June Lockhart, beloved television mother, dies at 100

LOS ANGELES – June Lockhart, the soft-spoken actress who exuded earnest maternal wisdom and wistful contentment in two very different mid-20th-century television roles – in the heartwarming children’s series Lassie (1954 to 1974) and the futuristic Lost In Space (1965 to 1968) – died on Oct 23 at her home in Santa Monica, California. She was 100.

Her death was announced by spokesperson Harlan Boll.

Lockhart replaced Cloris Leachman in the role of Ruth Martin, a farm wife and the foster mother of Jon Provost’s character and his courageous collie Lassie, in 1958, at the beginning of the show’s fifth season.

After six years of dispensing homespun wisdom, Lockhart was herself replaced, along with her human co-stars, in favour of a forest ranger (Robert Bray) who would guide the show’s canine heroine through her further adventures.

In 1965, Lockhart returned to television, playing a wife, mother and interplanetary explorer turned castaway in Lost In Space.

Her TV family included a robot that seemed to announce “Danger, Will Robinson”, alerting the show’s boy hero (Bill Mumy) to extraterrestrial menace, as often as Lassie’s sensitive ears and nose alerted her to earthly emergencies.

The series, which combined an over-the-top villain (Jonathan Harris as Dr Smith) with low-budget production values, became something of a camp classic, acquiring a devoted following years after its original run.

Lockhart had known the lustre of stardom much earlier in her career. When she was 22, she made her Broadway debut in For Love Or Money (1947), a middling comedy about an actor and a pretty vagrant, and won a Tony Award for best performance by a newcomer – a category that no longer exists.

Her performance, which also won the Theater World Award, prompted The New York Times’ lead theatre critic Brooks Atkinson to describe her as “the only fresh idea in the evening” and to recommend that she “be kept under surveillance on Broadway to prevent her from returning to Hollywood” – where she had first worked almost a decade earlier.

She made her film debut at age 13, appearing uncredited in the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol. Her parents, Canada-born actor Gene Lockhart and Britain-born actress Kathleen Lockhart, played the poor but happy Mr and Mrs Bob Cratchit; she played their daughter Belinda. She first appeared onstage at age eight in a Metropolitan Opera production of Peter Ibbetson (1931).

June Lockhart was born on June 25, 1925, in Manhattan, an only child.

At first, her parents chose her acting projects for her, reportedly allowing her to participate only in particularly prestigious films. They chose well, with young June taking supporting roles in Sergeant York (1941), with Gary Cooper; All This, And Heaven Too (1940), with Bette Davis; and Meet Me In St Louis (1944), with Judy Garland. In a prescient bit of casting, she also appeared in Son Of Lassie (1945), with Peter Lawford.

But she seemed to be making her own choices by 1946, when she starred in She-Wolf Of London (1946), a horror drama in which she and Don Porter were the biggest names.

Her TV career began in 1949, when she played Amy March in a Ford Theatre Hour production of Little Women (1949).

During the 1950s, she was seen in at least three dozen television series, including anthologies like Studio One (1948), The United States Steel Hour (1953) and Playhouse 90 (1956).

After Lost In Space went off the air in 1968, Lockhart immediately signed on to join the cast of rural sitcom Petticoat Junction (1963), whose star, Bea Benaderet, had died. Playing a new doctor in town, she remained until the series ended its run two years later.

Beginning in 1984, she had a recurring role on the daytime soap opera General Hospital (1984). She continued to make guest appearances on TV series and was occasionally seen in feature films, including Strange Invaders (1983), The Big Picture (1989) and Sleep With Me (1994).

Her last screen roles were in Zombie Hamlet (2012), in which she played a southern matron who finances a strange film; The Remake (2018), a romantic comedy about actors; and the animated Bongee Bear And The Kingdom Of Rhythm (2019), as the voice of Mindy the Owl. She also provided the voice of Alpha Control in a 2021 episode of the Netflix reboot of Lost In Space (2018 to 2021).

Lockhart married Dr John Maloney, a former navy physician, in 1951, and had two daughters with him. After their divorce in 1959, she was briefly married to Mr John Lindsay, an architect. She is survived by two daughters, Ms June Elizabeth Trola and actress Anne Lockhart, and four grandchildren. NYTIMES