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William Hopper, the actor who played the stalwart private detective Paul Drake on the hit 1957 legal drama "Perry Mason," was a notoriously prolific smoker, often seen with a cigarette hanging from his lips on camera. In 1970, Hopper suffered a stroke and succumbed to smoking-related health issues a month later. He was 55 years old. 

As Paul Drake, Hopper was a cynic, a more grizzled presence built to balance Perry Mason's serious intellect. He was the Dr. McCoy to Perry Mason's Spock. For those unfamiliar with the series, "Perry Mason" was about a Los Angeles defense lawyer, played brilliantly by Raymond Burr, who was always careful to investigate the clients he was hired to defend. Typically, innocent people came to Mason, and he was always curious about the details of their case. Mason would always face off against the L.A. District Attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman), who never won a case against him.

Sharon Acker, a Canadian film, television and theater actor best known for her roles in “Point Blank,” “The New Perry Mason” and “Happy Birthday to Me,” has died. She was 87.

Acker’s death was confirmed by her cousin, David Glover, in a tribute to his family member on Facebook: “My wife Judy and I were very close with Sharon and we spoke regularly even after she moved back to Toronto to be close to with daughters and family. I can never forget Sharon’s million dollar smile. She made everyone she came in contact with feel so much better.”

According to reports, Acker died March 16 at her retirement home in Toronto.

Across an acting career spanning four decades, Acker found one of her most enduring roles in the 1967 neo-noir “Point Blank,” helmed by John Boorman. Acker played the wife to Lee Marvin’s lead, who betrays her conman husband after a robbery on Alcatraz.

Sharon Acker, the Canadian actress who portrayed Lee Marvin’s unfaithful wife in the 1967 neo-noir classic Point Blank and the right-hand woman Della Street opposite Monte Markham on a rebooted Perry Mason in the 1970s, has died. She was 87.

Acker died March 16 in a retirement home in her native Toronto, her daughter Kim Everest, a casting director, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Star Trek fans know Acker for her January 1969 turn as Odona, a desperate woman from an overpopulated planet, on the third-season episode “The Mark of Gideon.”

She also starred on a 1976-77 CBS adaptation of Executive Suite, playing the wife of Mitchell Ryan‘s Dan Walling. (Acker and Ryan assumed the parts performed by William Holden and June Allyson in the 1954 MGM film directed by Robert Wise.)

In John Boorman’s Point Blank, Acker’s character takes up with John Vernon’s Mal Reese after he shoots Walker (Marvin...

Erle Stanley Gardner’s brilliant and savvy criminal defense attorney Perry Mason has been on the case since 1933’s “The Case of the Velvet Claws.” The attorney describes himself in that first novel as a “lawyer who has specialized in trial work, and in a lot of criminal work…I’m a specialist on getting people out of trouble.”

Inspired by the famed Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Earl Rogers who only lost three of his 77 murder trials, Mason was featured in 82 novels and four short stories, six Warner Bros. murder mystery movies, a long-running radio series, the beloved 1957-66 CBS series starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale as his true-blue assistant Della Street, movies and a 1973-74 series with Monte Markham. Matthew Rhys (“The Americans” ) plays the latest incarnation in HBO’s stylish “Perry Mason” series, currently in its second season.

Set during the Great Depression, the HBO drama has a real “Chinatown” feel,...

The Golden Globe drama series race is shaping up to be a battle between Season 4 of Netflix’s “The Crown,” which premieres Nov. 15, and HBO’s “Perry Mason,” according to the latest predictions of Gold Derby’s Experts. The reinvention of the classic Raymond Burr crime drama traces Mason’s early sketchy years as a L.A.-based private investigator before he was persuaded to try his hand at the law. The noirish mystery, set in 1932, stars Emmy winner Matthew Rhys with valiant and vibrant support from John Lithgow, Juliet Rylance and Shea Wigham. Rhys is a two-time Golden Globe nominee for his performance as a conflicted Russian spy in FX’s long-running series “The Americans.” Lithgow is a five-time Golden Globe nominee, most recently for his Emmy-winning turn as Winston Churchill in “The Crown,” and a two-time winner for his performances in NBC’s “3rd Rock from the Sun” and Showtime’s “Dexter.