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Barbara Billingsley, Who Played June Cleaver (and Later Spoke Jive), Is Dead
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Jerry Mathers, Barbara Billingsley and Tony Dow at a a celebration of the 50th anniversary of “Leave It To Beaver” in 2007.Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press Jerry Mathers, Barbara Billingsley and Tony Dow at a a celebration of the 50th anniversary of “Leave It To Beaver” in 2007.
Barbara Billingsley, television’s June Cleaver, died Saturday morning at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 94. In Ms. Billingsley’s obituary, posted on The Times’s Web site, Michael Pollak writes:
From 1957 to 1963 and in decades of reruns, the glamorous June, who wore pearls and high heels at home, could be counted on to help her husband, Ward (Hugh Beaumont), get their son Theodore, better known as Beaver (Jerry Mathers), and his older brother, Wally (Tony Dow), extricated from innumerable minor jams, from an alligator in the basement to a horse in the garage.
… The real Barbara Billingsley, who had nothing but respect for June Cleaver, was a former model and career actress who was married three times and spent part of her career as a working single mother (of two boys, at that).
Yes, she acknowledged 40 years later, her role was an idealized reflection of the times. “We were the ideal parents because that’s the way he saw it,” she said, describing the show as the world seen through the eyes of a child. (The pearls, incidentally, were there to cover up a hollow in her neck. In the beginning she wore flats; the heels were an attempt to stay taller than the growing boys.)
After the show went off the air, Ms. Billingsley, by then thoroughly typecast as June, saw few acting roles and concentrated on her family. Her career was revived in 1980 by the movie comedy “Airplane!” Pollack writes that she played “a sweet passenger who communicates in “jive” with two streetwise black passengers — an ironic comment on her previous incarnation as America’s white-bread mom.”
Jerry Mathers, Barbara Billingsley and Tony Dow at a a celebration of the 50th anniversary of “Leave It To Beaver” in 2007.Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press Jerry Mathers, Barbara Billingsley and Tony Dow at a a celebration of the 50th anniversary of “Leave It To Beaver” in 2007.
Barbara Billingsley, television’s June Cleaver, died Saturday morning at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 94. In Ms. Billingsley’s obituary, posted on The Times’s Web site, Michael Pollak writes:
From 1957 to 1963 and in decades of reruns, the glamorous June, who wore pearls and high heels at home, could be counted on to help her husband, Ward (Hugh Beaumont), get their son Theodore, better known as Beaver (Jerry Mathers), and his older brother, Wally (Tony Dow), extricated from innumerable minor jams, from an alligator in the basement to a horse in the garage.
… The real Barbara Billingsley, who had nothing but respect for June Cleaver, was a former model and career actress who was married three times and spent part of her career as a working single mother (of two boys, at that).
Yes, she acknowledged 40 years later, her role was an idealized reflection of the times. “We were the ideal parents because that’s the way he saw it,” she said, describing the show as the world seen through the eyes of a child. (The pearls, incidentally, were there to cover up a hollow in her neck. In the beginning she wore flats; the heels were an attempt to stay taller than the growing boys.)
After the show went off the air, Ms. Billingsley, by then thoroughly typecast as June, saw few acting roles and concentrated on her family. Her career was revived in 1980 by the movie comedy “Airplane!” Pollack writes that she played “a sweet passenger who communicates in “jive” with two streetwise black passengers — an ironic comment on her previous incarnation as America’s white-bread mom.”
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Leave It To Beaver Mom Dead. (Read 1,360 times)
