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: American actor Grant Williams is best remembered for playing the lead in the memorable sci-fi film The Incredible Shrinking Man. Before breaking into films in 1956 in Red Sundown, Williams had attended three colleges and spent four years in the U.S. Air Force. He then trained under Lee Strasberg and performed in summer theater. He also appeared occasionally on television. Following his success with The Incredible Shrinking Man, Williams continued making film and television appearances, but none of them attracted much notice. Eventually he launched his own acting school. Williams also wrote text books on acting.

Trivia: Although Texas-raised Allen Case was one of the busier actors on television during the 1950s and early '60s, he never broke through to lasting leading-man status despite a major assist from Henry Fonda. After a start as a singer in Dallas, Case made his breakthrough in New York on Arthur Godfrey's television show. He broke into movies with a small role in the screen version of Damn Yankees!. Over the next two years, Case had guest roles on Bronco, Have Gun-Will Travel, The Rifleman, Wagon Train, and other small screen Westerns. He was appearing off-Broadway when he was offered the co-starring role -- really the leading role -- in a Universal/NBC series called The Deputy, created by Roland Kibbee and Norman Lear. Fonda was the official star (and raison d'être) of the show, playing the chief marshal of the territory; but his character's work often carried him far away from the focus of the series (the town of Silver City), and his character was absent from most of the program's action in all but a dozen of the 76 episodes, whereas Case's character, Deputy Marshal Clay McCord, a shopkeeper-turned-lawman based in Silver City, was at the center of every episode. The series ran for two seasons and proved to be the peak of Case's career. He spent most of the '60s mostly working in Westerns -- even The Time Tunnel episode he did had him playing 19th century New Mexico lawman Pat Garrett -- and it was only in the '70s that he moved into more diverse roles in such vehicles as The Magician, The Bob Newhart Show, and Nero Wolfe. He died in 1986 at the age of 51.

Trivia: Character actor Bert Freed prepared for his theatrical career at Penn State. Freed made his first Broadway appearance in the forgotten 1942 production Johnny 2 X 4, then went on to such long-running efforts as Counterattack, One Touch of Venus and Annie Get Your Gun. In films from 1947, he was most often cast as big-city detectives and small-town sheriffs. Some of his more memorable movie roles include Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), Christopher Jones' institutionalized father in Wild in the Streets (1968), and all-around meanie Stuart Posner in Billy Jack (1969). A busy television actor, Freed settled down to a weekly-series grind only once, as Rufe Ryker on the 1966 video version of Shane. Outside of his performing activities, Bert Freed was for many years a member of the Motion Picture Academy's Committee of Foreign Films.

Trivia: Born in London, Les Tremayne moved to America in his early teens. Educated at Northwestern, Columbia and UCLA, Tremayne went on the stage in the early 1930s, where his distinguished demeanor and mellifluous voice served him well. He rose to stardom on radio, appearing in literally thousands of "Golden Age" broadcasts, notably as star of the long-running anthology The First Nighter Program. In films from 1951, Tremayne brought a large dose of sober credibility to many an otherwise hard-to-swallow science fiction opus. At his best as General Mann in War of the Worlds (1953)--the General's explanation of the Martian's invasion strategy remains one of the finest pieces of pure exposition in all of "fantastic" cinema--Tremayne was also successful in maintaining his dignity in cheapies of the Angry Red Planet (1959) and Slime People (1965) variety. The actor's contributions to the sci-fi genre were hosannahed in the direct-to-video production The Attack of the B-Movie Monsters (1985). In addition, Tremayne showed up in several non-genre efforts, usually in small but substantial roles like the auctioneer in North by Northwest (Tremayne's single scene in this 1959 Hitchcock classic also featured his old First Nighter colleague Olan Soule). Busiest on television as a commercial spokesman and voiceover artist, Tremayne found time to appear on the prime-time TV version of radio's One Man's Family (1951); as Inspector Richard Queen on the 1958-59 incarnation of the venerable Ellery Queen; and as Mentor on the Saturday morning Captain Marvel-inspired weekly Shazam! (1974-77). In 1995, Les Tremayne, as golden-throated as ever, was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame during a moving, nationally broadcast ceremony from Chicago's Museum of Broadcasting.

Trivia: Authoritative, sandy-haired character actor Willis Bouchey abandoned a busy Broadway career in 1951 to try his luck in films. Bouchey's striking resemblance to Dwight D. Eisenhower enabled him to play roles calling for quick decisiveness and unquestioned leadership; he even showed up as the President of the United States in 1952's Red Planet Mars, one year before the "real" Ike ascended to that office. The actor's many judge, executive, military, and town-marshal characterizations could also convey weakness and vacillation, but for the most part there was no question who was in charge when Bouchey was on the scene. A loyal and steadfast member of the John Ford stock company, Willis Bouchey was seen in such Ford productions as The Long Gray Line (1955), The Last Hurrah (1958), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), Two Rode Together (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1962).

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 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: 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: Barton MacLane may have been born on Christmas Day, but there was precious little chance that he'd ever be cast as Santa Claus. A star athlete at Wesleyan University, MacLane won his first movie role in the 1924 silent Quarterback as the result of his football skills. This single incident sparked his interest in performing, which he pursued on a serious basis at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He performed in stock, on Broadway, and in bit parts in films lensed at Paramount's Astoria studios (notably the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts). In 1932, MacLane wrote a slice-of-life play titled Rendezvous, selling it to influential Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins on the proviso, that he, MacLane, be given the lead. The play was a success, leading to a lucrative film contract from Warner Bros. Most effectively cast as a swaggering villain ("who never spoke when shouting would do," as historian William K. Everson observed), MacLane played good-guy leads in several Warner "B"s: he played the conclusion-jumping lieutenant Steve McBride in the studio's Torchy Blaine series. Free-lancing in the 1940s, MacLane made an unfortunate return to writing in 1941, penning the screenplay for the PRC quickie Man of Courage; it is reported that audiences erupted in shrieks of laughter when MacLane, reciting his own lines, recalled his childhood days on the farm by declaring "Boy! Did I love ta plow!" He was better served in a brace of John Huston-directed films, beating up Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and being beaten up by Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. MacLane's TV-series work included a starring stint on The Outlaws (1960-62) and the recurring role of General Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie (1965-69). Having come into the world on a holiday, Barton MacLane died on New Years' Day, 1969; he was survived by his wife, actress Charlotte Wynters.

Trivia: Leading lady Joan Blackman began her film activities in 1958. Joan's best-remembered film roles were Ellen, the earthbound girlfriend of extraterrestrial Jerry Lewis, in Visit to a Small Planet (1960), and Maile Duval, Elvis Presley's vis-à-vis in Blue Hawaii (1961). On television, she was seen as Marion Fowler during the 1965-1966 season of Peyton Place. Joan Blackman was married to actor/artist Joby Baker.

Trivia: The son of circus performers, the diminutive Frankie Darro began appearing in films as a juvenile player in 1924; he co-starred with western star Tom Tyler in several silent oaters at FBO in the mid-1920s, and was cast in leading roles in Little Mickey Grogan (1927) and The Circus Kid (1928). During the 1930s, Darro showed up in innumerable bit and supporting roles, often playing juvenile delinquents; he carried over this particular characterization into his voiceover stint as Lampwick in the 1940 animated Disney feature Pinocchio. He was given star billing at such minor-league studios as Ambassador and Monogram, co-starring with black comedian Mantan Moreland at the latter studio in an enjoyable series of action programmers, often cast as a jockey because of his stature. In the late 1940s, Darro was a frequent stunt double for such pint-sized actors as Leo Gorcey. Frankie Darro was compelled to accept bit roles into the 1960s; he was also featured in several Red Skelton Shows of the period, often dressed as an old woman for a peculiar comic effect.

Trivia: An honor student in high school, American actor John Howard was also an accomplished pianist, and, in this capacity, won a position in the musical department at Cleveland radio station WHK. While appearing in a stage production at Case Western Reserve University, Howard was spotted by a Paramount talent scout and signed for films. Looking much older than his 26 years, the actor assumed the role of suave adventurer Bulldog Drummond in a series of seven B-movies beginning in 1937. The first actor to play Drummond in sound pictures was Ronald Colman, and it was with him whom Howard co-starred in his most famous film, Lost Horizon (1937). Howard played Colman's younger brother, whose recklessness led to the classic scene in which Margo, playing a woman spirited away from Shangri-La by Howard, aged 50 years before viewers' eyes. Modern day audiences watching the film aren't always very kind to the actor, laughing uproariously at his fevered histrionics; but he was the first to admit in latter-day interviews that he was overacting -- in fact, he was rougher on himself than any audience had been. Otherwise, Howard's film roles were played competently, if not colorfully, although he certainly deserved some credit for convincingly reacting to and making love with the Invisible Woman in the 1941 film comedy of the same name. Howard also became a pioneer of sorts when, in 1947, he starred in Public Prosecutor, the first filmed television series. Eight years later, the actor enjoyed a two-season run on the syndicated hospital drama Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal, in which all traces of the Lost Horizon ham were completely obliterated by his calm, persuasive performance. He starred in a third TV series filmed in 1958, Adventures of the Sea Hawk, but it wasn't aired until 1961 and turn out to be a flop. Howard was philosophical about his acting career, noting that he was always somewhat indifferent about stardom (although he did dearly covet the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind [1939], which ultimately went to Leslie Howard). The actor was, however, justifiably proud of his performance as Katharine Hepburn's wealthy, stuffed-shirt fiancé in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and his 1953 Broadway debut in Hazel Flagg. The next 30 years of his career were divided between mostly unremarkable movies and television productions. Completely out of the film business by the mid-'70s, Howard taught Drama and English at a private high school in Brentwood, CA, for the rest of his life. He died in 1995.