Barbara Billingsley, who played June Cleaver, the ideal mom on the popular ’50s sitcom ‘Leave it to Beaver,’ died October 16 at her home in Santa Monica Canyon. She was 94. Billingsley’s TV image as the loving wife and mother of two boys, dressed in pearls and high heels even when she ran the vacuum cleaner, remains an emblem of the perfect homemaker in the Eisenhower era. She once explained that she wore the pearls to hide a hollow in her neck that cast an unflattering shadow. ’Leave It to Beaver’ ran from 1957 to 1963 with Hugh Beaumont as Ward, June’s mild-mannered husband; Jerry Mathers as Theodore ‘Beaver’ Cleaver, who dodged a minor catastrophe in almost every episode; and Tony Dow as Wally, his older brother and often unreliable advisor. Billingsley’s warm but ladylike demeanor as June never wavered. ‘She was the love in that family,’ Billingsley once said of her character. Over the years, she said, she grew to be more similar to her TV alter ego. ’I was June Cleaver,’ Billingsley told the Palisadian-Post in 2003, the year she was grand marshal of the town’s Fourth of July parade. ‘You bring yourself to a role like that one. The writers put some of your traits into it, too. You become the same people.’ Born Barbara Combes in Los Angeles on December 22, 1915, she attended Los Angeles City College but knew she wanted to be an actress. She joined the cast of ‘Straw Hat,’ a 1937 production that went to Broadway. When the show closed she stayed in New York and worked as a fashion model until her acting career took off. She returned to Hollywood in the 1940s, under contract at MGM. She had small roles in B movies through that decade, many of them uncredited parts. She also made guest appearances on popular television series including ‘The Danny Thomas Show’ and ‘The Loretta Young Show’ before she landed her regular role on ‘Leave It to Beaver,’ which still airs in reruns on cable TV. ’It’s so surprising,’ Billingsley told the Post in 2003. ‘When we made the show we certainly didn’t expect that to happen.’ She often heard people say that no one would look at such a show these days. But she didn’t agree. ‘They’re still looking at this one,’ she said. Billingsley, Mathers and Dow were reunited for ‘Still the Beaver,’ a series that ran from 1985 to 1989. She continued to get small roles in movies, including as the unlikely ‘jive-talking’ passenger in the zany comedy ‘Airplane!’ She told the Post that when Mother’s Day came around each year, she was often invited to speak at celebrations. Billingsley’s first marriage, to Glenn Billingsley, ended in divorce in 1947. She married Roy Kellino and after his death in 1956 she married Dr. William Mortensen. They remained married until he died in 1981. She is survived by her sons, Drew Billingsley of Granada Hills, Glenn Billingsley, Jr. (wife Karen) of Philips Ranch, stepson William Mortensen Jr. (wife Nancy) of Pacific Palisades, 16 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren. ’Our mom was truly the best mom,’ Glenn Billingsley said this week. ‘She was every bit as nurturing, classy and lovely as June Cleaver, and we were so proud to share her with the world.’
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