Peerless TV mom (Lassie, Lost in Space) June Lockhart, 100, died on Oct. 23. Daughter of performers Gene and Kathleen Lockhart, she was a promising starlet (A Christmas Carol—her 1938 movie debut—All This and Heaven Too, Sergeant York, The White Cliffs of Dover, Meet Me in St. Louis) before becoming a steadily working presence on TV in the 1950s. As warm, nurturing moms Ruth Martin (Lassie) and Maureen Robinson (the wonderfully camp Lost in Space), she found small-screen immortality (she also replaced Bea Benaderet on Petticoat Junction). The seemingly ageless Lockhart continued to work steadily thereafter, in movies, series and TV-movies, most recently in a 2021 TV reboot of Lost in Space (she also appeared in the 1998 movie). Lockhart said, “I’m not really affected whether or not the phone rings asking me to do a job. When you’re working, you’re very professional and you do the work. You know your lines and you hit your marks and your collar’s clean. There is a wonderful world out there besides what you do on screen.”
I hope one of the old people TV stations runs a Lost in Space marathon, I love that show.
This one really hurts! She also played Felicia's grandmother, Mariah, in General Hospital. Jon Provost and Angela Cartwright and Marta Kristen and Billy Mumy must feel awful about her passing.