A scene from "In the Soup," an episode of Leave it to Beaver directed by Norman Abbott. [photographer unknown]
The sit-com was a new invention when director Norman Abbott, who died at age 93 on July 9th, started making them in the early sixties. And the series he helped to create -- Get Smart, Leave It to Beaver, The Munsters, Sanford and Son, to name a few -- are among the all-time landmarks of classic television comedy. (Though, to be sure, he never quite eclipsed the legacy of his uncle, Bud Abbott of Abbott and Costello.)
I conducted a one-on-one interview with Abbott in August 1997 for a newspaper article, but ended up not using the interview for the piece. Hence, my audiotaped Q&A with him has been unpublished -- until now. Here's my conversation with him.
Paul Iorio: What is your favorite [Leave It to Beaver] episode of all the ones you did? What's the best one?
Norman Abbott: I like the one in the soup cup on the billboard. [The 1961 episode "In the Soup," in which Beaver gets stuck in a giant cup on an advertising sign.]
Iorio: How did that evolve? What about your part in that?
Abbott: We were sitting around talking. I had just come back from New York and was talking about Times Square. And [writers] Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher had also been in New York. And we were talking about the sights. And there was an actual billboard in Times Square -- I think it was a soup cup or a bowl or something with heat coming out of it. And Bob and Joe said, "Let's put Beaver up in one of those cups." It was their idea, based on our kicking around stories about New York City. And that's how it happened.
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Iorio: You started directing [Leave It to Beaver] in '60, '61?
Abbott: Some time in there. I was working at ABC as a stage manager and my first show was Bachelor Father with John Forsythe. And from that show, at the Universal lot, I got the Leave it to Beaver job.
Iorio: So you weren't there with the CBS incarnation of the show?
Abbott: It was on ABC initially, I think. Wasn't it?
Iorio: No, actually, I think it was on CBS for one season and then was canceled by CBS.
Abbott: Yeah, that's probably right.
Iorio: For a time, you were the main director, though Norman Tokar --
Abbott: Norman Tokar was the one. Norman Tokar was responsible, really, for the success of the show. The writing was very good. Connelly and Moser did most of the writing. They hired Norman Tokar, who set the style of the show, he was a very gifted director and worked for Disney for many years.
Iorio: Who do you think was most responsible for the character or Eddie Haskell? Because he is the one thing, whenever you bring up the show --
Abbott: I don't know where the character came from... There was no antagonist on the show -- ever. Everyone was a protagonist. No bad guys. And Eddie kind of fit that picture [of an antagonist] a little bit. He was abrasive, he was someone you could bounce off of. And good writing comes from that kind of an attitude.
Iorio: Did you ever think of basing a spin-off show around Eddie Haskell, like Eddie and the Gang?
Abbott: No, I don't recall any talk of doing a spin off with Eddie, because Beaver was too important to Bob and Joe.
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Iorio: The show was obviously done on a back lot.
Abbott: Yes
Iorio: But my research says there's a house at 1727 Buckingham Road in L.A. that apparently the facade is based on. Was it ever filmed on site?
Abbott: I doubt it very much. The Beaver house was on the back lot. And on a three-day schedule, which is all we had, we had a day of rehearsal, we had a three-day shoot, and time was always of the essence because the boys had to be in school. We would never go off the lot to shoot. Once in a great while, maybe. But, generally, everything had to be done in that three-day period. Because [the child actors] had to have five hours of school everyday. And we only had an eight or ten-hour day to shoot.
Iorio: Everybody always mention how well-crafted the show was. But everybody also mentions that the series had an idealized portrait of suburbia, never a hair out of place --
Abbott: All of that can be attributed to Joe Connelly. Joe came from an Irish-Catholic family and he attributed the good life to his lifestyle. And [Barbara Billingsley's character] was always the epitome of what every mother should be, as far as Joe was concerned. And that in turn cast the perfect husband, understanding to the children. And while we never did anything religious on the show, Joe was staunch in that area.
Iorio: What did you do after Leave It to Beaver?
Abbott: We went on to do [The Munsters]. There were two writers who worked for us, Norm Liebman and Ed Haas. They worked for Joe and Bob. And Ed Haas was an artist in his heart and would take the trade papers every day and [jokingly] re-do whatever picture was on [the cover]. He would erase the face and put a new one on. That sort of thing.
One day there was a Frankenstein picture in the paper and he redid it with a smile on Frankenstein's face. And -- I remember the day so well -- that's how The Munsters started.
He then took the picture to Joe and Bob and said, "Look at this funny thing I did." With no idea they would say, "Hey, that's a good idea for a pilot!" But that's how the Munsters pilot started. Exactly as it started. We did a ten-minute presentation, we didn't even do a full pilot. And I had a friend at CBS in charge of programming. And we had two days of shooting. The second day, you couldn't get near the soundstage. Everybody on the lot came down to see what we were doing. And I called my friend at CBS and said, "I don't know what the hell this is, but, my god, you can't get near the place, you'd better send for the film once we finish it." And he did. And it went on the air.
Iorio: The Addams Family --
Abbott: That came afterwards.
Iorio: Who was in production first?
Abbott: We were.
Iorio: Did you ever think of doing Leave It to Beaver as a feature film?
Abbott: No, never entered my mind. At that time, not many television shows were being done as features.
Iorio: Are you surprised at the durability of these shows (you were involved with]?
Abbott: Well, no, I'm not. My wife and I were discussing what garbage there is currently on television... And here comes material from the past that was strong... That's why the revival has happened.