Barbara Hale is an American actress best known for her role as legal secretary Della Street on more than 250 episodes of the long-running Perry Mason television series and later reprising the role in 30 made-for-TV movies.
Hale was born in DeKalb, Illinois, to Luther Ezra Hale, a landscape gardener, and his wife, Wilma Colvin. She is of Scots-Irish ancestry. Hale graduated from high school in Rockford, Illinois, then attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, planning to become an artist. Her performing career began in Chicago when she started modeling to pay for her education. She moved to Hollywood in 1943, and made her first screen appearances playing small parts (often uncredited).
Hale was under contract to RKO Radio Pictures through the late 1940s. She appeared in Higher and Higher (1943) with Frank Sinatra; played leading lady to Robert Mitchum in West of the Pecos (1945); enjoyed top billing in both Lady Luck (1946) opposite Robert Young and The Window (1949) with Arthur Kennedy; and co-starred in Jolson Sings Again (1949), with Larry Parks playing Al Jolson and Hale as Jolson's wife, Ellen Clark. She played the top-billed title role in Lorna Doone (1951) and portrayed Julia Hancock in The Far Horizons (1955) with Fred MacMurray and Charlton Heston.
Her flourishing movie career more or less ended when Hale accepted her best known role, Della Street, secretary to attorney Perry Mason, in the TV series with Raymond Burr. The show ran from 1957 to 1966, and she reprised the role in several television movies. Her last performance to date was in 2000 at age 78. In 1967 she guest starred on the ABC series Custer. Hale also had a featured role in the 1970 ensemble film Airport, playing the wife of a jetliner pilot (Dean Martin).
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Florence Lake (born Florence Silverlake, November 27, 1904 – April 11, 1980) was an American actress best known as the leading lady in most of the Edgar Kennedy comedy shorts.
Florence was petite, with a high-pitched speaking voice. She perfected a comical singsong delivery that established her in "dumb" roles. She personified flightiness in the Kennedy shorts, as the scatterbrained Mrs. Kennedy. After the series ended upon Kennedy's death in 1948, she continued to play character roles in films and television. Her best-known TV role was Jenny, the Claverton telephone operator in Lassie. Lake played the role for the entire ten year "farm seasons" of the show (1954–1964), thus becoming the Lassie player with the longest tour of duty on the series.
She played the role of Mama Angel in a 1957 episode of the The Lone Ranger TV series entitled "The Angel and the Outlaw". She also appeared in the first color episode of the TV series Superman in 1957 as a cave woman.
In her later years, Lake appeared as Elvira Norton on an episode of Dragnet entitled "Frauds". She also played a blind date for the character Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode, "Lou's First Date". Her last roles were in the TV series Emergency! and Baretta in 1976.
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Richard "Dick" Elliott (April 30, 1886 – December 22, 1961) was an American character actor who played in over 240 films from the 1930s until the time of his death.
He was born Richard Damon Elliott in Boston, Massachusetts.
Elliott played many different roles, typically as a somewhat blustery sort, such as a politician. A short, fat man, Elliott played Santa Claus on the Jimmy Durante, Red Skelton, and Jack Benny programs. Elliott had a couple of memorable lines in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), in which he scolded James Stewart, who was trying to say goodnight to Donna Reed, advising him to stop hemming and hawing and "just go ahead and kiss her".
He also had a few memorable appearances in episodes of the Adventures of Superman television series. He appeared three times as Stanley on the CBS sitcom December Bride, as well as on two of ABC/Warner Brothers' western series, Sugarfoot and Maverick. He was cast as the prospector Peter Cooper and then as Sheriff Tiny Morris in two segments of CBS's Tales of the Texas Rangers. He appeared twice as Doc Thornton on ABC's The Real McCoys. Elliott is perhaps best known as Mayberry's Mayor Pike in early episodes of CBS's The Andy Griffith Show, one of his last screen works. In two of the eleven episodes featuring Elliot as mayor, actress Josie Lloyd portrayed his daughter.
On December 22, 1961, Elliott died from heart illness.
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Herbert Banemann Rawlinson (15 November 1885 – 12 July 1953) was an English-born stage, film, radio, and television actor. A leading man during Hollywood's silent film era, Rawlinson transitioned to character roles after the advent of sound films.
Rawlinson was born in New Brighton, Cheshire, England, UK. He sailed to America on the same ship as Charlie Chaplin.
He died of lung cancer in 1953.
Ernie Adams (born Ernest Stephen Dumarais, June 18, 1885 – November 26, 1947) was an American vaudevillian performer, stage and screen actor and writer.
Born in San Francisco, California to Leon D. Adams and Laurence G. Girard, he was also billed as Ernest S. Adams and Ernie S. Adams.
He appeared in vaudeville, theater, and film. He started his career in musical comedy on Broadway. Along with his wife Berdonna Gilbert, he formed the vaudeville team "Gilbert and Adams". He appeared in more than 400 films starting from the silent era between 1919 and 1948, and was particularly known for playing shady characters. On Broadway, Adams appeared in Toot-Toot! (1918).
On November 26, 1947, Adams died of an acute pulmonary edema at the West Olympic Sanitarium in Los Angeles, California, aged 62. He is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ernie Adams (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Sam Flint was born on October 19, 1882 in Gwinnett County, Georgia, USA as Samuel A. Ethridge. He was an actor, known for The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955), Winds of the Wasteland (1936) and Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat (1944). He died on October 17, 1980 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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George Chandler (June 30, 1898 – June 10, 1985), born in Waukegan, Illinois, was an American actor. He made his screen debut in 1928, ultimately appearing, throughout his career, in over 140 films, usually in smaller supporting roles. Chandler is perhaps best known for playing the character of Uncle Petrie Martin on the television series Lassie.
Early in his performing career he had a vaudeville act, billed as "George Chandler, the Musical Nut", which featured comedy and his violin. He served in the United States Army during World War I.
In addition to many film roles throughout the years 1928-1979, Chandler appeared, from 1951 onward, in numerous television series.
He was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1960.
George Chandler died in Panorama City, California, the result of cancer, on June 10, 1985. He was 86.
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Ruth Lee (September 14, 1895 - August 3, 1975) was an American film and stage actress. In film she played primarily uncredited parts. As a stage actress she acted in stock theater with the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Lee died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California. She was married to the actor Grandon Rhodes.
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Marietta Canty (1905-1986) was an African American actress, community activist and recipient of numerous humanist awards.
As an actress, Marietta Canty first appeared on Broadway in 1933. She also appeared in 40 films between 1940 and 1955, mostly in supporting roles and bit parts. Two of her first roles were in the films The Lady is Waiting (1942) and The Spoilers (1942), both with Marlene Dietrich in the leading role. Canty is perhaps best known as Delilah, Spencer Tracy's housemaid, in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and in its sequel Father's Little Dividend (1951). Canty retired from film acting in 1955, her last role in Hollywood was Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, where she had a memorable part as Sal Mineo's family maid.