4 hours ago
6
June Lockhart, who has died aged 100, started her career in films, but made her name after switching almost exclusively to television. Having been given little chance to scintillate in the movies from her debut as a child in 1938 until 1947, she shone on the small screen in scores of popular series, above all in Lassie.
Taking over from Cloris Leachman in 1958, Lockhart continued in the show until 1964. She played Ruth Martin, married to the farmer Paul Martin (Hugh Reilly), and the adoptive mother of seven-year-old Timmy Martin (Jon Provost), whose collie was the titular hero of the series.
In her role as a housewife, Lockhart somehow managed to avoid being completely upstaged by the clever canine. She described the show as “a fairy tale about people on a farm in which the dog solves all the problems in 22 minutes, in time for the last commercial”. After she left the show, Lockhart commented: “In six sexless years of playing a country wife and mother, I was hardly ever allowed to kiss Hugh Reilly on the cheek.”
Lockhart went straight into another hit, Lost in Space (1965-68), a semi-spoof sci-fi series aimed mostly at children and inspired by The Swiss Family Robinson, the 19th-century novel by Johann David Wyss. Lockhart and Guy Williams portrayed Maureen and John Robinson, two scientists exploring alien planets. Lockhart had to spend most of her time deftly trying to survive special effects. As the series continued, the narrative became less and less about this Swiss Family Robertson in space and more about the Robertsons’ young son (Billy Mumy) and his friendship with a robot, and the cowardly villain Dr Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris).
Lockhart’s feature film debut, at the age of 13, had come as Belinda Cratchit in A Christmas Carol (1938). In the roles of her parents, Bob and Mrs Cratchit, were her actual parents, Gene and Kathleen Lockhart. As British-born Kathleen (nee Arthur) and Canadian-born Gene were both actors in dozens of films, as well as on stage, it was almost inevitable that June, who was born in New York, would enter show business.
Her first stage appearance, at the age of six, came in a non-singing role in Deems Taylor’s opera Peter Ibbetson at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1931).
When her father was offered a contract by the RKO motion picture studio, after his success on Broadway in Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! (1933), she moved with her parents to Hollywood, where Gene made around 300 films. After attending school in Beverly Hills, June began her career in films, mostly in small roles in prestigious pictures such as Sergeant York (1941), The White Cliffs of Dover (1942) and Meet Me in St Louis (1944). In the latter, she is charming as a New Yorker at the Smith family’s house party, whose dance card is filled by Judy Garland spitefully to prevent Lockhart dancing with her brother.
More significantly, although she did not know it at the time, was Son of Lassie (1945). It was one of several sequels to the hugely successful Lassie Come Home (1943), in which Elizabeth Taylor had played the girl, Priscilla, who helps the dog to escape back to the family who had had to sell her. In the later film, Lockhart played the now grown-up Priscilla.
The affectionate way in which she handled both Lassie and her son, Laddie, hero of a wartime adventure in Nazi-occupied Norway, was in the minds of the producers when it came to casting the Lassie TV series 13 years later.
Although she was given leading roles in two thrillers, She-Wolf of London (1946) and Bury Me Dead (1947), Lockhart decided her movie career was getting her nowhere and that television would be the answer. Before going in a new direction, she won acclaim on Broadway in For Love or Money (1947), a comedy by F Hugh Herbert, for which she won a Tony award as best newcomer.
A further substantial run came with Petticoat Junction (1968-70), set in a country hotel, where Lockhart is a doctor and mother figure. She also featured regularly in TV westerns in the 50s, such as Have Gun Will Travel, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, and Rawhide. Her busy workload continued for the following five decades, with a recurring role in General Hospital between 1984 and 1998. Among her many one-off appearances were as herself in a 1988 episode of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, where the talkshow host, finds a stray collie, and in Roseanne in 1995 as the mother of the restaurant manager Leon.
Her final TV credit came in 2021 as the voice of Alpha Control in an episode of Netflix’s remake of Lost in Space. In the big screen version starring William Hurt and Mimi Rogers (1998), she had a holographic cameo as Will’s school principal. She took pleasure in learning how much of an inspiration the original series had been to future Nasa astronauts, and often attended the organisation’s launches and other events. In 2013 her work as a volunteer spokesperson brought her its Exceptional Public Achievement Medal.
Among her few later feature films was the fantasy, Troll (1986) in which she portrayed a witch, with her own daughter, Anne Lockhart, playing her younger self.
In 1951 she married John Maloney, a doctor and former Navy physician. In addition to Anne, they had another daughter, June. That marriage ended in divorce, as did her second, to John Lindsay, an architect.
She is survived by her daughters and four grandchildren.
June Lockhart, actor, born 25 June 1925; died 23 October 2025
