[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is8jEXY1WjI]
Barbara Billingsley, best known as Cleaver family matriarch June in Leave It to Beaver, has died at age 94. Through June Cleaver, Billngsley created one of that handful of TV characters who we’ve come to know not just as people but as symbols of the ideas and social threads of an entire generation: in her case, the notions of motherhood and the role of women in postwar America. “June Cleaver” became a shorthand for the idea of the impossibly perfect suburban housewife, and insofar as Billingsley carried out the role impeccably in pearls and heels, unflappable and perfectly coiffed, that was the unattainable ideal the show conveyed. But it’s also worth remembering that for all its focus on the kids (see TIME’s 1958 review), Leave It to Beaver was often a show about the adult business of parenting, and Billingsley always portrayed June as a sharp and capable grown-up.
Billingsley also showed off her comic sensibility for a later generation by playing off her straitlaced June Cleaver image in a famous scene from Airplane:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKfS3udCCx0]
RIP.