Actor. He is remembered as a 20th century American actor, who was best-known playing the role of "Hamilton Burger," the perpetually unsuccessful District Attorney on the popular 1957 to 1966 television murder-mystery series "Perry Mason." Born William Whitney Talman Jr., the son of a wealthy businessman, his father was the vice-president of an electric company, which manufactured devices for yachts. His family's conspicuous affluence instigated frequent scrapes with fellow classmates, yet he survived the ordeals and became a member of his church's boxing team, which evened the odds of such future encounters. As an avid sportsman, he played semi-professional baseball. After a failed attempt at studying law at Dartmouth College, he made his way to New York, where family friends in show business enabled him to get a start in the acting profession. Working his way up through a series of small stage roles, Talman gradually built an extensive stage career in New York, including the touring company of "Of Mice and Men." During World War II, he was drafted in January of 1942, entering as a private before having a 30-month tour in the Pacific. He received a commission and eventually was promoted to major. Besides his Pacific combat tour, he taught soldiers and provided entertainment. After the war, he relocated to Hollywood in 1949, playing his first major screen role as the gangster "Bunny Harris" in "Red, Hot and Blue." Talman was soon in demand as a Hollywood "heavy" and proceeded to compile a long list of villainous film credits, most notably as the psycho killer "Emmett Myers" in the 1953 film noir classic "The Hitch-Hiker." He appeared in 17 films. He co-wrote two films, "I Lived Before" in 1956 and "Joe Dakota" in 1957. Talman was married three times and divorced twice: to Lynne Carter, Barbara Read and Margaret Larkin Flanagan. He fathered a daughter with his first marriage, another daughter and a son with his second marriage and in his third marriage, another son and daughter in addition to adopting his wife's two children from her marriage to Flanagan. In 1957, Talman was cast in the role of "Hamilton Burger" in the Perry Mason series, who he once termed "the most unsuccessful prosecuting attorney in the history of the legal profession." He would portray the eternally frustrated Burger in a total of 210 episodes over the whole 9-year run of the series, except for the time he was briefly fired during the third season. In March of 1960 he was arrested in a police raid on a Hollywood party he was attending, where illegal drugs were found and all the participants were reportedly nude. Despite his claims of innocence and his acquittal on all formal charges, the producers of "Perry Mason" felt that the media scandal that resulted from his arrest was sufficient grounds to fire Talman for violating the "morals clause" in his contract. However, the intervention of his fellow cast members, most notably Raymond Burr, as well as public pressure on CBS, got him reinstated as Burger after an absence of seven episodes. Despite his reinstatement, Talman was still effectively blackballed elsewhere in Hollywood, thus outside of Perry Mason, he worked very little in show business after the party incident. After the "Perry Mason" show ended in 1966, he made a six-week tour to entertain the troops during the Vietnam War. His last film was "The Ballad of Josie" in 1967 co-starring with Doris Day. In September of 1967, Talman sought medical treatment for a persistent cough and was diagnosed with advanced, inoperable stage-four lung cancer. The cancer did not respond to treatment and before his death, metastasized to his liver, bones and brain. By the following summer the actor realized he was dying and made a fateful decision. In July of 1968 the 53-year-old Talman, gaunt and in obvious pain, taped a landmark antismoking public service announcement that warned of the hazards of cigarettes, the first such ad ever made by a celebrity. The tape was made at his home in Encino, California and at his request, was not aired until after his death six weeks later. Besides being a talented actor, he is remembered for his fight with lung cancer and his stance against cigarette smoking. In 2002, his third wife died of lung cancer related to smoking.