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Barbara Hale (born April 18, 1922) 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 dozens of 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, 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... MORE

Barbara Hale (born April 18, 1922) 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 dozens of 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, 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; and 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), co-starred with James Cagney as Verity Martin in 1953's A Lion Is in the Streets, and portrayed Julia LESS