Barbara Billingsley Biography

Barbara 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 June Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver (1957"1963) and its sequel Still the Beaver (1985"1988, retitled in season two as The New Leave It to Beaver).

Early life

Billingsley was born Barbara Lillian Combes in 1915 in Los Angeles, California, the youngest child of patrolman Robert Collyer Combes (1891"1950) and his first wife, the former Lillian Agnes McLaughlin. 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.

Starting out

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 to New 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. She also landed a contract with MGM Studios in 1945.

She had mostly uncredited roles in major motion picture productions in the 1940s. These roles continued into the first half of the 1950s with The Bad and the Beautiful, Three Guys Named Mike, opposite Jane Wyman, as well as the sci-fi story Invaders from Mars (1953). Her film experience led to roles on the sitcoms Professional Father (with Stephen Dunne and Beverly Washburn) and 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 guest starred in the episode "That Magazine" of the CBS sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve, starring Howard Duff and Ida Lupino. She co"starred opposite Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy in The Careless Years, which was her first and only major role in film.

In 1952 Billingsley had her first guest"starring role on an episode of The Abbott and Costello Show. The part led to other roles on The Lone Wolf (1954), two episodes of City Detective, 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 moved to ABC the following year and stayed there for the next five seasons. The show was featured in over 100 countries. Also starring on Beaver were Hugh Beaumont, in the role of Ward Cleaver, June's husband and the kids' father, as well as 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."

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:

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 The Love Boat, Silver Spoons, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Mike Hammer, and Empty Nest, among many others. She reprised her June Cleaver role three times, in Amazing Stories, Baby Boom and Roseanne.

She 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 Award nominations for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series in 1989 and 1990. Billingsley appeared with Robin Williams and Pam Dawber in a 1982 episode of Mork & Mindy. She appeared in a 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 (1985"1989). In the 1997 film version of Leave It to Beaver, Billingsley played the character "Aunt Martha". In 1995, she appeared with other "TV Moms" on Roseanne. In 1998, she appeared on Candid Camera, along with June Lockhart and Isabel Sanford, as audience members in a spoof seminar on motherhood.

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. According to interviewer Tom Bergeron, both of Billingsley's co-stars, Mathers and Osmond, were currently getting financial advice from another co-star, Bank.

On May 6, 2008, hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, she was unable to attend the Academy Leonard Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood, California, where the Academy of Television Arts & Science presented "A Salute to TV Moms."

Personal life

Billingsley was married to:

• Glenn Billingsley, Sr. (1912"1984), a restaurateur who was a nephew of Sherman Billingsley, the owner of the Stork Club. Her husband's 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 in 1941 (divorced 1947). They had two sons, Drew and Glenn, Jr., who now own and operate Billingsley's Steak House in West Los Angeles, California, which was formerly their father's original Golden Bull restaurant. By this marriage, the actress was related to actor/producer Peter Billingsley.
• Roy Kellino (1912"1956), a British-born movie director who had previously been married to British actress Pamela Mason. He and Billingsley were married from 1953 until his death.
• Dr. William S. Mortensen (1907"1981), whom she married in 1959. By this marriage, she had stepchildren; the oldest was William Mortensen, Jr., retired Chairman of the Board of old First Federal of Santa Monica

Hobbies

Her hobbies included gardening, dining, watching movies, listening to radio, tennis, drinking wine, spending time with her family, sewing and traveling.

Death

Billingsley died of polymyalgia at her home in Santa Monica, California, on October 16, 2010, at the age of 94. She was survived by her 2 sons Drew and Glenn and a stepson William, 16 grandchildren, and 23 great-grandchildren. She is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.

Filmography

Film

• DuBarry Was a Lady (1943) unbilled showgirl
• Up Goes Maisie (1946) unbilled
• The Arnelo Affair (1947)
• The Argyle Secrets (1948)
• Valiant Hombre (1948)
• Prejudice (1949)
• I Cheated the Law (1949)
• Caught (1949) unbilled
• Air Hostess (1949)
• Shadow on the Wall (1950)
• Dial 1119 (1950)
• Trial Without Jury (1950)
• Pretty Baby (1950)
• Three Guys Named Mike (1951)
• Inside Straight (1951)
• Angels in the Outfield (1951) (uncredited)
• Two-Dollar Bettor (1951)
• The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) (uncredited)
• Young Man with Ideas (1952)
• Woman in the Dark (1952)
• The Lady Wants Mink (1953)
• The Careless Years (1957)
• Airplane! (1980)
• Still the Beaver (1983) (TV)
• Back to the Beach (1987)
• Bay Coven (1987) (TV)
• Leave It to Beaver (1997)
• Secret Santa (2003) (TV)

Television

• Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (1953"1955)
• City Detective, two episodes:
  • "The Corpse on the Carousel" (1953)
  • "The Glass Thumb" (1954)
• Four Star Playhouse (1953"1955)
• The Brothers (1956)
• Make Room for Daddy (1957)
• Leave It to Beaver (1957"1963)
• The F.B.I. (1971)
• Mork and Mindy (1982)
• Amazing Stories (1985)
• Jim Henson's Muppet Babies (1984"1990)
• The New Leave It to Beaver (1985"1989)
• Parker Lewis Can't Lose (1991)
• Roseanne (1995)
• Mysterious Ways (2000)
• My Name Is Earl (2007)