Barbara Hale

 Barbara Hale (April 18, 1922 – January 26, 2017)

She was best known for her role as legal secretary Della Street on more than 270 episodes of the long-running Perry Mason television series. She reprised the role in 30 Perry Mason movies for television. Her first role was in Gildersleeve's Bad Day She was under contract to RKO Radio Pictures through the late 1940s. She appeared in Higher and Higher (1943) with Frank Sinatra and sang with the crooner; played leading lady to Robert Mitchum in West of the Pecos (1945); enjoyed top billing in both Lady Luck (1946) opposite Robert Young, her first "full stardom" and "her fifth A picture", 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), co-starred with James Stewart in The Jackpot (1951), with James Cagney in a 1953 drama, A Lion Is in the Streets, and opposite Rock Hudson in 1953's Seminole. She then appeared in 1955's The Far Horizons with Fred MacMurray and Charlton Heston, also working with some of Hollywood's best-known leading men of the day. Hale's career became inextricably linked with that of Perry Mason co-star Burr, including her 1971 guest-starring role on his next series, Ironside, in an episode titled "Murder Impromptu," followed by their 1980s and early '90s TV movies together. Her last onscreen appearance to date came in a TV biographical documentary about Burr that aired in 2000. Hale died at her home in Sherman Oaks, California on January 26, 2017 of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, aged 94.