We always had a central committee. They were mesmerized by Eldridge Cleaver.

My parents were like June and Ward Cleaver; there was nothing dysfunctional about them.

You don't have to choose between June Cleaver or Barbara Walters. There are miles of space between them.

People stopped me on the street and said 'I can't live up to you.' Of course, they're referring to June Cleaver.

My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.

I have to tell you that June Cleaver had a job in 'The New Leave It to Beaver.' She did. Sure, she was a council woman. She went to work. She wasn't a sit-at-home grandma. She went out, got a job.

There's no point meeting somebody with a meat cleaver the moment they open their mouth - because they're going to clam up, you're going to have lost your impact and the audience is going to hate you for not allowing anyone to say anything.

Our public portrayal of fathers has shifted during my life. TV fathers have 'evolved' from real people like Sheriff Andy Taylor, Beaver's dad Ward Cleaver and Heathcliff 'Cliff' Huxtable, to cartoon dads like Homer Simpson and Seth MacFarlane's caricatures in 'American Dad!' and 'Family Guy.'

I feel that I can't do certain things that have sent to me, scripts, because I think that really - I've been June Cleaver for so many years, because we went back, you know, and we did - 20-year hiatus we had - and we went back and made 105 new ones. And so I really feel very strongly that there are certain things I won't do.

In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play.

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