Article 1: “The Teenage Terror in the Schools”: Adult Fantasies, American Youth, and Classroom Scare Films during the Cold War

CBS premiered Leave it to Beaver on October 4, 1957, the same day that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, a small satellite that orbited the earth for just over an hour and a half. Sputnik intensified the Cold War, initiated the “Space Race,” and wrought havoc on the American psyche.

As the New York Times reported, “the Soviet announcement inevitably was a sobering one for the West, particularly in the United States. It tended to confirm the claim by Moscow six weeks ago of the first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and indicated that the U.S.S.R. was—for the moment—ahead of the U.S. in the crucial rocket race” (New York Times 1957). The Times also made short mention of Beaver Cleaver’s arrival on the national scene, but noted that the “situation comedy on adolescence” was “both too broad and artificial to be persuasive” (Gould 1957).