By Carmenlita Castillo
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
June Kathleen Lockhart (June 25, 1925 – October 23, 2025) was an American actress, beginning a film career in the 1930s and 1940s in films such as A Christmas Carol and Meet Me in St. Louis. She appeared primarily in 1950s and 1960s television and with performances on stage and in film. She became most widely known for her work on two television series, Lassie and Lost in Space, in which she played mother roles. Lockhart also portrayed Dr. Janet Craig on the CBS television sitcom Petticoat Junction (1968–70). She was a two-time Emmy Award nominee and a Tony Award winner. With a career spanning nearly 90 years, Lockhart was one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
June Kathleen Lockhart was born on June 25, 1925, in Manhattan in New York City. She was the daughter of Canadian-American actor Gene Lockhart, who came to prominence on Broadway in 1933 in Ah, Wilderness! and English-born actress Kathleen Lockhart (née Arthur). Her grandfather was John Coates Lockhart, “a concert-singer”.
Lockhart attended the Westlake School for Girls in Beverly Hills, California.
Lockhart had a lifelong fascination with American presidential candidates and the media’s coverage of them. Her friend reporter Merriman Smith arranged for her to travel with both major-party candidates Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson during the 1956 presidential election and again with both campaigns in the 1960 election. Between 1957 and 2004, Lockhart attended many presidential briefings.
Although a child of the Greatest Generation, Lockhart embraced rock music and listened to emerging rock bands. In an interview, her Lost in Space co-star Bill Mumy stated that she took Angela Cartwright and him to the Whisky a Go Go nightclub in Hollywood “to hang out with The Allman Brothers Band“.[32]
She turned 100 on June 25, 2025. Lockhart died of natural causes at her home in Santa Monica, California, on October 23, 2025.
