Mike’s Beaumont is one of my favorite reoccurring characters. From what I remember, some time passed between both of Mike’s Beaumont bit but I’m glad they kept the continuity going. Watching one after the other is a logical progression (not to mention hilarious).
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2 years in between skits.
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Hugh Beaumont in Mexican Spitfire’s Blessed Event (1943).
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Beaumont in The Seventh Victim (1943).
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Beaumont in Night Passage (1957).
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I’m just gonna say it. I like Hugh Beaumont! I grew up watching reruns of Leave it to Beaver. Hugh was America’s dad 1950’s style! He was also an ordained minister, which is why he stopped playing bad guys around the same time. A true " nice guy" he was the epitome of the kind, patient, father figure. Loved him in The Mole People! He was way less annoying than John Agar!
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Beaumont is like oatmeal in his characterizations. He tastes good and keeps you regular. He never upends the apple cart and holds things together when he’s in frame. The sole time I thought he lacked this was in The Human Duplicators (1965).
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Beaumont in Wild Stallion (1952).
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And possibly in Lost Continent in that scene where Sid Melton lost his pants on camera.
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@optiMSTie What was the draw of making Hugh Beaumont a skit character? Was it just his Leave It to Beaver fame? Mixed with his appearance in those episodes?
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In that initial appearance in Lost Continent, I think part of it was in the novelty of the presentation, of making it look like they put in an expensive black-and-white insert effect (which, as noted in the Episode Guide, is given away when you see Hugh light up in glorious color).
Part of it is in the appeal of revisionist jazz, of playing around with the imagery of a figure who was deeply ingrained/embedded in a part of American pop culture. Yeah, MST3K has found a way to work in guest appearances from characters who haven’t become fixtures of the pop cultural firmament (case in point, the jerk gym owner in Daddy-O), but with Beaumont, you see an individual who had a very fixed and set-in-stone place in pop culture, so you KNOW they had to play around with that.
You see that get taken up to eleventy when Hugh returns in The Human Duplicators for an angrier and more unhinged guest appearance that’s more wildly at odds with his TV persona.
And again, you see that played with more in the riffs for Season 8’s The Mole People (“June, no, not tonight, honey!” quips Crow as a mole person puts a sack over Hugh’s head).
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