June Lockhart: Beloved actress known to millions who starred in Lassie and Lost in Space dies aged 100
June Lockhart, the “TV mom” known to millions, has died of natural causes at her home in Santa Monica aged 100.
Her death was announced by a spokesman, Harlan Boll, on Saturday. “She was very happy up until the very end, reading the New York Times and LA Times every day,” he said. “It was very important to her to stay focused on the news of the day.”
Lockhart died Thursday with her daughter, June Elizabeth, and her granddaughter, Christianna, by her side, People magazine reported. The daughter of prolific character actor Gene Lockhart, Lockhart was cast frequently in ingenue roles as a young film actor. Television made her a star.
From 1958 to 1964, she portrayed Ruth Martin, who raised the orphaned Timmy (Jon Provost), in the popular CBS series Lassie. From 1965 to 1968, she traveled aboard the spaceship Jupiter II as mother to the Robinson family in the campy CBS adventure Lost in Space.
Offscreen, Lockhart insisted, she was nothing like the women she portrayed. “I must quote Dan Rather,” she said in a 1994 interview. “I can control my reputation, but not my image, because my image is how you see me.
“I love rock ‘n’ roll and going to the concerts. I have driven Army tanks and flown in hot air balloons. And I go plane-gliding — the ones with no motors. I do a lot of things that don’t go with my image.”
Early in her career, Lockhart appeared in numerous films. Among them: All This and Heaven Too, Adam Had Four Sons, Sergeant York, Miss Annie Rooney, Forever and a Day and Meet Me in St. Louis. She also made Son of Lassie, the 1945 sequel to Lassie, Come Home, playing the grown-up version of the role created by Elizabeth Taylor.
She was married and divorced twice: to John Maloney, a physician, father of her daughters Anne Kathleen and June Elizabeth; and architect John C. Lindsay.