Olson: When Barbara Hale became 'DeKalb's own'

Actress Barbara Hale died at her home in Sherman Oaks, California, last week at age 94, and since then, several people have pointed out the connection she had to DeKalb.

Hale had some connections to the area, but it was probably a visit she made in 1951 that led many to consider her “DeKalb’s own.”

Hale was born April 18, 1922, in the DeKalb Public Hospital, and attended the McMurry School – a practice school at what is now McMurry Hall on the Northern Illinois University campus – before moving to Rockford as a young child, according to Daily Chronicle reports from the time.

Hale grew up in Rockford, where she won a beauty pageant, then went on to a career as a model and leading woman in films in the 1940s and ’50s opposite actors including James Stewart, James Cagney, Robert Mitchum and her actor husband, Bill Williams.

It seems unimaginable today, but in October 1951, Hollywood launched a weeklong marketing initiative called “Movietime U.S.A.,” designed to bring movie stars and writers to towns across America to interact with regular people.

Hale, along with Williams, actress Alice Kelly and screenwriter Valentine Davis (writer of “On the Riviera” and “Miracle on 34th Street”), came to DeKalb County on the morning of Oct. 12, 1951. They paraded through Genoa, and then down State Street in Sycamore, where they were led by the Spartans’ marching band. Then they came to DeKalb.

A front-page story in the next afternoon's Daily Chronicle reported that the DeKalb Township High School band led them up Seventh Street to Lincoln Highway, from there to a platform at the Memorial Clock, which at the time was at Third Street and Lincoln.

About 2,000 people crowded around the platform, and the reporter noted that the visiting stars were “visibly startled with the crowds.”

“You’re a grand bunch, even those of you who are not relatives,” Hale said in her only quote in the story.

Later, at a luncheon at The Cabin, Hale posed for a photo with several of her relatives, including an uncle, Justus Hale of Maple Park, and his wife, “Mrs. Justus Hale.”

The visit left an impression that was remembered for years. When Hale’s next film, Columbia Pictures’ “The First Time,” was shown in DeKalb, the ads reminded the public of Hale’s “unforgettable visit to DeKalb in person last fall!”

The DeKalb theater, billed as “The Theatre of Tomorrow,” in 1953 ran a photo of “DeKalb’s own Barbara Hale” to plug the new Technicolor hit “Last of the Comanches,” in which she starred with Broderick Crawford.

Hale took on the role of tenacious legal secretary Della Street in the “Perry Mason” show on CBS in 1957, and won an Emmy while working with Raymond Burr in the original series that lasted until 1966 on CBS.

She reprised the role several times in Perry Mason TV movies from 1985 to ’95.

Hale did have relatives in DeKalb. A 1959 visit to see an aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Scruggs Colvin, and others, was noted in the society pages.

However, after the 1950s ended, her association with DeKalb in the popular mind faded. Later mentions of her in the Chronicle rarely brought up the DeKalb connection.

• Eric Olson is editor of the Daily Chronicle. Reach him at 815-756-4841, ext. 2257, email eolson@shawmedia.com, or follow him on Twitter @DC_Editor.