‘Leave It to Beaver’ Inspired This ‘Simpsons’ Character
As hard as it may be to believe today, The Simpsons was considered quite edgy when it first premiered in 1989 — so much so that some schools famously banned students from wearing T-shirts that depicted Bart Simpson casually using the H-word or dropping bovine-based slang terms.
But while it may have rattled conservative viewers at the time, The Simpsons — specifically the character of Bart — was directly inspired by perhaps the squeaky-cleanest sitcom of all-time: Leave It to Beaver.
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Apart from Ward and June Cleaver’s regrettably suggestive nickname for their youngest child, Leave It to Beaver was a family friendly, highly sanitized view of 1950s American life in the suburbs. The show had to battle tooth and nail with network censors just to show a toilet on screen. And it was only for a shot of an alligator in the bowl, it wasn’t like Wally dropped a deuce or anything.
Simpsons creator Matt Groening has often cited the classic sitcoms he grew up with as key influences on the show. For example, Father Knows Best literally took place in a town named “Springfield.” But the original Springfield presumably had no perpetually burning tire fires or escalators to nowhere.
When he first watched Leave It to Beaver, Groening was reportedly less interested in the two Cleaver brothers than he was in Wally’s piece of shit best friend Eddie Haskell. Eddie was annoying, cruel, unscrupulous and probably would have become Mayfield’s first serial killer if the show hadn’t ended.
In an interview for the 1999 TV documentary Influences: From Yesterday to Today, per MeTV, Groening recalled that, as a child, he was disappointed by the TV version of Dennis the Menace. Despite the title, Groening found the alleged menace to be “very, very mild.” And while Beaver Cleaver was kind of a wimp, Groening recalled that “the character I really liked on Leave It to Beaver was Eddie Haskell.”
“He was the bad kid. He got away with stuff, and I really liked that,” Groening explained. “I thought, ‘Eddie Haskell should have his own show. And when I grow up, I’m gonna do my own show, and it’s gonna star Eddie Haskell,’ or a version thereof. Hence Bart Simpson.”
Oddly enough, the character of Eddie Haskell shares another Simpsons connection: He was very nearly played by future cast member Harry Shearer. As a child actor, Shearer actually landed the role of Haskell for the Leave It to Beaver pilot. But when the show was picked up, Shearer’s parents didn’t want to pull him out of public school, forcing the producers to recast the part with actor Ken Osmond.
Maybe in some alternate timeline Shearer played Eddie Haskell and Osmond voiced Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns and Hugh Jass.
