Transcription:
Dog Days Are Over For June Lockhart
By Gwen Gibson
Maturity News ServiceVeteran actress June Lockhart would never make a biting remark about “Lassie,” the long-running television series starring a heroic collie that was her meal ticket for six years.
But she is quick to point out that the real June Lockhart is nothing like the sweet, wholesome, apron-wearing woman she played when cast as “Lassie’s mother” in the series between 1958 and 1964.
The real June Lockhart, she says with an impish laugh, has played some very racy women in the past 25 years, including a murderess on the made-for-TV movie “Whisper Kills” and an alcoholic nymphomaniac in an old “Gunsmoke” episode.
Her resume also notes proudly that “June has ridden a camel in New Delhi and an elephant in the circus” and has “owned and driven a 1923 Seagrave fire engine, flown a blimp, joined the Teamsters union, flown in a hot-air balloon, and driven the Army’s largest tank, the M60A1 weighing in at 53 tons, at Fort Knox.”
But once typecast as a kindly model mother, it’s hard to change your image. And Lockhart, now 63, is on stage again, touring with the national company of “Steel Magnolias,” in a play and a role that older fans will surely find befits “Lassie’s mother.”
A sad-funny, warm human play based on a true story, “Steel Magnolias” is set in a small-town Louisiana beauty salon. Lockhart is the spunky, levelheaded widow of the town mayor. Her friend and fellow actress, Barbara Rush, gives a sterling performance in the more demanding role as the mother of a diabetic daughter who risks her life to have a child.
The small-scale tear-jerker played for six weeks to sell-out audiences in the 1,150-capacity Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, and left in April for engagements in Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland and several California cities.
Despite her checkered career and present part in the hit drama, Lockhart says fans and interviewers still invariably ask her how it feels, after 55 years in the theater, to be best known as a collie’s sidekick.
Her stock, perky response: “I think it’s lovely to have one part for which you’re known. Some actors work all their lives and never achieve this.”
“But acting is what I do; it’s not what I am. And I have always had a varied acting career and a very full life beyond my acting endeavors.”
A third-generation performer, Lockhart made her stage debut at 8 in “Peter Ibbetson” at the Metropolitan Opera House, where she was studying ballet. She made her movie debut at 12, playing Belinda Cratchit in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” and was virtually stereotyped thereafter as the ideal American sweetheart.
The image was set as she played in other family films like “The White Cliffs of Dover” (1944), “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), “The Yearling” (1946) and “So Dear to My Heart,” as the predecessor of the TV series.
The real June Lockhart, a “bawdy, fun-loving, rock ‘n’ roll fan,” emerged frequently during the long, tedious filming sessions of the 26-episode-a-year series.
“After 5:30 p.m., when the kids went home, we could sort of get down and dirty,” she recalls with a chuckle. “But for the most part, we were quite proper when the kids were around.”
Lockhart, who has two daughters and two granddaughters, is still a trim, attractive woman with short blond hair, wide, expressive eyes, an infectious laugh and a bent for startling interviewers with tidbits about the “Lassie” series.
For instance, Lockhart says neither she nor other actors in the TV show ever became particularly attached to the collies who played Lassie.
“The dogs were always totally concentrated on their trainers,” she explains. “They were not fed before filming, and the trainers would stand on either side of the set and hold up a piece of meat to make Lassie look to the right or left.”
When not on stage, Lockhart dispels a dilettante’s interest in everything from medical research to political journalism. She is a member of the board of the First Federal Savings Bank of California, an avid fan of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, and an active spokeswoman for Hearing Dog International, which takes dogs from animal shelters and trains them to be the ears of deaf persons.
Younger fans, who haven’t caught the many repeats of the “Lassie” series, may remember the award-winning Lockhart best for her TV work as the intergalactic matriarch in “Lost in Space” or the country doctor in “Petticoat Junction.”
But it was “Lassie” that formed the woof — uh, the fabric — of her career, and when asked if she would ever work with a dog again, the real June Lockhart answers with an emphatic, “You bet.”
“I can hold my own,” she chortles. “After all, who do you remember from that series? Me and the collie!”
©1989. Maturity News Service