Acting Career
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, 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 Hancock in The Far Horizons (1955) with Charlton Heston.
Hale is best known for the role of Della Street, secretary to attorney, Perry Mason, in the 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 age 78. In 1967 she guest starred on the ABC series Custer. Hale had a featured role in the 1970 film Airport, playing the wife of a jetliner pilot (Dean Martin).
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