Tonight, NBC airs the last Perry Mason movie Raymond Burr ever made, The Case of the Killer Kiss.
Burr, a hefty man of legendary constitution, probably should not have made it. Wracked with cancer, he is seated in most scenes, and when he stands, he is beside a desk or file cabinet for support.
And yet Burr musters up a final, lovely smile for the movie’s end, his arm around his longtime co-star, Barbara Hale.
Best to remember him that way. Not long afterward, Burr, 76, died at his 40-acre Northern California ranch, where he raised sheep and cultivated orchids and his vineyard.
His companion of three decades, Robert Benevides, who shared and now owns his Sonoma County home, was there. Another friend, actor Charles Macaulay, confirmed that Burr refused most other visitors.
“He was my hero,” said Hale, who had played private secretary Della Street in all of the Mason mysteries. “He was in such pain, such terrible pain. But that man had such strength and such willpower.
“Just last February he had surgery to remove a kidney, and seven days after that he gave a dinner party. I just fussed at him, but he never would listen to me. He was a very, very strong, beautiful human. I shall miss him all my life.”
Hale said that Canadian-born Burr, whom she’d known since both were RKO Studio stock players in the 1940s, was determined to make the movie and approved of its sequels, The Perry Mason Mysteries. For the ailing Burr, who spent most of his days on the set in a wheelchair, the Killer Kiss cast and crew “tried doubly hard to stay up and happy,” said Hale.
NBC will begin The Perry Mason Mysteries in mid-December, starring Paul Sorvino as a lawyer who uses Mason’s office while the redoubtable lawyer is in Washington, D.C.
Hale appears again as Della. But Hale said she would not have continued in the role if another actor had been cast as Perry Mason. “I just couldn’t have – I wouldn’t have.”
Hale is now the sole survivor of the original Mason cast that included William Hopper (son of Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper) as detective Paul Drake, William Talman as prosecutor Hamilton Burger and Ray Collins as police lieutenant Arthur Tragg.
She is also the only actor to have appeared in every one of the Perry Mason stories since she and Burr began them in 1957. Even Burr himself was absent from four episodes.
In this week’s movie, there is one scene where Perry Mason abruptly turns and leaves the courtroom. That man, Hale admitted, is Burr’s double.
In the early ’40s, Hale appeared in several movies, uncredited, before making West of the Pecos in 1945 with a young actor named Bill Williams (real name William Katt).
Hale and Williams were married, then played newlyweds in A Likely Story (1947) and later became parents of two daughters, Juanita and Jody, and a son, William Jr. Much later, Hale would appear in her son’s short-lived series, The Greatest American Hero (March to May 1981), playing the Hero’s mom. And both father and son had turns on Perry Mason mysteries.
In 1985, producer Dean Hargrove asked Hale if she was interested in doing a reunion show.
“I said, ‘What are you going to do to replace the other boys?’ And he said, ‘We’re going to bring in another younger man, and I have a younger man in mind, named William Katt. He’s been doing a series, The Greatest American Hero, and I’m looking for him now.’ And I said, ‘Well, he’s in Kansas City doing The Music Man. And I changed his diapers.”‘
Hargrove, she said, was astounded to learn that Katt, who came aboard to play Paul Drake Jr., was Hale’s son.
The final movie, The Case of the Killer Kiss, is built around a soap opera and stars actors who appear in daytime dramas: Genie Francis, Mark Shaw, Alex Straub and Linda Dano (General Hospital); Krista Tesreau (The Guiding Light); Michael Tylo and Christian Le Blanc (The Young and the Restless); Arleen Sorkin (Days of Our Lives); and Karen Moncrieff (Days of Our Lives).
