June Lockhart

Most sitcom moms, way-back-when, dealt with their child’s problems.

One dealt with more than that. She dealt with a dog and with a robot. And someone else’s three daughters.

That was June Lockhart.

She took a back seat on screen in the late ‘50s to Lassie. And when Lost in Space came along in the mid-‘60s, she took a back seat again to a scene-stealer who turned a space adventure series into camp comedy, with a sidekick robot and a reality-anchor boy whose performances made you appreciate what a good actor he was.

Then when Petticoat Junction star Bea Benaderet died, Lockhart was parachuted into the show opposite Benaderet’s three 20-something daughters. Despite her pleasant, smiling style, Lockhart didn’t quite fit in for me. The show had built a whole community of characters over a number of seasons and she hadn’t been among them; she was a sudden outsider to some viewers.

Instead of a mom, at one time Lockhart was known as a daughter, being the off-spring of actors Gene and Kathleen Lockhart. She worked in films and on the stage as a girl—even winning a Tony—but, the power of television being what it is, became known through a collie that also had a venerable film career.

Here’s an article from the Times-Mirror Syndicate that appeared in papers starting July 7, 1959. Lockhart was quite happy not dealing with stardom but she wanted more of the star’s camera time. The second line proved somewhat prophetic, given her career path.

Actress June Lockhart Loves That ‘Lassie’ Show
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD. — June Lockhart wishes people would stop feeling sorry for her. Since she took over the TV role of foster mother to Jon Provost and Lassie, many of June’s friends and fans treat her as if she had volunteered to be the first woman shot into space.
“Why did you do it, June” they wail, solicitously. “Think what it can do to your career!”
These well-wishers don’t understand that her career is precisely what June had in mind when she joined the “Lassie” cast last year. (CBS-TV and Ch. 4 at 6 p.m. Sundays.)
“Everyone seems to be concerned over my missing ‘better things.’ My answer to that is, what are those better things?
“I’ve been a freelance actress and waited for the right script. They don’t come along very often, and being unemployed at the end of each one can be pretty dull,” says June.
Last March, during the seasonal recess between “Lassie” shootings, June went back to New York and appeared with Tom Ewell in “Square Egghead,” a very entertaining comedy on the “U.S. Steel Hour.” She not only luxuriated in a “whole week” of rehearsal but found herself the envy of every unemployed actress in Manhattan because she had a steady job.
STEADY WORK
“Steady work, a certain amount of creative satisfaction and dignity are the things an actor wants most, and I have found all three with ‘Lassie’”, June insists. Jack Wrather, the Texas oil and TV tycoon who planked out $3.5 million for the “Lassie” show three years ago, wanted June to play the boy's mother when Jan Clayton left two years ago, but June was having personal troubles which climaxed in a divorce. She didn't want to further complicate her life at that time with a TV role which demands that the actress’ private life be at least 99 per cent pure.
June got another crack at it when Jan Clayton's successor, Cloris Leachman, became disenchanted with the part and left “Lassie” after a season.
MOVIE ROLE
Wrather didn't have to introduce June to Lassie. In 1944 she was the ingenue opposite the canine in MGM's “Son of Lassie.” The original dog, incidentally, died last year at the ripe old age of 19. June's debut in the TV series this past season left her with little to do except stand in the background with a benign smile and less dialogue than the writers gave Lassie.
“I think you'll see an improvement next season,” says June. “Jack Wrather’s wife, Bonita Granville, will be the associate producer. She has looked at all of the ‘Lassie’ films from the beginning and wants to make it more gutsy. Hugh Reilly and I will shout at each other once in a while.”
Actually, the whole series can stand considerable beefing up. During the first two seasons producer-owner Robert Maxwell injected some real life problems into the lives of the characters, and there were entertaining episodes dealing with such things as racial tolerance and a boy's growing up pains.
After Wrather took over, things seemed to decline into the familiar, simpering boy-loves-his-dog situations.
STAY FOREVER
Next month June Lockhart will have a meatier part when she attends two Campbell Soup (her sponsor) sales conventions in Chicago and New Orleans and delivers herself of a speech on both occasions.
She was married to architect John C. Lindsay in April and with her two daughters (Anne, 5, and June 3) they live in the swank Brentwood home recently purchased from Dore Schary.
“It's very flattering to have people worrying about my career, but really I'm happy just the way I am," June re-emphasizes. “I never had that drive to be famous anyway. If I were doing ‘The June Lockhart Show,’ think of the responsibility I’d have. This way, I just do the job, take my money and go home—and, if Lassie will forever.”

Lockhart and Lassie left each other in 1964 and the following year we find her blasting off for three seasons on the Jupiter Two. Well, almost three seasons. Lockhart was suspended and didn’t appear on the last two episodes because she kept cracking up while filming a ridiculous show about alien vegetable people. Afterward she changed her mode of transport from space ship to steam train to Hooterville for two more years on the small screen.

It seems actors don’t like to be typecast once they get regular roles and by the ‘70s, June Lockhart appears to have chafed at being a benign, nice character. Here’s a syndicated feature story from July 17, 1971, cobbled together from several papers.

June Lockhart Tired Of Sweet Image
By MIMI MEAD
NEW YORK—Out of the bog of whipped cream and sugar that has enveloped her most of her acting life comes June Lockhart, ribs up, eyes shining, hair down, her enthusiasm as bright as any kid's, her conversation as salty as any old trouper’s.
June Lockhart “Lost in Space,” being Lassie's mother or practicing medicine in “Petticoat Junction,” is a far cry from June Lockhart off-camera. She is sick to death of the sweet and wholesome image, is the unofficial den mother for the Los Angeles company of "Hair," and happily embraces the outlook of “Hair,” and happily embraces the outlook of the more liberated young of this decade.
She is not, however, one of those dreary women who stalk about braless and hair-ribboned, less eager to genuinely embrace a new philosophy than eager to “pass” among the under-thirties. She is a cheerful, practical outgoing woman, a true professional in her work and a sensible kook in her private life.
She will be seen next Saturday (July 24) as hostess for CBS’ “Miss Universe Beauty Pageant” at 10 p.m. She performed the same function for the “Miss U.S.A. Beauty Pageant” (held this year on May 22 and won by Michele McDonald, 18, of Butler; Pa.), and it is her fifth year on the job. Bob Barker is co-host.
“In the six years I've done it I've never been on the air in the same shot with Bob Barker, not to talk to him,” she said smiling. “In fact, the Rose Bowl of '69 was the first time we've ever been on a show together.
LITTLE MINGLING
“I don't really have much to do with the girls themselves, you know. The girls I work with most are the girls who are giving up their crowns, last year's Miss U.S.A. and Miss Universe.”
Although her participation requires her to assume once more the peaches-and-cream-stately image, June said with a shrug, “I rather like it. The girls are very cordial. The Miss Universe girls seem to be more opinionated and better able to express themselves than the Miss America girls, which is nice. As a matter of fact, I heard they're going to encourage the girls to speak out even more this year.
“I know all about image,” said June with a giggle. “When I was on the Lassie show, I heard a great deal about how to conform to an image. I remember Dan Jenkins of TV Guide did an article on me in 1961 or so, the most marvelous article, and the sponsor almost didn’t get over it.”
Jenkins, who says he had gone to interview June thinking she was an awful-stuffed shirt and discovered she was a “delightful nut,” wrote the article in the form of an expense account memo in which he related that his first meeting with Miss Lockhart was in the Brown Derby and she was so eager to get downtown to nose around a sensation murder trial, that she ordered a jigger of scotch and left it half unused.
TEMPERANCE LECTURE
“Well, that scotch just about did for them,” June recalled. “They lectured me at Campbell Soup for one hour and 45 minutes about the image and concept of Lassie’s mother. Lassie’s mother doesn’t drink, and if she did she wouldn’t tell TV Guide. They harangued and each one took a turn at me. So finally I said, ‘Well, gentlemen, I made a mistake. Hasn’t any of you ever made a mistake?” And that started them off again.
“When Bonita Granville (‘Lassie’s’ producer) heard about it she was furious, and I must say I wouldn’t put up with that sort of thing today. But in those days I wasn't so sure of myself. Really! You would have thought I’d done something really inflammatory, like run naked through the park or something.”
And then, in a typical Lockhart departure, she illustrated with word and gesture some of the ways past Miss Universe candidates had expressed their inner selves, as well as some of the more intimate physical problems of being a beauty pageant entrant, to the edification of an apparently imperturbable waiter who revealed his genuine interest in the conversation when, he poured the tonic in the glass and the gin into the ice bucket.
June was in New York ostensibly to do promotion for the pageants but primarily it would appear to enjoy herself. She saw 14 Broadway shows in nine days, went shopping, went sightseeing and had a generally good time, accompanied by Bob Corff, an attractive young actor in his mid-20s with whom she was sharing her suite.
Corff played Claude in the Los Angeles production of Hair, and was assigned to escort June during the 1969 Peace Moratorium performances, and when pressed to explain their current relationship she smiles and said, “It isn't exactly romantic. Bob is a dear.” The one thing that does seem certain is that he is definitely not a beau of either of her two daughters, Anne Kathleen and June Elizabeth.
IN THE FAMILY
June Lockhart is a third-generation performer, the granddaughter of concert singer John Coates Lockhart and the daughter of movie actor Gene Lockhart. (Her daughter Anne, 17, with whom June taped a “Dating Game” show this spring, has signed with WilliamMorris agency to become a fourth-generation actress in the family.)
June made her debut at the age of 8 in the Metropolitan Opera production of “Peter Ibbetson.” She appeared in small movie roles while still in school, including “All This and Heaven, Too,” and “Sergeant York,” but her career started with a contract with MGM under which she made “White Cliffs of Dover,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “The Yearling” and—prophetically—“Son of Lassie.”

In 1947 she appeared on Broadway in “For Love or Money,” for which she won the Donaldson Award, the Theater World Award, the Tony award and was named the AP Woman of the Year in Drama. Brooks Atkinson said, “She is enchanting and should be kept . . . from returning to Hollywood.”
“I like it all, all kinds of media,” she said happily, “as long as I am working. I really do enjoy my work very much. I sympathize with those millions who go to work every day hating what they do. What I want now, though, is to get back to what I was doing because I was Lassie’s mother,” she added wryly. “I used to play nymphos, drunks, crazy ladies, everything.
“My favorite of all was once on ‘Gunsmoke,’ when I was the whole thing, with breasts hanging out and the bottle and everything. I was an alcoholic, nymphomaniac murderess who was retarded and had a 12-year-old mind. But she was sorry afterward which made it all right.”
As far as the stage goes, “I’m thinking about it more and more,” June said. “I would like to do a play if I don't have to go through the agony of that out-of-town tryout and rehearsal period. Replacing someone would be lovely, when all the dirty work is done,”—a remark, incidentally, that is sensible and practical and absolute heresy to the average stage star who wants to “create” a role herself.
One of her great enthusiasms, as stated, is for Hair. “I was a Hairophile. I had seen the show three or four times, and I called to see if I could participate in one of their Moratorium performances and I went to Washington to show middle America that someone over 20 cared about the war in Vietnam.
After that I've done several things with them. I arranged for them to play Chino Women’s Prison, for instance, which hadn’t had a professional performance in 10 years. And on a more personal level, a couple of the kids were picked up by the police for marijuana and I vouched for them.”
She also acted as unofficial advance man for the show in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and was then hired to do advance work for it in Minneapolis.
DOES HER OWN THING
Lockhart gives very much the impression not of “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” but of doing your own thing. Twice divorced, she lives with her daughters Anne, 17, and June, 15, and there is obviously very little generation gap.
“They're a kick,” said June. “We really do have the jollies together. I’m a very permissive parent, really. I figure they're going to be adults much longer than they’re going to be children, so we might as well expose them. And they haven’t become jaded.
“But there are several ways of exposing them. Even though Annie and Junie have been raised in and out of the atmosphere of show business, their appreciation of good films, good theatre, good music is very high. They love the symphony, for instance, and Zubin Mehta (conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra)—Zubie baby, as we call him—is one of their favorites.
“Of course, when I became the den mother of the Hair company, I really made marks,” said June Lockhart delightedly.

Lockhart continued to appear on TV—sometimes in recurring roles—and heard, as well. In 1993, she called up Bob Camp and said she was a big fan of Ren and Stimpy. Camp found a place for her.

If she wanted to cast in a show far from her “type,” she found it. Ren Hoek is no Lassie.