Ward and June Are Together Again

Yet another cultural icon has died:  Barbara Billingsley, who is best remembered as playing June Cleaver in the 1950s-early '60s television classic, Leave It to Beaver, died today of rheumatoid disorder polymyalgia, according to her publicist.  She was 94 years old.

The role of June Cleaver was seen as an unrealistic ideal, the perfect housewife who dressed up in pearls, even when cooking or cleaning the living room.  However, there was a practical reason why Billingsley always wore pearls:  It was because she didn't like the way her neck looked without them.

From the Los Angeles Times obituary:

Born Barbara Combes in Los Angeles on Dec. 22, 1915, she and her sister grew up in a single-parent household after her parents divorced when she was an infant.

She always wanted to be an actress. She was attending Los Angeles City College when she joined the cast of "Straw Hat," a comedy that went to Broadway in late 1937. The show closed after four performances, but she "decided New York was more fun than college" and found work as a $60-a-week fashion model. She later toured with Billie Burke in a production of "Accidentally Yours."

Her marriage in the early 1940s to restaurant operator Glenn Billingsley, nephew of Stork Club owner Sherman Billingsley, produced two sons and prompted her move back to Los Angeles, where her husband managed the Mocambo nightclub.

When the marriage ended in divorce in the late '40s, Barbara Billingsley already had begun playing uncredited bit parts and small roles in a string of B movies. That continued into the '50s, when she also began landing roles on "Four Star Playhouse" and other television anthology programs.

Interesting her own childhood was hardly the "ideal."