LOS ANGELES — Barbara Billingsley, who gained supermom status for her portrayal of June Cleaver, the warm, supportive mother of a pair of precocious boys in “Leave It to Beaver,” died Saturday. She was 94.
Billingsley, who had suffered from a rheumatoid disease, died at her home in Santa Monica, said family spokeswoman Judy Twersky.
When the show debuted in 1957, Jerry Mathers, who played Beaver, was 9, and Tony Dow, who portrayed Wally, was 12. Billingsley’s character, the perfect stay-at-home 1950s mom, was always there to gently but firmly nurture them through the ups and downs of childhood.
Billingsley’s own two sons said she was pretty much the image of June Cleaver in real life, although the actress disagreed.
“She was every bit as nurturing, classy and lovely as June Cleaver, and we were so proud to share her with the world,” said her son Glenn Billingsley on Saturday.
Billingsley did acknowledge that she might have become more like June as the series progressed. “I think what happens is that the writers start writing about you as well as the character they created,” she once said. “So you become sort of all mixed up.”
After “Leave It to Beaver” left the air in 1963, Billingsley largely disappeared from public view for several years. She resurfaced in 1980 in a hilarious cameo in “Airplane!” — playing a demur elderly passenger not unlike June Cleaver.
When flight attendants were unable to communicate with a pair of jive-talking hipsters, Billingsley’s character volunteered to translate, saying, “I speak jive.” The three then engage in a raucous street-slang conversation.
“No chance they would have cast me for that if I hadn’t been June Cleaver,” she once said.
