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June Cleaver, played by Barbara Billingsley
June Evelyn Bronson Cleaver is Ward Cleaver's wife and the mother of his sons, Wally and Theodore, "The Beaver". June grew up in or near Mayfield and went to boarding school where she captained the basketball team and appeared as George Washington in a school play. As a child, she was in a class taught by Mrs. Rayburn, the principal of Beaver's school, and, at one time, was forced by her father to spend her savings on galoshes rather than the opal ring she wanted in a jeweler's window. June spent summers with, and was raised principally by, her very proper Aunt Martha, a character who makes a few appearances on the show. June typically leaves the matter of disciplining the boys to her husband and supports him in his decisions. June is the typical housewife of the late 1950s. She aspires to nothing more than being a good wife and mother. Although she has a bit of a social life outside the house attending weddings or her sons' school activities, she is chiefly seen frosting cakes in the kitchen, serving flapjacks, making sandwiches, or engaged in lady-like occupations like arranging flowers or reading glossy women's magazines. She sometimes has household help but when she does take on the housework, she wears high heels, chic frocks, and a pearl necklace. The necklace was purportedly worn to cover a surgical scar on Billingsley's throat. Leave It to Beaver was told from a child's point of view and, as a result, any problems June and her husband may have had as a married couple were never examined. |
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