June Evelyn Bronson Cleaver is a principal character in the American television sitcom Leave It to Beaver. June and her husband, Ward, are often invoked as the archetypal suburban parents of the 1950s. The couple are the parents of two sons, Wally and "Beaver". Wally is twelve years old and in the eighth grade when the series opens; Beaver is seven years old ("almost eight") and in the second grade. Episodes followed the escapades of Wally and Beaver and usually ended with a moral lesson delivered to the boys, but also often included reminders of childhood and minor lessons for the parents through the adventures of their boys. She was included in Yahoo!'s Top 10 TV Moms from Six Decades of Television for the time period 1957-1963.
June is played by Barbara Billingsley in both the pilot, "It's a Small World" (which aired in April 1957 on Studio '57), and in the original television series. Billingsley also plays the character in the show's television reunion movie, Still the Beaver (1983), and the show's sequel series, The New Leave It to Beaver (1985—1989). In the sequel series, Wally and Beaver are both parents, and June is a grandmother. Janine Turner played June in the 1997 spin-off film adaptation of the original series, Leave It to Beaver. Billingsley made a cameo appearance in the spin-off film as Aunt Martha.
Famous quotes containing the words june and/or cleaver:
“In June the bush we call
alder was heavy, listless,
its leaves studded with galls,
growing wherever we didnt
want it.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“In prison, those things witheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)