{"id":104873,"date":"2025-10-26T11:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T11:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/104873\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T11:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T11:05:09","slug":"lassie-and-lost-in-space-star-june-lockhart-dies-aged-100-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/104873\/","title":{"rendered":"Lassie and Lost In Space star June Lockhart dies aged 100"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lockhart died on Thursday of natural causes at her home in Santa Monica, family spokesman Lyle Gregory, a friend of 40 years, said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was very happy up until the very end, reading the New York Times and LA Times everyday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Actress<\/p>\n

Actress June Lockhart addresses bloggers at Nasa\u2019s social media event at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California (Damian Dovarganes\/AP)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very important to her to stay focused on the news of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The daughter of prolific character actor Gene Lockhart, Lockhart was cast frequently in ingenue roles as a young film actor, but television made her a star.<\/p>\n

From 1958 to 1964, she portrayed Ruth Martin, who raised the orphaned Timmy (Jon Provost), in the popular CBS series Lassie.<\/p>\n

From 1965 to 1968, she travelled aboard the spaceship Jupiter II as mother to the Robinson family in the campy CBS adventure Lost in Space.<\/p>\n

Her portrayals of warm, compassionate mothers endeared her to young viewers, and decades later baby boomers flocked to nostalgia conventions to meet Lockhart and buy her autographed photos.<\/p>\n

Offscreen, Lockhart insisted, she was nothing like the women she portrayed.<\/p>\n

\"June<\/p>\n

June Lockhart with the crew from television series Lost in Space in Boston in 1995 (Steven Senne\/AP)<\/p>\n

\u201cI must quote Dan Rather,\u201d she said in a 1994 interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can control my reputation, but not my image, because my image is how you see me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love rock \u2018n\u2019 roll and going to the concerts. I have driven Army tanks and flown in hot air balloons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I go plane-gliding \u2014 the ones with no motors. I do a lot of things that don\u2019t go with my image.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early in her career, Lockhart appeared in numerous films.<\/p>\n

Among them were All This and Heaven Too, Adam Had Four Sons, Sergeant York, Miss Annie Rooney, Forever and a Day and Meet Me in St Louis.<\/p>\n

\"June<\/p>\n

June Lockhart poses for a photo as she arrives for the 60th Anniversary DVD release screening of Meet Me in St Louis in Los Angeles (Nam Y Huh\/AP)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lockhart remained active long after Lost in Space, appearing often in episodic television as well as in recurring roles in the daytime soap opera General Hospital and night-time soaps, Knots Landing and The Colbys.<\/p>\n

She also used her own media pass to attend presidential news conferences, narrated beauty pageants and holiday parades, appeared in B pictures and toured in the plays Steel Magnolias, Bedroom Farce and Once More with Feeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer true passion was journalism,\u201d Mr Gregory said. \u201cShe loved going to the White House briefing rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young June made her stage debut at eight, dancing in a children\u2019s ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House.<\/p>\n

Her first film appearance was a small role in the 1938 A Christmas Carol, playing the daughter of Bob Cratchit and his wife, who were played by her parents.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Throughout her later career, Lockhart was connected in the public mind with Lassie.<\/p>\n

Even though she sometimes mocked the show, she conceded: \u201cHow wonderful that in a career there is one role for which you are known.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany actors work all their lives and never have one part that is really theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lockhart died on Thursday of natural causes at her home in Santa Monica, family spokesman Lyle Gregory, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,898],"class_list":{"0":"post-104873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-latest-news-ticker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}