Barbara Hale, at 94, played Perry Mason’s Della Street
Barbara Hale, best known for her Emmy Award-winning role as Perry Mason’s loyal secretary Della Street on the long-running 1950s and ’60s TV series starring Raymond Burr, has died. She was 94.
Ms. Hale died Thursday, according to her son, actor William Katt, who posted the news on his Facebook page.
Based on characters in author Erle Stanley Gardner’s popular mystery series, “Perry Mason,” about a crime-solving defense attorney, ran for nine seasons on CBS, from 1957 to 1966.
Ms. Hale viewed the devoted Della as “a woman who knew what everybody was thinking.”
“She was informed and very observant of everything that went on,” Ms. Hale said of the character in a 1993 interview with The Chicago Tribune. “That was my challenge as an actress — to be a necessary part of the office without being too aggressive.
Ms. Hale was a former RKO and Columbia Pictures contract player with a string of movies and TV dramatic anthology series appearances behind her when producer Gail Patrick Jackson offered her the role of Della.
The one-time Chicago fashion model, who was married to actor Bill Williams (TV’s Kit Carson) and had young children at home, wasn’t interested in working full time on a weekly TV series. But at Jackson’s urging, she agreed to read the pilot script.
“I called back after reading it and said: ‘Good luck, dear,’” Ms. Hale recalled in a 1993 interview with the Los Angeles Times, saying she didn’t think an actor could sustain Mason’s lengthy courtroom monologues on a weekly basis.
But when Jackson told her that Gardner had chosen Burr to play Mason, Ms. Hale said she thought they had an actor who could pull it off.