Why June Cleaver Always Wore Pearls on ‘Leave It To Beaver’
What To Know
- Barbara Billingsley wore pearls as June Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver to conceal a spot on her neck.
- She also began wearing high heels in later seasons to maintain a height advantage.
- The pearls became an iconic symbol of her character.
Leave It to Beaver ran for six seasons on television, with one on CBS and the remaining five on ABC. Since that time, it seems like reruns of that show have always been on the air somewhere. One thing that avid viewers of the show have noticed over the years is that June Cleaver really did seem to have a thing for pearls.
It is a rare scene on the show that does not have Barbara Billingsley wearing those pearls. So, what was the deal? Was it a fashion choice for her character or something more? In reality, the reason for the pearls was that Billingsley was hiding something. While some fans of the show have speculated that she might have been trying to conceal a scar or maybe even a birthmark, the truth of the matter is that Billingsley had a deep hollow spot in her neck area that the lighting on the show set just really seemed to accentuate.
Billingsley felt quite bad because that little spot on her neck was driving the lighting and camera guys absolutely nuts, no matter how they set things up. They just could not seem to get rid of that coin-sized dark shadow. It is unclear if Billingsley ever said who came up with the idea of the pearl necklace as a workaround, but it absolutely did the trick.
Everett Collection
Billingsley talked about the pearls as well as another fashion decision during an interview conducted by The Television Academy Foundation when she explained that during the later seasons of the show, she also started wearing high heels. That choice was made for one very simple reason: so that she could still seem a bit taller than Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow, the actors who played Beaver and Wally. Mathers experienced significant growth spurts during the middle seasons, while Dow eventually outpaced much of the cast in height. By wearing heels instead of flats, Billingsley could still appear taller than her TV sons.
Later on, when the show was revived in the ’80s, high heels did not do a thing to give Billingsley a height advantage, but she did continue to wear those iconic pearls. Regardless of the practical reason behind her choice to wear them, they remain a defining symbol of one of television’s most famous mothers.
When Billingsley passed away in 2010, a generation of TV viewers that had been raised on the show mourned her death. In her obituary, found on the National Public Radio website, Billingsley was quoted as having once said this about playing June Cleaver, “Some people, they just associate you with that one role, and it makes it hard to do other things. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s been an honor.”
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