Mother of Wally and the Beav and wife to Ward, June Cleaver was the perfect 1950’s pearl necklaced American housewife for multiple generations of television viewers. The actress who played her, Barbara Billingsley was forever typecast as that iconic mom but she seemed to enjoy her role as elderstateswoman in the “TV Mom’s Hall of Fame” and even sent up her picture perfect persona in the spoofy film, “Airplane” when she was called upon to translate a “jive” conversations between two hip, black dudes on that doomed plane. She was awesome!
Miss Billingsley died early Saturday at her Santa Monica home of complications from rheumatoid disease.
A toast to Barbara Billingsley.
– Michael Strangeways
