Actress June Lockhart, whose long career began in Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age with such films as \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d and \u201cMeet Me in St. Louis\u201d and went on to include television roles as the mother on \u201cLassie\u201d and \u201cLost in Space,\u201d has died at the age of 100, it was announced Saturday.<\/p>\n
Lockhart died Thursday in Santa Monica of natural causes with her daughter June Elizabeth and granddaughter Christianna by her side, according to her publicist.<\/p>\n
Born in New York, Lockhart made her stage debut at 8 years old in the 1933 production of \u201cPeter Ibbetson\u201d at the Metropolitan Opera House. She began acting in films at age 13 MGM\u2019s 1938 version of the Charles Dickens classic \u201cA Christmas Carol,\u201d which starred her parents Gene and Kathleen Lockhart.<\/p>\n
Her next film was \u201cAll This and Heaven Too\u201d playing alongside Bette Davis and Charles Boyer. Other notable films included 1941\u2019s \u201cSergeant York\u201d and the classic 1944 musical \u201cMeet Me in St. Louis,\u201d starring Judy Garland and directed by Vicente Minnelli.<\/p>\n
In the midst of her burgeoning Hollywood career, Lockhart won a Tony Award as best newcomer for her 1947 Broadway debut in \u201cFor Love or Money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lockhart gained new fame with TV audiences as the gentle, soft-voiced mother in \u201cLassie,\u201d as space mom Maureen Robinson in \u201cLost in Space,\u201d and as Dr. Janet Craig in \u201cPetticoat Junction.\u201d<\/p>\n
In later years, she appeared in numerous episodic series and contributed her voice to her favorite animated series, \u201cRen & Stimpy\u201d for Nickelodeon.<\/p>\n
Lockhart was also a great admirer of the U.S. space program and became a NASA spokesperson, attending many launches and landings throughout the decades, including side-by-side with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at NASA\u2019s milestone 40th Anniversary of the Moon landing celebration in Washington, D.C., in 2009.<\/p>\n
\u201cMommy always considered acting as her craft, her vocation, but her true passions were journalism, politics, science and NASA,\u201d her daughter June Elizabeth said. \u201cShe cherished playing her role in `Lost in Space\u2019 and she was delighted to know that she inspired many future astronauts, as they would remind her on visits to NASA. That meant even more to her than the hundreds of television and movies roles she played.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASA honored Lockhart\u2019s impact on space exploration by awarding her the Exceptional Public Achievement Medal in a 2013 ceremony at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The award is given to non-government individuals who have made significant public contributions to NASA throughout their career.<\/p>\n
Lockhart was also a tireless defender of animal rights, supporting the Santa Monica Mounted Police Horses among other groups, and was the national spokesperson for International Hearing Dog Inc.<\/p>\n
\u201cThomas Edison in the early 1920s hired and introduced two young actors to one another, Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Arthur,\u201d Lockhart\u2019s longtime family friend Lyle Gregory said. \u201cThey performed sketches written by Edison to promote his latest invention, the phonograph, for eager audiences across the emerging modern North American landscape. Those two young actors fell in love, married, had one child and named her June.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gene Lockhart, June\u2019s father, a prolific, Oscar-nominated character actor with more than 300 film credits, was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1930s. Influenced by his work with the union, June got involved with the American Federation of Radio Artists (later AFTRA) and The Screen Actors Guild, and was awarded The Founders Award in 2018.<\/p>\n
Service will be private.<\/p>\n
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to The Actors Fund (entertainmentcommunity.org), ProPublica (propublica.org) or International Hearing Dog Inc. (hearingdog.org).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actress June Lockhart, whose long career began in Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age with such films as \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[63940,1582,276,2563,1436,51252,3193,4155,2961,165143,224,5337,3996,165144],"class_list":{"0":"post-333115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-63940","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-career","12":"tag-classic","13":"tag-dies","14":"tag-films","15":"tag-june","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-lockhart","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-shows","21":"tag-spanned"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115438753218204963","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}