Barbara Hale (born April 18, 1922) is an American actress best known for her role as Della Street on the long running Perry Mason show.

Acting career

Hale was born in DeKalb, Illinois, to Luther Ezra Hale, a landscape gardener, and his wife Wilma Colvin. She is of mainly Scottish and Irish ancestry. Hale graduated from high school in Rockford, Illinois, and 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, Lady Luck (1946) opposite Robert Young and Frank Morgan, the The Window (1949), and Jolson Sings Again (1949), with Larry Parks playing Al Jolson and Hale as Jolson's wife, Ellen Clark. She played the title role in Lorna Doone (1951) and was Julia Hancock in The Far Horizons (1955) with Charlton Heston.

Hale had a featured role in the movie Airport, playing the wife of the pilot (Dean Martin). In 1967, she guest starred on the ABC series Custer.

Hale is best known for the role of Della Street, secretary to attorney Perry Mason, in TV series with Raymond Burr. The show ran from 1957 to 1966, and she reprised the role in several television movies. Her last performance was in 2000, at the age of 78.

Spokesperson

Barbara Hale is also remembered as a spokesperson for Amana, memorably intoning "If it doesn't say Amana, it's not a Radarange"

Private life

In 1945, during the filming of West of the Pecos, Hale met actor Bill Williams. They married the following year, and would become the parents of two daughters (Jodi and Juanita) and a son (actor William Katt). Her son played detective Paul Drake with her in several made-for-television Perry Mason movies. She also appeared as the mother of Ralph Hinkley (played by William Katt) in an episode of The Greatest American Hero.

Bill Williams died of cancer in 1992, after 46 years of marriage. Hale herself has survived cancer. Now a grandmother, she is retired and is a follower of the Bahá'í Faith.

Tributes

Hale has been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She won the Emmy Award in 1959 and was nominated a second time in 1961.