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Barbara Billingsley, TV’s June Cleaver, Dies
Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver
She was the perfect mom for a generation of children…or at least she played the perfect mom on TV.
Barbara Billingsley, a former model and veteran actress who became best known for her role as matriarch June Cleaver on “Leave it to Beaver,” died Saturday at her home in Santa Monica, California, The New York Times reports. She was 94.
With her high heels and pearl necklace, onscreen as June Cleaver, Billingsley managed to be both glamorous and maternal. She could always be counted on to say just the right thing. She had an uncanny way of knowing when her sons were getting into trouble.
As Michael Pollack writes in her New York Times obituary, June Cleaver “personified a Hollywood postwar family ideal of the ever-sweet, ever-helpful suburban stay-at-home mom.”
Onscreen, she was a devoted wife to Ward Cleaver and a mother to Theodore a.k.a. The Beaver and Wally.
Offscreen, Billingsley who was raised by a single mother, was married three times and for a part of her career, was a single mother to her two sons.
She is survived by her sons, Glenn Jr and Drew, and four grandchildren: Logan, Morgan, Taylor, and Drew Jr, according to Famecrawler.
What do you remember best about Barbara Billingsley’s June Cleaver?
photo: flickr/Diana Biedeman
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