Bartlett Robinson, Radio’s Perry Mason, Is Dead at 73

Bartlett (Bart) Robinson, who gave Perry Mason a radio voice in 1943, has died at a retirement home in Fallbrook. He was 73 and died March 26 after a lengthy battle with cancer, his wife, Margot, said this week.

Robinson also portrayed the noble but crazed and suffering husband on “Portia Faces Life” and was a regular on “Yours Truly Johnny Dollar,” the last major dramatic radio network show when it went off the air in 1962.

Born in New York, Robinson first broke into the entertainment business when he and some young friends who called themselves the Sunday Players drove to Los Angeles in 1933 and landed a job on radio station KFI.

For the next several years he alternated between stage work in New York and radio and films in Los Angeles.

He worked with Henry Fonda and Lillian Gish on stage and amassed a series of regular radio credits that included such top-rated shows as “The Romance of Helen Trent,” “Backstage Wife,” “Valiant Lady” and “Young Dr. Malone.”

As radio began to wind down in the 1950s, Robinson shifted to films and television, performing supporting roles in “Toward the Unknown,” “The Spirit of St. Louis,” “No Time for Sergeants,” “I Want to Live,” “The Fortune Cookie” and more.

On television he was seen in sustaining roles on “Mona McCluskey” in 1954-55 and “Wendy and Me” in 1964-65.

In addition to his wife he is survived by two sons, a brother and two grandchildren.