Trivia: In the first ten years of his life, Raymond Burr moved from town to town with his mother, a single parent who supported her little family by playing the organ in movie houses and churches. An unusually large child, he was able to land odd jobs that would normally go to adults. He worked as a ranch hand, a traveling tinted-photograph salesman, a Forest service fire guard, and a property agent in China, where his mother had briefly resettled. At 19, he made the acquaintance of film director Anatole Litvak, who arranged for Burr to get a job at a Toronto summer-stock theater. This led to a stint with a touring English rep company; one of his co-workers, Annette Sutherland, became his first wife. After a brief stint as a nightclub singer in Paris, Burr studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and took adult education courses at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chunking. His first New York theatrical break was in the 1943 play Duke in Darkness. That same year, his wife Sutherland was killed in the same plane crash that took the life of actor Leslie Howard. Distraught after the death of his wife, Burr joined the Navy, served two years, then returned to America in the company of his four-year-old son, Michael Evan Burr (Michael would die of leukemia in 1953). Told by Hollywood agents that he was overweight for movies, the 340-pound Burr spent a torturous six months living on 750 calories per day. Emerging at a trim 210 pounds, he landed his first film role, an unbilled bit as Claudette Colbert's dancing partner in Without Reservations (1946). It was in San Quentin (1946), his next film, that Burr found his true metier, as a brooding villain. He spent the next ten years specializing in heavies, menacing everyone from the Marx Brothers (1949's Love Happy) to Clark Gable (1950's Key to the City) to Montgomery Clift (1951's A Place in the Sun) to Natalie Wood (1954's A Cry in the Night). His most celebrated assignments during this period included the role of melancholy wife murderer Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and reporter Steve Martin in the English-language scenes of the Japanese monster rally Godzilla (1956), a characterization he'd repeat three decades later in Godzilla 1985. While he worked steadily on radio and television, Burr seemed a poor prospect for series stardom, especially after being rejected for the role of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on the grounds that his voice was too big. In 1957, he was tested for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger in the upcoming TV series Perry Mason. Tired of playing unpleasant secondary roles, Burr agreed to read for Burger only if he was also given a shot at the leading character. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson, who'd been courting such big names as William Holden, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., agreed to humor Burr by permitting him to test for both Burger and Perry Mason. Upon viewing Burr's test for the latter role, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner jumped up, pointed at the screen, and cried "That's him!" Burr was cast as Mason on the spot, remaining with the role until the series' cancellation in 1966 and winning three Emmies along the way. Though famous for his intense powers of concentration during working hours -- he didn't simply play Perry Mason, he immersed himself in the role -- Burr nonetheless found time to indulge in endless on-set practical jokes, many of these directed at his co-star and beloved friend, actress Barbara Hale. Less than a year after Mason's demise, Burr was back at work as the wheelchair-bound protagonist of the weekly detective series Ironside, which ran from 1967 to 1975. His later projects included the short-lived TVer Kingston Confidential (1976), a sparkling cameo in Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982), and 26 two-hour Perry Mason specials, lensed between 1986 and 1993. Burr was one of the most liked and highly respected men in Hollywood. Fiercely devoted to his friends and co-workers, Burr would threaten to walk off the set whenever one of his associates was treated in a less than chivalrous manner by the producers or the network. Burr also devoted innumerable hours to charitable and humanitarian works, including his personally financed one-man tours of Korean and Vietnamese army bases, his support of two dozen foster children, and his generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which he partly owned. Despite his unbounded generosity and genuine love of people, Burr was an intensely private person. After his divorce from his second wife and the death from cancer of his third, Burr remained a bachelor from 1955 until his death. Stricken by kidney cancer late in 1992, he insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace, filming one last Mason TV movie and taking an extended trip to Europe. In his last weeks, Burr refused to see anyone but his closest friends, throwing "farewell" parties to keep their spirits up. Forty-eight hours after telling his longtime friend and business partner Robert Benevides, "If I lie down, I'll die," 76-year-old Raymond Burr did just that -- dying as he'd lived, on his own terms.

Trivia: According to her Rockford, Illinois, high-school yearbook, Barbara Hale hoped to make a career for herself as a commercial artist. Instead, she found herself posing for artists as a professional model. This led to a movie contract at RKO Radio, where she worked her way up from "B"s like The Falcon in Hollywood (1945) to such top-of-the-bill attractions as A Likely Story (1947) and The Boy With Green Hair (1949). She continued to enjoy star billing at Columbia, where among other films she essayed the title role in Lorna Doone (1952). Her popularity dipped a bit in the mid-1950s, but she regained her following in the Emmy-winning role of super-efficient legal secretary Della Street on the Perry Mason TV series. She played Della on a weekly basis from 1957 through 1966, and later appeared in the irregularly scheduled Perry Mason two-hour TV movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The widow of movie leading man Bill Williams, Barbara Hale was the mother of actor/director William Katt. Hale died in 2017, at age 94.

Trivia: The scion of a wealthy Detroit family, William Talman would later claim that he learned to "champion the underdog" while a member of his Episcopal church boxing team. In his 20s, Talman became an evangelist for the Moral Re-Armament Movement, and later made at stab at studying law. He drifted to New York, where, through the intervention of an actor friend of his father, he began picking up small stage roles. After extensive experience in New York and in the touring company of Of Mice and Men, Talman moved to Hollywood, where in 1949 he played his first important screen role as a gangster in Red, Hot and Blue (1949). At his best when his characters were at their worst, Talman developed into one of Tinseltown's most fearsome screen villains, never more so than when he played a psycho killer who slept with one eye open in the noir classic The Hitchhiker (1955). In 1957, Talman was cast as Hamilton Burger, the perennially losing District Attorney on the popular TV weekly Perry Mason. He remained with the series until March of 1960, when he was arrested for throwing a wild party where vast quantities of illegal substances were consumed. The Perry Mason producers had every intention of firing Talman from the series, but he was reinstated thanks to the loyal intervention of his co-stars -- particularly Raymond Burr, who threatened to quit the show if Talman wasn't given a second chance. William Talman was last seen on TV in a series of anti-smoking public service announcements; these spots were run posthumously, at Talman's request, following his death from lung cancer at the age of 53.

Trivia: Tall, sharp-featured American comic actor Erik Rhodes made his film debut in the 1934 Astaire/Rogers musical Gay Divorcee, playing genial Italian "professional correspondent" Tonetti ("Your wife is safe with Tonetti: He prefers spaghetti."). Rhodes essayed virtually the same part in Astaire's and Rogers' 1935 vehicle Top Hat, then settled into a short but lively Hollywood career, playing mostly gigolos and sharpers. A master dialectician, Rhodes was at home with the "silly ass Englishman" cadence of his character in Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938) as he was with the Manhattanite intonations of his murder suspect character in The Nitwits (1935). He forsook Hollywood in favor of stage work in 1939, working without interruption (except for wartime service in the Army Air Force) until his retirement in the early '70s.

Trivia: An alumnus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Brooklyn-born Hayden Rorke became a member of the original Walter Hampden theatrical company in the early '30s (he ended up the last surviving member of that hardy troupe). While serving in WWII, Rorke appeared in both the road company and film versions of the all-serviceman musical This Is the Army. He would make 70 Broadway appearances in his career, in additional to some 50 films and nearly 400 TV shows. Though usually unbilled, Rorke was instantly recognizable in roles calling for erudition and urbanity, notably in such films as An American in Paris (1951) and The Robe (1953). Among his many TV assignments was the role of CBS radio announcer John Daly (though his character was not identified by name) in the Pearl Harbor episode of the CBS historical series You Are There; he also co-starred in the two-part pilot for an intriguing 1951 science fiction series Project Moonbase, which didn't make it as a series but was released as a theatrical feature. Still essaying small movie roles into the 1960s, Hayden Rorke finally achieved a fame (and generous screen time) in the continuing role of flustered air force psychiatrist Dr. Bellows on the fanciful TV sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970).

Trivia: From 1922 through 1934, Iowa-born performer Frank Jenks was a song and dance man in vaudeville. He began picking up day work in Hollywood films in 1933, and by 1937 had worked his way up to a contract with Universal Pictures. Jenks was seen in sizeable character roles in films ranging from the sumptuous Deanna Durbin vehicle 100 Men and a Girl to several entries in the Crime Club B-series. He portrayed sardonic sleuth Bill Crane (a creation of mystery writer Jonathan Latimer) in the Crime Club entries The Westland Case (1937) and Lady in the Morgue (1938). Jenks' familiar Hibernian grin and salty delivery of dialogue graced many a feature of the '40s and '50s; most of the roles were supporting, though Jenks was allowed full leads in an informal series of PRC detective films of the mid '40s. Frank Jenks' most conspicuous assignment of the '50s was as Uthas P. Garvey, the Runyonesque assistant of lovable con artist Alan Mowbray on the TV series Colonel Humphrey Flack, which ran live in 1953-54 and was resurrected for 39 filmed episodes in 1958.

Trivia: Broadway actor Richard Gaines made his initial film appearance as Patrick Henry in The Howards of Virginia (1940). Gaines is best-known to modern audiences as Jean Arthur's stuffy suitor C. J. Pendergast in George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1942). Less pompous but no less dignified were his performances as George Washington in DeMille's Unconquered (1947) and Professor Jackson in Flight to Mars (1953). Either by accident or design, Richard Gaines made most of his last screen appearances at MGM, playing DAs, doctors and other briskly professional types.

Trivia: A specialist in hard-boiled dame roles, Barbara Pepper made her first film appearances as a Goldwyn Girl; she was prominent among the nubile slaves who were garbed only in floor-length blonde wigs in Goldwyn's Roman Scandals (1933). Pepper's one shot at stardom came in King Vidor's Our Daily Bread, in which she played the sluttish vamp who led hero Tom Keene astray; unfortunately, the film was not successful enough, nor her performance convincing enough, to lead to larger parts. She spent the next 30 years in supporting roles and bits, most often playing brassy goodtime girls. A radical weight gain in the 1950s compelled Pepper to alter her screen image; she quickly became adept at portraying obnoxious middle-aged tourists, snoopy next-door neighbors, belligerent landladies, and the like. Pepper's best friend in Hollywood was Lucille Ball, another alumna of the Goldwyn Girl ranks. At one point in 1951,Pepper was a candidate for the role of Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy. In her last decade, Barbara Pepper gained a whole new crop of fans thanks to her recurring appearances as Doris Ziffel on the TV sitcom Green Acres.

Trivia: One of show-businesses busiest grandfatherly figures, actor Bill Erwin has been appearing in film and television since the early '40s, and as of 2003, he's shown no signs of slowing. His consistently reliable performances in such high-profile efforts as Somewhere in Time (1980), Home Alone (1990), and Forces of Nature (1999) have found Erwin enduring to become one of the most in-demand supporting players around. A Honey Grove, TX, native who earned his bachelor's in journalism at the University of Texas in Austin in 1935, Erwin went on to California to complete his Masters of Theater Arts at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1941. Though a stint in World War II would momentarily put his acting career on hold, Erwin returned stateside to make his film debut in, appropriately enough, the 1941 Phil Silvers comedy You're in the Army Now. Throughout the years, Erwin has appeared in numerous stage productions on both coasts, and repeat performances on such television classics as Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Growing Pains, and Seinfeld have ensured Erwin's popularity with many generations of television viewers. His role in Seinfeld earned him an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 1993. From high-profile releases like Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995) to edgy, low-budget sci-fi movies like Menno's Mind (1996), Erwin has done it all, and equally well. Outside of his film work, Erwin spends his time writing and illustrating cartoons in his North Hollywood home.

Trivia: Chances are when a doctor made a house call in a '40s movie, that doctor was portrayed by Sam Flint. Silver-haired, authoritative, and distinguished by an executive-style moustache, Flint entered films in the early '30s after a long stage career. Though his movie roles were usually confined to one or two scenes per picture, Flint was always instantly recognizable in his characterizations of businessmen, bankers, chairmen of the board, politicians, publishers, fathers of the bride--and, as mentioned before, doctors. In addition to his prolific feature-film work, Sam Flint was always welcome in short subjects, appearing in support of everyone from Our Gang to the Three Stooges.

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.