friends include the perpetually apple-munching Larry Mondello (Rusty Stevens) in the early seasons, and, later, Gilbert Bates (Stephen Talbot), as well as the old firefighter, Gus (Burt Mustin). His sweet-natured-but-no-nonsense elementary school teachers are Miss Canfield (to whom ****** declares his love in the episode entitled "******'s Crush") (Diane Brewster), Miss Landers (Sue Randall) and Mrs. Rayburn (Doris Packer), the school's principal. In the early seasons, ******'s nemesis in class is Judy Hensler (Jeri Weil).

In its first season, Wally was in eighth grade and 12 years old, while ****** was 7 and in second grade, a five-year age difference; in real life, the two actors were only three years apart. By the series' end, the boys were inexplicably only four years apart, with Wally graduating from high school and ****** graduating from grammar school. Wally is popular with both peers and adults, getting into trouble much less frequently than some of the other characters. He letters in three sports. He has little difficulty attracting girlfriends, among them Mary Ellen Rogers (Pamela Baird) and Julie Foster (Cheryl Holdridge). His pals include the awkward Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford (Frank Bank) and smart aleck Eddie Haskell (Ken Osmond), the archetype of the two-faced wise guy, a braggart among his peers and an obsequious yes man to the adults he mocks behind their backs. Eddie often picks on the ******.

The family lives in the fictional town of Mayfield. ****** attends Grant Ave. Grammar School and Wally attends Mayfield High School (after graduating from Grant Ave. in season one).