William Whitney Talman Jr. (February 4, 1915 – August 30, 1968) was an American television and movie actor, best known for playing Los Angeles District Attorney Hamilton Burger in the television series Perry Mason.
Family and education
William Talman was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Ada Barber and William Whitney Talman, a vice president of an electronics company. His maternal grandparents, Catherine Gandy and James Wells Barber, were immigrants from England.
Talman founded the drama club at the Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He continued to act at Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan. After college, he worked in summer stock and at an iron foundry, paper mills, boat yards, and as an automobile salesman. Talman served for 30 months in the United States Army in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, beginning his service as a private on February 4, 1942, at Camp Upton in Yaphank, Long Island, New York. He was ultimately commissioned a major during the war.
Acting career
Talman began his acting career on the stage. He was the leading man in the summer stock company at Ivoryton, Connecticut, where he met his first wife, and he played the male lead in Dear Ruth during part of the play's New York run. He appeared on Broadway in Beverly Hills, Spring Again and A Young Man's Fancy, and toured with the road companies of Yokel Boy and Of Mice and Men.
William Talman quickly established himself as a villain in motion pictures. His breakthrough role was in director Richard Fleischer's 1950 film noir thriller Armored Car Robbery, inspired by the Great Brink's Robbery. Talman played the leading role of a career criminal, acknowledged as a genius in gangland circles, who painstakingly masterminded the armored car robbery of the title. In the 1952 film Beware, My Lovely, in which Ida Lupino played a war widow terrorized by a madman in her home, a photograph of Talman was used for the picture of her late, heroic husband.
In 1953, Talman played a sadistic, psychopathic killer in a movie directed by Lupino, the film noir The Hitch-Hiker. The New York Times wrote, "William Talman, as the ruthless murderer, makes the most of one of the year's juiciest assignments."
His performance was also noted by Gail Patrick Jackson, executive producer of the CBS-TV series Perry Mason (1957–66). Raymond Burr had initially auditioned for the role of Mason's adversary, Los Angeles district attorney Hamilton Burger, but Patrick encouraged Burr to lose 60 pounds and read for the lead role – which Burr successfully did. Patrick already had an actor in mind for the district attorney: "I'd seen a brilliant little movie, The Hitch-Hiker, and had to have Bill Talman as Burger – and he never disappointed us", Patrick said.
In 1958, a journalist asked Talman how he felt about Burger losing to Mason week after week. Talman said, "Burger doesn't lose. How can a district attorney lose when he fails to convict an innocent person? Unlike a fist or gun fight, in court you can have a winner without having a loser. As a matter of fact, Burger in a good many instances has joined Mason in action against unethical attorneys, lying witnesses, or any one else obstructing justice. Like any real-life district attorney, justice is Burger's main interest."
Talman, as Burger, went on to lose all but three cases in the nine-year series, including a record two separate murder trials in the final episode. He called his record "the longest losing streak in history". Talman had the title role in the 1960 episode "The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor" in which Burger disqualified himself from prosecuting a longtime personal friend, Jefferson Pike, who was accused of murder. At the end of the episode, after Pike was cleared by Mason, Burger said, "You know, I think I won this case."
Aside from his major supporting role in Perry Mason, Talman also guest-starred in various television series, including Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, Cimarron City and Gunsmoke. After the 1966 cancellation of Perry Mason, Talman appeared on The Wild, Wild West and in a first-season episode of The Invaders, "Quantity: Unknown", which was his last on-screen acting role before his death.