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: Tall, silver-maned character actor Roy Roberts began his film career as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1943. Nearly always cast in roles of well-tailored authority, Roberts was most effective when conveying smug villainy. As a hotel desk clerk in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he suavely but smarmily refused to allow Jews to check into his establishment; nineteen years later, Roberts was back behind the desk and up to his old tricks, patronizingly barring a black couple from signing the register in Hotel (1966). As the forties drew to a close, Roberts figured into two of the key film noirs of the era; he was the carnival owner who opined that down-at-heels Tyrone Power had sunk so low because "he reached too high" at the end of Nightmare Alley (1947), while in 1948's He Walked By Night, Roberts enjoyed one of his few sympathetic roles as a psycho-hunting plainclothesman. And in the 3-D classic House of Wax, Roberts played the crooked business partner of Vincent Price, whose impulsive decision to burn down Price's wax museum has horrible consequences. With the role of bombastic Captain Huxley on the popular Gale Storm TV series Oh, Susanna (1956-1960), Gordon inaugurated his dignified-foil period. He later played long-suffering executive types on The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and The Lucy Show. Roy Roberts last appeared on screen as the mayor in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).

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: Actor Edward Binns possessed two qualities that many of his contemporaries lacked: he was always reliable, and always believable. On Broadway, he was shown to good advantage in such hit productions as Command Decision, The Lark, A View From the Bridge, and Caligula. In films from 1951's Teresa, Binns' roles ranged from the vacillating Juror #6 in 12 Angry Men (1957) to the authoritative Major General Walter Bedell Smith in Patton (1970). On television, Binns played the title role in the 1959 cop drama Brenner, Dr. Anson Kiley in The Nurses (1962-1964), and secret-service contact man Wallie Powers in It Takes a Thief (1969-1970 season). Edward Binns died suddenly at the age of 74, while traveling from New York to his home in Connecticut.

Trivia: Forever remembered by film buffs as the man who brought King Kong to New York, American actor Robert Armstrong was a law student at the University of Washington in Seattle when he dropped out in favor of a vaudeville tour. Learning by doing, Armstrong worked his way up to "leading man" roles in a New York stock company run by veteran character man Jimmy Gleason. Gleason's play Iz Zat So? led to a film contract for Armstrong, whose first picture was The Main Event (1927). The actor's stage training served him well during Hollywood's switchover to sound, and he appeared with frequency in the early talkie years, at one point costarring with Broadway legend Fanny Brice in My Man (1930). An expert at playing sports and showbiz promoters, Armstrong was a natural for the role of the enthusiastic but foolhardy Carl Denham in King Kong (1933). Armstrong enjoyed some of the best dialogue of his career as he coerced erstwhile actress Fay Wray to go with him to Skull Island to seek out "money, adventure, the thrill of a lifetime", and as he egged on his crew to explore the domain of 50-foot ape Kong. And of course, Armstrong was allowed to speak the final lines of this imperishable classic: "It wasn't the planes...It was beauty killed the beast." Armstrong played Carl Denham again in a sequel, Son of Kong (1933), and later played Denham in everything but name as a shoestring theatrical promoter in Mighty Joe Young (1949), wherein he brought a nice giant gorilla into civilization. Always in demand as a character actor, Armstrong continued to make films in the 1940s; he had the rare distinction of playing an American military officer in Around the World (1943), a Nazi agent in My Favorite Spy (1942), and a Japanese general in Blood on the Sun (1945)! In the 1950s and 1960s, Armstrong was a fixture on TV cop and adventure programs. Perhaps the most characteristic moment in Armstrong's TV career was during a sketch on The Red Skelton Show, in which Red took one look at Armstrong and ad-libbed "Say, did you ever get that monkey off that building?"

Trivia: Sharp-eyed viewers of Joel Coen's 2003 comedy Intolerable Cruelty might have noticed the older character actor playing the plaintiff's attorney in the first trial scene involving George Clooney. The deep, melodious voice, excellent old-style diction, and the sheer screen presence belonged to George Ives, a 50-year veteran of movies and the theater. Ives was born in New York City in 1922 and attended Garden City High School on Long Island. He studied drama at Columbia University and made his stage debut in Walter Kerr's Stardust, which closed before reaching Broadway. His Broadway debut came in 1947 in Alice in Arms, and appeared in road productions of Janie, Charley's Aunt, and Silver Whistle, in between work on Broadway in Present Laughter, You Never Can Tell, Mr. Barry's Etchings, Season in the Sun, and The Seven-Year Itch. He was also in the road-company production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (starring Eddie Bracken). Ives worked in postwar radio and television, including such anthology shows as Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Theatre Guild on the Air, Studio One, The Philco Television Playhouse, and Kraft Television Theatre, and did guest spots on Sgt. Bilko and The Celeste Holm Show, among other series. Amid all that East Coast activity, the actor made his screen debut in 1952 in a small role in Henry Hathaway's Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten. The part came about, Ives recalled in a 2004 interview, because they were shooting up at Niagara Falls and it was cheaper to bring actors in from New York City than from Hollywood. "Marilyn was acting up," he remembered with amusement, "and Arch Johnson and I were very grateful, because they had us up there for a week and a half, being paid, before they got to us." In between theater roles, Ives continued working on television into the 1960s, long after the medium moved to the West Coast. Live television had its virtues, which he appreciated, including rehearsal time and the immediacy of theater. It was also during the '60s in Hollywood that he got his best shots at regular series work. In 1961, he was in a sitcom called The Hathaways, with Jack Weston and Peggy Cass, about a couple raising a family of performing chimpanzees, though the show lasted but one season. Ives' 6-foot-2-inch height, dignified appearance, and resonant voice often got him cast as authority figures, and he did numerous guest spots on such series as The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Bewitched (he was a good friend of series co-star David White). In 1965, Ives got his best regular TV role, co-starring as Doc in the series Mr. Roberts, for Warner Bros. Television, based on the John Ford/Mervyn LeRoy navy drama starring Henry Fonda and James Cagney. Working in the shadow of William Powell, who had played the part in the movie, he made the role of the ship's doctor work for him on his terms. The series was renewed for a second season, but then abruptly canceled three weeks later when NBC decided to pick up Please Don't Eat the Daisies instead as a favor to MGM Television, which was producing the huge hit The Man From U.N.C.L.E. for the network. As good as he was with benign and avuncular roles, Ives also excelled at playing sinister, villainous, and sleazy parts, as fans of John Brahm's 1967 delinquency drama Hot Rods to Hell have come to appreciate. His other film appearances included the Paul Newman military comedy The Secret War of Harry Frigg in 1968. Ives remained active in theater all the while he was working on TV and movie projects, and in the early '70s, he was asked by Actors' Equity to take on an executive position with the organization on the West Coast. He eventually became executive director of the union's operations there, a position which precluded him from doing much other work. Ives finally retired from the union in the '90s and started working as an actor again. One of his jobs was a Honda commercial made by Joel and Ethan Coen. That project led to the Coen Brothers asking him to do a special introduction to their film Blood Simple for its DVD release. Since then, he has been a regular participant in their work, including his role in Intolerable Cruelty.

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Trivia: A stage actor since the 1920s, Kenneth MacDonald found the going rough in Hollywood until he published and distributed a pamphlet titled "The Case of Kenneth MacDonald." This little self-promotional book brought him to the attention of studio executives, and throughout the 1930s MacDonald could be seen as a mustachioed, mellifluous-voiced villain in scores of westerns and melodramas. His work in the Charles Starrett westerns at Columbia led to a lengthy association with that studio. From 1940 through 1954, MacDonald played featured roles in such Columbia productions as Island of Doomed Men (1940), Power of the Whistler (1945) and The Caine Mutiny (1954); he was also prominently cast in the studio's short subjects, especially in the comedies of the Three Stooges and Hugh Herbert, his most familiar role being that of a society criminal or shyster lawyer. During the 1960s, Kenneth MacDonald was a semi-regular on the Perry Mason TV series, playing a solemn judge.

Trivia: American character actor Pitt Herbert appeared on stage, screen, television and in commercials. He got his start on stage and during the '30s and '40s appeared on Broadway. He has also worked as a director and a drama instructor. Later Herbert was an active member of the Screen Actors Guild legislative committee and helped to pass Chapter 1217 of the Unemployment Compensation/Pension Refund Act.

Trivia: Douglas Evans was a versatile American supporting actor who during his 30-year career appeared in close to 100 films. He also worked on stage and in radio.