The actress was just 22 when she won a Tony for Best Performance by a Newcomer — one of the first Tonys ever given — for her role in the 1947 play &34;For Love

The actress was just 22 when she won a Tony for Best Performance by a Newcomer — one of the first Tonys ever given — for her role in the 1947 play "For Love or Money."

June Lockhart, Lassie and *Lost in Space *star, dies at 100

The actress was just 22 when she won a Tony for Best Performance by a Newcomer — one of the first Tonys ever given — for her role in the 1947 play "For Love or Money."

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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and Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman is a writer at **, mostly covering nostalgia. He has been writing about entertainment since 2007.

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October 25, 2025 4:20 p.m. ET

June Lockhart and Lassie. Credit:

Bettmann Archive/Getty

June Lockhart, the veteran Hollywood star famous for projects like *Lassie* and *Lost in Space*, has died. She was 100.

Publicist Harlan Boll announced that the actress, who also had big roles in films like *Meet Me in St. Louis* and *Sergeant York*, died on Thursday in Santa Monica from natural causes. A more specific cause of death was not provided.

Born in New York City in 1925 — two years before the advent of synced sound in film — Lockhart was a second-generation actor. Her father, Gene Lockhart, was a prolific stage actor who taught at Juilliard and was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting performance in 1938's *Algiers*, while her mother, Kathleen Lockhart, starred in movies like *Lady in the Lake* and *The Glenn Miller Story*.

Billy Mumy and June Lockhart on 'Lost in Space'.

20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

June Lockhart began her acting career as a young child, making her stage debut at age 8 in a 1933 production of *Peter Ibbetson* at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. Her first film appearance came in 1938's *A Christmas Carol*, which also starred her real-life parents as the Cratchits.

Lockhart costarred with Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien in the legendary 1944 movie musical *Meet Me in St. Louis*, which earned five Oscar nominations. She also played Gary Cooper's sister in Howard Hawks' *Sergeant York* and acted opposite Bette Davis in *All This, and Heaven Too*.

The actress won a Special Tony Award for Best Newcomer for her Broadway debut, *For Love or Money*, in 1947 — the first year that the theater awards, then called the Antoinette Perry Awards, were handed out. She later donated her award to the Smithsonian in 2008.

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Lockhart's best-known projects were a pair of iconic midcentury TV shows. She played Ruth Martin, the adoptive mother of young boy Timmy Martin (Jon Provost), in *Lassie, *about the adventures of the titular collie, from 1958 to 1964 after Cloris Leachman left the role. She then joined *Lost in Space*, in which she portrayed another matriarch, biochemist Dr. Maureen Robinson, from 1965 to 1968.

The *Lost in Space* ship was piloted by Guy Williams as the expedition commander and Lockhart's onscreen husband, Professor John Robinson, and Mark Goddard's Major West. Also onboard were the Robinsons' three children, Judy (Marta Kristen), Penny (Angela Cartwright), and Will (Bill Mumy); the sniveling stowaway Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris); and, of course, The Robot, played by Borscht Belt comedian Dick Tufeld.

In a 2024 interview, Lockhart called Dr. Robinson her favorite role. "It was so campy," she said of the series. "And I truly enjoyed my relationship with my space family." She also said she had stayed in touch with her three interplanetary children, as well as Provost from *Lassie*.

*Lost in Space* and *Lassie* included various iterations that spanned almost the entire length of Lockhart's career. One of her earliest film performances came in the 1946 movie *Son of Lassie, *in which she played a younger character than the one she eventually portrayed on the small screen. Her final screen credit came in 2021 with a voice role in the *Lost in Space* reboot. She also appeared on an episode of *The New Lassie* in 1989 and played a supporting part in the 1998 movie version of *Lost in Space*.

June Lockhart in 2015.

David Livingston/Getty

Lockhart was nominated for Best Actress at the 1953 Emmys, and later for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Continuing Character) in a Dramatic Series in 1959 for her work on *Lassie*.

Lockhart also appeared as a series regular on two seasons of *Petticoat Junction*, acted in 14 episodes of *General Hospital*, and guested in episodes of *Rawhide*, *Bewitched*, *The Man From U.N.C.L.E.*, *Falcon Crest*, *Full House*, *The Ren & Stimpy Show*, and *Grey's Anatomy*. She was in the cult 1986 horror-comedy-fantasy movie *Troll*; Christopher Guest's directorial debut, *The Big Picture*; and the black comedy *One Night at McCool's*.

In an interview with the Television Academy, Mumy called Lockhart "without a doubt, one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life and *truly* a rock 'n' roll goddess." Apparently the actress kept a photo of David Bowie on her at all times and had hired an early incarnation of the Allman Brothers Band to play a party at her house. When Mumy was just a kid, Lockhart snuck him and his TV sister Cartwright into shows at the Whisky a Go Go during the height of the 1960s psychedelic scene.

Lockhart also became an amateur presidential historian, a hobby she picked up after she met President Harry Truman — she asked for an autograph in the Oval Office and he let her keep the pen. As early as 1956, she traveled with presidential candidates from multiple parties just to watch the campaign process. Eisenhower's press secretary gave her a "lifetime pass" to attend news briefings at the White House, which she used many times over the years whenever she was in Washington, D.C.

Lockhart was an advocate for animal rights and involved with the Screen Actors Guild and AFRA (later AFTRA) from an early age. SAG-AFTRA awarded her the Founders Award in 2018.

After her death, the actress' daughter June Elizabeth highlighted how Lockhart's *Lost in Space *performance helped influence a generation of women in science. "Mommy always considered acting as her craft, her vocation, but her true passions were journalism, politics, science, and NASA," she said in a statement. "She cherished playing her role in *Lost in Space, *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."

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Lockhart sometimes directly interfaced with active-duty astronauts. She told Senior Voice Alaska that she suggested to Kenneth Reightler "a good wake-up song for them to use" on the Space Shuttle in 1992: "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise," a tune her father co-wrote that Thomas Edison recorded on an early recording device.

"I went to Mission Control in Houston and at around 2 a.m. they played the song for the crew of the Columbia mission," she told the outlet. "Then a voice from space came over the speaker: 'Some of us up here want to know what Lassie's mother is doing in Mission Control at 2 o'clock in the morning!'"

In 2013, NASA awarded Lockhart with the Exceptional Public Achievement Medal for her impact on the field of space exploration. The actress cited the award as the most meaningful honor of her career.

Her key to happiness, she said as she approached 100 years of age, was not to "spend time dwelling on things I can't change." She added, "I am happy and love my life."

Lockhart is survived by her daughters, Anne Kathleen and June Elizabeth.**

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