Barbara Hale, Perry Mason’s loyal secretary and confidant, Della Street, has passed away at the age of 94.

Born on April 18th, 1922 in DeKalb, Illinois, Miss Hale majored in art and drawing at the prestigious Chicago Academy of Fine Arts supplementing her college tuition as a model for the comic strip, Ramblin’ Bill and being featured as one of the original Dr Pepper calendar girls when she met actor and the love of her life, Bill Williams.

Miss Hale had three children: Jody, Juanita, and William, who would later become an actor, William Katt, most notably known for his role as Ralph Hinkley in The Greatest American Hero and the surf movie Big Wednesday where he also co-starred with her as his on-screen mother as in the later, made for TV feature films of Perry Mason, as private investigator, Paul Drake, Jr.

Miss Hale appeared in several feature films such as West of the Pecos, where she met her future husband Bill Williams, The Boy With the Green Hair and the film noir classic The Window, but it was her role in the Perry Mason series that made her famous.

Close friends with Raymond Burr, who played the stalwart attorney who only lost one case in the history of his barrister work and that was to set an innocent woman free in The Case of the Deadly Verdict, Mr. Burr, off-screen was an avid horticulturist, named a rare orchid after Miss Hale and was noted on record that Miss Hale had the best shriek in Hollywood in the series when she was scared.

A beautiful woman on screen and off, a loving mother, Miss Hale was one of a kind who will be missed. She was a class act all the way.

STARBURST sends our heartfelt good thoughts to her family and friends.

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