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: Trained at Juilliard and the American Academy of Dramatic Art, actress Constance Towers made her first impression on the public as a film actress. Towers was seen as the resourceful Southern-belle leading lady of John Ford's The Horse Soldiers (1959), then essayed a similar characterization in Ford's Sergeant Rutledge (1960). For a brief period in the early 1960s, she was the pet actress of director Samuel Fuller, who effectively cast her in extremely demanding roles in Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1965). With several film and TV appearances to her credit, Towers finally made her professional stage debut in a 1960 production of Guys and Dolls; one year later, she made her Broadway bow as star of Anya, a musicalization of Anastasia. Most closely associated with musicals, she has made hundreds of appearances in revivals of such Rodgers and Hammerstein classics as South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. During the 1960s and 1970s, Constance hosted a daily discussion show on New York radio station WOR. On TV, Towers has been seen as Clarissa McCandliss, daughter of JR-type patriarch Rory Calhoun, on the daytime drama Capitol (1982-87), and as Camilla, the mother of ex-call girl Jade O'Keefe (Lisa Hartman), on the heavy-breathing nighttimer 2000 Malibu Road (1992). Constance Towers is married to former actor and U.S. diplomat John Gavin.

Trivia: American actor Barry Atwater was tall enough but not handsome enough to be a leading man, so his film and TV career found him playing villains, authority figures and medical men. A stage and TV veteran, Atwater's first film appearance was in Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956) though you'd never know it from the opening credits. Longtime fans of the ABC daytime drama General Hospital will recall Atwater's performances as Dr. John Prentice, who married nurse Jessie Brewer (Emily McLaughlin) and later was unceremoniously murdered. Barry Atwater's most spectacular acting assignment was as Janos Skorzeny, the modern-day vampire terrorizing Las Vegas in the classic made-for-TV chiller The Night Stalker (1956).

Trivia: Blonde, loquacious American actress Joyce Van Patten was being sent out for modelling assignments at the age of eight months. Her stagestruck mother advertised Van Patten and older brother Dick as "the Van Patten Kids," ready and willing to step into any juvenile roles available. At age 5, Joyce made her Broadway debut in Love's Old Sweet Song, which also featured Dick. Joyce was nine years old when she won the Donaldson award for her performance in the stage drama Tomorrow the World. She interrupted her stage career for a brief marriage at age 16 (her equally brief second marriage was to actor Martin Balsam), then at 20 played her first adult role in the Broadway comedy Desk Set. Her first film assignment was an unbilled bit in the Manhattan-lensed Fourteen Hours (1951), and her first regular TV stint was on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in the late '50s. Joyce has since been seen on a weekly basis in such TV series as The Danny Kaye Show (1963-66), The Good Guys (1968) (as Herb Edelman's good-natured wife), The Don Rickles Show (1972) (as Don's goodnatured wife) and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979) (as Mary's personal secretary, yet again good-natured). Joyce Van Patten's films have included The Goddess (1958), I Love You Alice B. Toklas (1968), St. Elmo's Fire (1984), and a rare "bitchy" appearance as the antagonistic athletic coach in The Bad News Bears (1976).

Trivia: The son of legendary Broadway actor DeWolfe Hopper and movie actress Hedda Hopper, William Hopper made his film debut as an infant in one of his father's films. The popular consensus is that the younger Hopper was given his first talking-picture break because of his mother's reputation as the most feared of the Hollywood gossips. Not so: Hopper was signed to his first Warner Bros. contract in 1937, a year or so before Hedda had established herself as the queen of the dirt-dishers. At first billing himself as DeWolfe Hopper Jr., Hopper languished in bit parts and walk-ons for several years. He wasn't able to graduate to better roles until the 1950s, by which time he was calling himself William Hopper. After a largely undistinguished film career (notable exceptions to his usual humdrum assignments were his roles in 20 Million Miles to Earth [1957] and The Bad Seed [1956]) Hopper finally gained fame -- and on his own merits -- as private detective Paul Drake on the enormously popular Perry Mason television series, which began its eight-season run in 1957. In a bizarre coincidence, Perry Mason left the air in 1966, the same year that William Hopper's mother Hedda passed away.

Trivia: Rugged-looking American actor John Bryant is best remembered as the original "Marlboro Man" from the 1950s. He went on to play Dr. Robert Spaulding on the TV western, The Virginian. Bryant has subsequently played numerous character roles on a variety of television series ranging from westerns through sitcoms. He has appeared on Broadway and on stages throughout the country. Bryant also acted in films during the '50s and '60s.

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: Baby-faced second lead Don Dubbins began his film career at Columbia, playing young military types in From Here to Eternity (1953) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). Film star James Cagney took a liking to Dubbins, and saw to it that the young performer was prominently cast in Cagney's These Wilder Years (1956) and Tribute to a Bad Man (1956). Maturing into a dependable character actor, Dubbins later appeared in such films as The Prize (1963), The Illustrated Man (1969) and Death Wish II (1976). After nearly a decade in retirement, Don Dubbins died at the age of 63.

Trivia: The son of an Episcopal priest, John Gallaudet commenced his professional acting career after graduating from Williams College. He appeared on both Broadway and in stock opposite actors ranging from Fred Astaire to Helen Hayes. The slight, thinnish-haired Gallaudet spent several years in the 1930s as the resident character star of Columbia Pictures' "B" unit, playing everything from kindhearted doctors to serpentlike crooks. He owns the distinction of being one the few actors to ever "murder" Rita Hayworth, dispatching the lovely young actress with a poisoned baseball glove in the 1937 potboiler Girls Can Play. Active in films until the 1950s, John Gallaudet was well known and highly regarded throughout the film community for his off-camera vocation as a champion golfer.

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: Juvenile actor Jackie Searl began performing on local Los Angeles radio at the age of 3. Jackie came to film prominence in the early-talkie era, nearly always playing a nasty, phlegmatic brat, none more nasty or phlegmatic than Sidney Sawyer in 1930's Tom Sawyer and 1931's Huckleberry Finn. In response to overwhelming demand from his fans, Searl was teamed with his female counterpart, hoydenish young Jane Withers, in three mid-1930s films. However, the anticipated sparks never flew on screen, possibly because Searl and Withers, both pleasant and well-behaved in real life, got along too well offscreen. Even at the height of his popularity, Searl (and his family) never pocketed more than $4000 a year; thus, he sought out other forms of employment after serving in World War II. He made a brief comeback as a film character actor in 1948 before disappearing for nearly a decade into the "civilian" world. In the early 1960s, Jack Searl (Jackie no more), his trademarked weaselly facial features augmented by a stubbly chin and bald dome, enjoyed a flurry of activity as a supporting villain on TV westerns, cop shows and situation comedies.

Trivia: Rubber-faced British character actor Harold Goodwin first appeared onscreen in 1950.