Barbara Lillian Billingsley (December 22, 1915 – October 16, 2010) was an American film, television, voice and stage actress.

She gained prominence in the 1950s movie The Careless Years, acting opposite Natalie Trundy, followed by her best–known role, that of iconic 1950s mother figure June Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver (1957–63) and its sequel The New Leave It to Beaver.

Early life

Billingsley was born Barbara Lillian Combes on December 22, 1915, in Los Angeles,California, the youngest child of patrolman Robert Collyer Combes (1891–1950) and his first wife, the former Lillian Agnes McLaughlin (1891–1956). She had one elder sibling, Elizabeth (1911–1992). Her parents divorced sometime before her fourth birthday, and her father, who later became an assistant chief of police, remarried. After her divorce, Lillian Combes went to work as a foreman at a knitting mill.

Career

Early years

After attending Los Angeles Junior College for one year, Billingsley traveled to Broadway, when Straw Hat, a revue in which she was appearing, attracted enough attention to send it toNew York City. When, after five days, the show closed, she took an apartment on 57th Street and went to work as a $60–a–week fashion model. In 1941 she married Glenn Billingsley, Sr. She landed a contract with MGM Studios in 1945 and moved with her husband to Los Angeles the following year. That same year, Glenn Billingsley opened a restaurant in that city.

She had mostly uncredited roles in major motion picture productions in the 1940s. These roles continued into the first half of the 1950s with supporting roles in Three Guys Named Mike (1951), opposite Jane Wyman, The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and the sci-fi film Invaders from Mars (1953). In 1952, Billingsley had her first guest–starring role on an episode of The Abbott and Costello Show. In 1955, she won a co-starring role in the sitcom Professional Father, starring Stephen Dunne and Beverly Washburn. The series lasted one season. The following year, Billingsley had a recurring role on The Brothers (with Gale Gordon and Bob Sweeney) as well as an appearance with David Niven on his anthology series Four Star Playhouse. In 1957, she co–starred opposite Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy in The Careless Years, which was her first and only major role in film.

Billingsley also appeared in guest roles on The Pride of the Family, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Letter to Loretta, General Electric Summer Originals, You Are There, and Cavalcade of America.

Leave It to Beaver

After Billingsley signed a contract with Universal Studios in 1957, she made her mark on TV as everyday mother June Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver, alongside other 1950s family sitcoms such as Father Knows Best, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Make Room For Daddy and The Donna Reed Show. It debuted on CBS in 1957, to mediocre ratings and was soon cancelled. However, the show was picked up by ABC the following year where it became a hit and aired for the next five seasons. The show was featured in over 100 countries. Also starring on Beaver wereHugh Beaumont, in the role of Ward Cleaver, June's husband and the kids' father, as well as unfamiliar child actors Tony Dow in the role of Wally Cleaver and Jerry Mathers as Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver.

In the show, Billingsley often could be seen doing household chores wearing pearls and earrings. The pearls, which in real-life were Billingsley's trademark, were in turn her idea to have her alter ego wear on television. The actress had what she termed "a hollow" on her neck and thought that wearing a strand of white pearls would lighten it up for the cameras. In later seasons, she started wearing high heels to compensate for the fact that the actors who played her sons were growing up and getting taller than she was. So associated was the pearl necklace with the character, that an entire episode of the sequel series dealt with the necklace when lost. Billingsley had one regret about the show's lasting success: residual payments ended after six reruns in standard 1950s actors' contracts.

"She was the ideal mother," Billingsley said of her character in 1997 in TV Guide. "Some people think she was weakish, but I don't. She was the love in that family. She set a good example for what a wife could be. I had two boys at home when I did the show. I think the character became kind of like me and vice versa. I've never known where one started and where one stopped." As for the idealized TV family on Leave It to Beaver, which continues in reruns on cable more than half a century after its debut, Billingsley had her own explanation for the Cleavers' enduring appeal. "Good grief," she told TV Guide, "I think everybody would like a family like that. Wouldn't it be nice if you came home from school and there was Mom standing there with her little apron and cookies waiting?" Billingsley, however, did question her character's reactions to the Cleaver children's misbehavior, basing her concern on personal experience as the mother of two sons. As co-producer Joseph Connelly explained, "In scenes where she's mad at the boys, she's always coming over to us with the script and objecting. 'I don't see why June is so mad over what Beaver's done. I certainly wouldn't be.' As a result, many of Beaver's crimes have been rewritten into something really heinous like lying about them, in order to give his mother a strong motive for blowing her lady-like stack."[11]

After six seasons and 234 episodes, the popular series was canceled due to the cast's desire to move on to other projects, especially Mathers, who retired from acting to enter his freshman year in high school. The younger actor considered Billingsley a mentor, second mother and a close professional friend:

As I say, Barbara was always, though, a true role model for me. She was a great actress. And a lot of people, you know, when they see her talk jive talk, they always say she can do other things besides be a mom on Leave It to Beaver. And I tell them, Airplane! (1980), she's been a great comedian all her life. And in a lot of ways, just like All in the Family, we kind of stifled her, because her true talent didn't really come out in Leave it To Beaver. She was the straight woman, but she has an awful lot of talent.

After the show's cancellation, Mathers remained her close friend for more than forty-five years. They were reunited on The New Leave It to Beaver. Billingsley, Mathers, Dow, Frank Bank and Ken Osmond also celebrated the show's 50th anniversary together.

After Beaver

When production of the show ended in 1963, Billingsley had become typecast as saccharine sweet and had trouble obtaining acting jobs for years. She traveled extensively abroad until the late 1970s. After an absence of 17 years from the public eye (other than appearing in two episodes of The F.B.I. in 1971), Billingsley spoofed her wholesome image with a brief appearance in the comedy Airplane! (1980), as a passenger who could "speak jive". She stated that the role gave her as much publicity as Beaver, and revived her career. Returning to TV work, she appeared on Mork & Mindy and The Love Boat.

In 1983, she reprised her role as June Cleaver in the Leave It to Beaver reunion television movie entitled Still the Beaver in 1983. Hugh Beaumont had died the year before of a heart attack, so she played his widow. She also appeared in the subsequent revival of the series,The New Leave It to Beaver, from 1985 to 1989. During the run of The New Leave It to Beaver, Billingsley became the voice of Nanny and The Little Train on Muppet Babies from 1984 to 1991. For her performance as Nanny, she received subsequent Daytime Emmy Awardnominations for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series in 1989 and 1990.

After The New Leave It to Beaver ended its run in 1989, Billingsley appeared in guest roles on Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Empty Nest andMurphy Brown. She also reprised her role as June Cleaver in various television shows including Elvira's Movie Macabre, Amazing Stories,Baby Boom, Hi Honey, I'm Home!, and Roseanne. In 1998, she appeared on Candid Camera, along with June Lockhart and Isabel Sanford, as audience members in a spoof seminar on motherhood. Billingsley final film role was as "Aunt Martha" in the 1997 film version of Leave It to Beaver. She made her final onscreen appearance in the 2003 television movie Secret Santa.

On October 4, 2007, she and her surviving castmates, Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow, Ken Osmond and Frank Bank, were reunited on ABC's Good Morning America, to celebrate Leave It to Beaver's 50th anniversary.

Personal life

Billingsley was married three times and had two children. She married Glenn Billingsley, Sr. (1912–1984) in 1941. Glenn Billingsley was a restaurateur who was a nephew of Sherman Billingsley, the owner of the Stork Club. His businesses included Billingsley's Golden Bull, Billingsley's Bocage, and the Outrigger Polynesian restaurants in Los Angeles, and a Stork Club in Key West, Florida, where the couple lived briefly after their marriage. They had two sons, Drew and Glenn, Jr., and divorced in 1947.

In 1953, she married British-born movie director Roy Kellino. They were married until Kellino's death in 1956.[15] Billinglsley's third and final marriage was to Dr. William S. Mortensen. They married in 1959 and remained together until Mortensen's death in 1981.

Death

Billingsley died of polymyalgia at her home in Los Angeles, California, on October 16, 2010, at the age of 94. She is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.