Billingsley was born Barbara Lillian Combes on December 22, 1915, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Lillian Agnes (née McLaughlin) and Robert Collyer Combes, a police officer.[2][3] She had one elder sibling, Elizabeth.[4] Her parents divorced sometime before her fourth birthday, and her father, who later became an assistant chief of police,[2] remarried.[5] After the divorce, Billingsley's mother began working as a foreman at a knitting mill.[6]
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 the show closed after five days, she took an apartment on 57th Street and went to work as a $60-a-week fashion model. In 1941, she married Glenn Billingsley Sr. She landed a contract with MGM Studios in 1945, and moved with her husband to Los Angeles in 1946. That same year, Glenn Billingsley opened a steakhouse there.[7]
In the show, Billingsley was often seen doing household chores wearing pearls and earrings. The pearls, which were Billingsley's trademark, were, in turn, her idea to have her alter ego wear on television. She had what she termed "a hollow" in her neck[2][8][9] 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 playing her sons were getting taller than she was.[2][9][10] The pearl necklace was so closely associated with the character that an entire episode of the sequel series dealt with the necklace when it was lost.
Billingsley had one regret about the show's lasting success: In standard actors' contracts in the 1950s, residual payments ended after six reruns—and the show, subsequently considered a classic, was syndicated for the rest of her life.[11]
Billingsley said that her character was the "ideal mother" during a 1997 interview with TV Guide. She said that some people thought June was a weak character, but that she didn'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." Billingsley explained her view on the enduring appeal of the Leave It to Beaver characters: "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?"[12]
Billingsley, however, questioned 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."[13]
After six seasons and 234 episodes, the series was canceled because of 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, a second mother, and a close professional friend:
Barbara was always, though, a true role model for me. She was a great actress. And a lot of people, you know, when they see her talk jive talk, they always say she can do other things besides be a mom on Leave It to Beaver. And I tell them Airplane! (1980); she's been a great comedienne all her life. And in a lot of ways, just like All in the Family, we kind of stifled her because her true talent didn't really come out in Leave It to Beaver. She was the straight woman, but she has an awful lot of talent.[14]
After Beaver
When production of the show ended in 1963, Billingsley had become typecast 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), she spoofed her wholesome image with a brief appearance in the comedy Airplane! (1980) as a passenger who could "speak jive." She said the role gave her as much publicity as Beaver and revived her career.[15]
Returning to TV, she appeared on episodes of Mork & Mindy and The Love Boat. In 1983 she reprised her role as June Cleaver in the Leave It to Beaver television movie titled Still the Beaver in 1983. Hugh Beaumont had died the previous year of a heart attack, so she played his widow. She also appeared in the revival of the series The New Leave It to Beaver from 1985 to 1989. During the run of The New Leave It to Beaver, Billingsley became the voice of Nanny on Muppet Babies from 1984 to 1991. For her performance as Nanny, she was nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series in 1989 and 1990.[citation needed]
After the show's cancellation in 1963, Mathers remained her close friend. They were reunited on The New Leave It to Beaver. Billingsley, Mathers, Dow, Frank Bank, and Ken Osmond celebrated the show's 50th anniversary together on Good Morning America.[citation needed]
Personal life
Billingsley was married three times and had two children. She married Glenn Billingsley Sr. in 1941, a restaurateur and a nephew of Sherman Billingsley, owner of the Stork Club. His businesses included Billingsley's Golden Bull, Billingsley's Bocage, the Outrigger Polynesian restaurants in Los Angeles, and a Stork Club in Key West, Florida, where they lived briefly after their wedding.[16] They had two sons and divorced in 1947.[17]
In 1953 she married British-born movie director Roy Kellino. Their marriage lasted three years, when in 1956 he died of a heart attack at age 44.[18][19] It was about six months later that she was handed the pilot for what would become Leave It to Beaver (then titled It's a Small World).[20] Billingsley's third and final marriage was to William S. Mortensen in 1959; they remained together until his death in 1981.[19][21]
^Combes's status as a patrolman with the Los Angeles Police Department is stated on his 1917 draft registration, accessed on ancestry.com on October 17, 2010. The website indicates that Combes was then married with two children. According to U.S. Federal Census information, Combes, like his first wife, was the child of an American father and an English mother. He was a native of Sea Cliff Village, Oyster Bay, New York; his father, Henry P. Combes (1860–1920), was a carpenter, and his mother, the former Helen Merritt (1864–1949), was a reporter. Information cited on 1900 U.S. Federal Census, accessed on ancestry.com on October 17, 2010.
^Only one sibling, Elizabeth, is cited on 1920 and 1930 U.S. Federal Censuses, accessed on ancestry.com on October 17, 2010. The birth and death dates for Elizabeth Combes (later known as Elizabeth "Betty" McLaughlin) are cited on ancestry.com.
^The 1920 U.S. Federal Census for Los Angeles, California, documents the entire Combes household, including Lillian Combes as head of household, divorced, and with two daughters, Elizabeth, age eight, and Barbara, age four. The same census states that Robert Collyer Combes, a 28-year-old divorced police officer, was living as a lodger elsewhere in the city. Ten years later the next federal census shows that Robert Collyer Combes, by then a captain in the Los Angeles police force, was living with his new wife Maria S. Combes (1903–1999) and that the couple had been married since 1925. Maria Combes's birth and death dates are listed on the Social Security Death Index, accessed on ancestry.com on October 17, 2010.
^Mother's occupation stated in the 1930 U.S. Federal Census, accessed on ancestry.com on October 17, 2010.
^Liebman, Nina C. (July 22, 2010). Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television. University of Texas Press. p. 70. ISBN978-0292786356.
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