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 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: Yale grad John Hoyt had been a history instructor, acting teacher and nightclub comedian before linking up with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in 1937. He remained with Welles until he joined the Army in 1945. After the war, the grey-haired, deadly-eyed Hoyt built up a screen reputation as one of most hissable "heavies" around, notably as the notorious political weathervane Talleyrand in Desiree (1954). He was a bit kinder onscreen as the Prophet Elijah in Sins of Jezebel. Nearly always associated with mainstream films, Hoyt surprised many of his professional friends when he agreed to co-star in the softcore porn spoof Flesh Gordon; those closest to him, however, knew that Hoyt had been a bit of a Bohemian all his life, especially during his frequent nudist colony vacations. TV fans of the '80s generation will remember John Hoyt as Grandpa Stanley Kanisky on the TV sitcom Gimme a Break; those with longer memories might recall that Hoyt played the doctor who told Ben Gazzara that he had only two years to live on the pilot for the 1960s TV series Run For Your Life. Hoyt also holds a footnote in Star Trek history playing the doctor in the first pilot episode, "The Cage."

Trivia: Philip Terry labored away as an oil-rig worker until enrolling at Stanford University, where the 6'1" San Franciscan distinguished himself on the football field. After college, Terry travelled to London to study acting, assuming that a British accent would automatically assure him good roles upon his return to America (it didn't). A nominal movie leading man at RKO and Paramount in the early 1940s, Terry managed to pick up a few good notices for his star turn in the 1941 western The Parson of Panamint. The following year, Terry became the third husband of superstar Joan Crawford (he'd been a bit player in Crawford's 1937 vehicle Mannequin, but was not formally introduced to the actress until four years later). A competent but bland screen presence, Terry tended to be overshadowed by his world-famous spouse. Though all reports indicate that the marriage was a happy one, Terry eventually chafed at being Mr. Joan Crawford, and in 1946 the couple was amicably divorced. In films until 1966, Philip Terry is best remembered for his portrayal of Wick Birman, the straight-arrow brother of alcoholic Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (1945).

Trivia: Character actor James Westerfield made comparatively few films, as his first love was the stage; he produced, directed and acted in a number of Broadway productions, and was the recipient of two New York Drama Critics awards. In films from 1941 (he's easily recognizable as a traffic cop in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons), he was generally cast as villains, notably as a recurring rapscallion on the 1963 TV series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. Disney fans will remember Westerfield as the flustered small-town police officer (variously named Hanson and Morrison) in such fanciful farces as The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). James Westerfield was married to actress Fay Tracy.

Trivia: Born to a family of vaudevillians, Hardie Albright studied drama at Carnegie Tech and took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago before embarking upon his adult theatrical career. He made his New York debut with Eva Le Gallienne's company in 1926, and his motion picture bow in 1931. Though typed as a virile, athletic leading man, there was always the air of dishonesty surrounding Albright's performances; as such, he was better off playing unsympathetic roles. Since one of his trademarks was a fixed, insincere grin, it is altogether appropriate that his last Hollywood role was as the double-crossing "Smiley" in Angel on My Shoulder (1946). His final film appearance was in exploitation producer Kroger Babb's notorious Mom and Dad, a 1949 quickie about sex education. In his last years, Hardie Albright wrote several informative textbooks on the art of acting, and also taught drama classes at UCLA.

Trivia: From the '50s through the '80s, American actress Maxine Stuart played character parts ranging from maternal to hard-bitten. Among Stuart's many films were Winning (969), Fun with Dick and Jane (1977) and Coast to Coast (1980). Her TV soap opera assignments included The Edge of Night, as Grace O'Leary; The Young Marrieds (a briefie from 1964) as Mrs. Korman; and General Hospital, as Mrs. Baldwyn. Occasionally breaking into prime-time, Ms. Stuart was co-featured on Room for One More (1962) as the wife of "funny neighbor" Jack Albertson; on Slattery's People (1965), as secretary to politician Richard Crenna; and on Hail to the Chief (1985) as the swinging mother of American president Patty Duke. Twilight Zone addicts best remember Maxine Stuart for a role in which her face never appeared: the bandaged plastic-surgery patient in the 1960 episode "The Eye of the Beholder."

Trivia: He was born John Williams, but there already was a John Williams in show business (several of them, in fact), so the Canadian-born actor selected John McLiam as his professional moniker. McLiam's man-on-the-street countenance could be molded into a vast array of characterizations, ranging from a cockney low-life (My Fair Lady) to a Southern redneck (Cool Hand Luke). The actor's bland normality was a key factor in his being cast as real-life murder victim Herbert Clutter in 1967's In Cold Blood. John McLiam accepted more TV guest-star assignments than can possibly be listed here; he was also a regular on the weekly series Men From Shiloh (1970) and Two Marriages (1983).