Barbara Billingsley, best known as June Cleaver, the pro-typical suburban mother in “Leave it to Beaver,” died Saturday. She was 94.
Billingsley starred as June Cleaver from 1957 to 1963, helping guide her husband, Ward (Hugh Beaumont), and sons Theodore, better known as Beaver (Jerry Mathers), and Wally (Tony Dow), through the difficult world of sitcom TV.
Her performance as the stoic, all knowing and all wise mother would set the standard for sitcom moms for decades.
Billingsley was in dozens of movies and TV shows in the 40s and 50s, but it was “Leave it to Beaver” that made her a lasting star. Even after the show’s ending, people forever came to know June Cleaver through reruns.
After the end of ‘Beaver’, work would be scarce for Billingsley, but she has a triumphant (and hilarious) return to fame with a small role in the spoof “Airplane!” in 1980. When flight attendants were unable to communicate with a pair of hipsters, Mrs. Billingsley’s character volunteered to translate, saying: “I speak jive.”
Billingsley would go on to work in TV and film for the next two decades.
Mrs. Billingsley’s survivors include her sons, a stepson and numerous grandchildren.