Raymond Burr
From the film Please Murder Me (1956)
Born	Raymond William Stacey Burr (1917-05-21)May 21, 1917 New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Died	September 12, 1993(1993-09-12) (aged 76) Healdsburg, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1940–93
Spouse	Annette Sutherland ?-1943 (her death) Isabella Ward 1948-1952 (divorced) Adrina Laura Morgan ?-1955 (her death)
Partner	Robert Benevides 1960-1993
Children	Michael Evan Burr 1942-1953

Raymond William Stacey Burr (May 21, 1917 – September 12, 1993) was a Canadian actor,^[1] primarily known for his title roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside.^[1] His early acting career included roles on Broadway, radio, television and in film,^[2] usually as the villain.^[3] He won two Emmy Awards in 1959 and 1961^[4] for the role of Perry Mason, which he played for nine seasons between 1957 and 1966. His second hit series, Ironside, earned him six Emmy nominations, and two Golden Globe nominations.^[4] He is also widely known for his role as Steve Martin in both Godzilla, King of the Monsters! and Godzilla 1985.

In addition to acting, Burr owned an orchid business and had begun to grow a vineyard. He was a collector of wines and art, and was very fond of cooking.^[5]

After his death from cancer in 1993, Burr's personal life came into question as details of his known biography appeared to be unverifiable.^[6][7]

In 1996, Raymond Burr was ranked #44 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.^[8]

Early life[link]

Burr was born Raymond William Stacey Burr in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada,^[5] to William Johnston Burr (1889–1985), an Irish hardware salesman,^[9] and his wife Minerva (née Smith, 1892–1974), a concert pianist and music teacher, who was of English and Scottish descent.^[9] After his parents divorced, Burr moved to Vallejo, California^[5] with his mother and younger siblings, Geraldine and James Edmond. He attended a military academy for a while and graduated from Berkeley High School.^[10]

In later years, Burr freely invented stories of a happy childhood. He told the Modesto Bee in 1986, for example, that when he was twelve and a half years old, his mother sent him to New Mexico for a year to work as a ranch hand. He was already his full adult height and rather large and "had fallen in with a group of college-aged kids who didn't realize how young Raymond was, and they let him tag along with them in activities and situations far too sophisticated for him to handle."^[11] He developed a passion for growing things and, while still a teenager, joined the Civilian Conservation Corps for a year.^[11] Throughout his teenage years he had some acting work, making his stage debut at age 12 with a Vancouver stock company.^[5]

Burr may have served in the Coast Guard, but never in the United States Navy as he and his publicists later claimed.^[12] Nor was he seriously wounded in the stomach during the Battle of Okinawa in the latter stages of World War II.^[13] Other invented biographical details that were made include years of college education at a variety of institutions, world travel, an acting tour of the United Kingdom, and success in high school athletics.^[14] Such claims were accepted as fact by the press during his lifetime^[1][5] and by his first biographer.^[15]

Early career[link]

In 1937, Burr began his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1941, he landed his first Broadway role in Crazy with the Heat. He became a contract player at RKO studio, playing a film noir villain in Raw Deal (1948).

Burr appeared in over 60 movies between 1946 and 1957. In 1976, Richard Schickel cited his performance in Pitfall (1948) as a prototype of film noir in contrast with the appealing television characters for which Burr later became famous.^[16] He received favorable notice for his role as an aggressive prosecutor in A Place in the Sun (1951), co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Shelly Winters. Perhaps his best-known film role of the period was that of a suspected murderer in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly.^[1][5] He played the part of reporter Steve Martin in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956).^[17]

Burr emerged as a prolific television character actor in the early-to-mid 1950s. He made his television debut on the April 24, 1952 episode "The Tiger" of Gruen Playhouse on the DuMont TV network. (At about the same time, Burr guest-starred on an episode of The Amazing Mr. Malone on ABC.) This part led to other roles in such programs as Dragnet, Chesterfield Sound Off Time, Four Star Playhouse, Mr. & Mrs. North, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, The Ford Television Theatre, and Lux Video Theatre.

During this time, Burr's distinctive voice could also be heard on network radio, appearing alongside Jack Webb in the short-lived Pat Novak for Hire on ABC radio, as well as in early episodes of NBC's Dragnet.^[3] He also made guest appearances on other Los Angeles-based shows, such as Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and landed a starring role in CBS's Fort Laramie (1956),^[18] which depicted 19th-century life at old Fort Laramie.^[19] One year later, Burr became a television star as Perry Mason.

[edit] Perry Mason and Ironside

In 1956, Burr auditioned for the role of District Attorney Hamilton Burger in Perry Mason, a new courtroom drama based on the highly successful novels written and created by Erle Stanley Gardner that was to air on CBS. William Talman tried out for the title role. The producers of the show allowed Burr to try for the title role and when Gardner, who was present at the audition, saw him he declared, "He is Perry Mason."^[3] Mason eventually became the role with which Burr was most closely identified.^[20] The series ran from 1957 to 1966, and Burr won Emmy Awards^[4] in 1959 and 1961 for his performance as Perry Mason. The series has been re-run in syndication ever since.^{[citation needed]} Beginning in 2006, the series has become available on DVD, with each calendar year seeing the release of one season as two separate volumes. Though Burr's character is often said never to have lost a case, he did lose two murder cases in early episodes of the series, once when his client misled him and another time when his client was later cleared.^[21]

In the early 1960s, Burr narrated one film and appeared in several others sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service. They were designed to educate the public about accident prevention.^[22]

Burr moved from CBS to Universal Studios, where he played the title role in the television drama Ironside, which ran on NBC. In the pilot episode, San Francisco Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside is wounded by a sniper during an attempt on his life and is left an invalid in a wheelchair. This role gave Burr another hit series, the first crime drama show ever to star a disabled police officer. The show, which ran from 1967 to 1975, earned Burr six Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations.^[4] Burr's weight, always an issue for him in getting roles, became a public relations problem when Johnny Carson began making jokes about him during his Tonight Show monologues. Burr refused to appear as Carson's guest from then on and told Us Weekly years later: "I have been asked a number of times to do his show and I won't do it. Because I like NBC. He's doing an NBC show. If I went on I'd have some things to say, not just about the bad jokes he's done about me, but bad jokes he does about everybody who can't fight back because they aren't there. And that wouldn't be good for NBC."^[23] In later life his distinctive physique and manner could be used as a reference that would be universally recognized. One journal for librarians published a writer's opinion that "asking persons without cataloging experience to design automated catalogs...is as practical as asking Raymond Burr to pole vault."^[24]

NBC failed in two attempts to launch Burr as the star of a new series. In a two-hour television movie format, Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence aired in February 1976 with Burr again in the role of the lawyer who outwits the district attorney. Despite good reviews for Burr, the critical reception was poor and NBC decided against developing it into a series.^[25] In 1977, Burr starred in the short-lived TV series Kingston: Confidential, a critical failure that was scheduled opposite the extraordinarily popular Charlie's Angels. It was cancelled after thirteen weeks.^[26] Burr took on a shorter project next, playing an underworld boss in a six-hour miniseries, 79 Park Avenue^[27] One last attempt to launch a series followed on CBS. The two-hour premiere of The Jourdan Chance aroused little interest.^[28]

In 1985, Burr was approached by producers Dean Hargrove and Fred Silverman to star in a made-for-TV movie Perry Mason Returns.^[29] Burr recalled in a 1986 interview, "They asked me to do a new "Godzilla" the same week they asked me to do another Perry Mason, so I did them both."^[30] He agreed to do the Mason movie if Barbara Hale returned to reprise her role as Della Street.^[31] Hale agreed and when Perry Mason Returns aired in December 1985, her character became the defendant.^[29] The rest of the original cast had died, but Hale's real-life son William Katt played the role of Paul Drake, Jr.^[29] The movie was so successful Burr made 26 more before his death.^[1] Many episodes were filmed in and around Denver, Colorado.^[2]

By 1993, when Burr signed with NBC for another season of Mason films, he was using a wheelchair full-time because of his failing health. In his final Mason movie, The Case of the Killer Kiss, he was shown either sitting or standing while leaning on a table, but only once standing unsupported for a few seconds.^[32] Twelve more Mason movies were scheduled before Burr's death, including one scheduled to film the month he died.^[33]

In 1993, as he had with the Perry Mason TV movies, Burr decided to do an Ironside reunion movie. In May of that year, The Return of Ironside aired, reuniting the entire original cast of the 1967-1975 series.^[34] Burr's illness precluded any further such reunions.^[33]

Other work[link]

In 1973, Burr starred in one-hour television drama, Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John. He portrayed Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, as he tried to prevent the forced return of Jewish children from Istanbul to Nazi Germany.^[35]

Burr co-starred in such TV films as Eischied: Only The Pretty Girls Die and Disaster On The Coastliner (both 1979), The Curse of King Tut's Tomb and The Night the City Screamed (both 1980), and Peter and Paul (1981). He also had a supporting role in Dennis Hopper's controversial film Out of the Blue (1980) and spoofed his Perry Mason image in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982).

Burr reprised his 1956 role in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! in Godzilla 1985: The Legend Is Reborn.^[36] The film won Burr a nomination for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor.^[37] Burr delivered the film's closing lines: "For now, Godzilla - that strangely innocent and tragic monster - has gone to earth. Whether he returns or not, or is never again seen by human eyes, the things he has taught us remain."^[38]

Burr also worked as media spokesman for the now-defunct British Columbia-based real estate company Block Bros. in TV, radio, and print ads during the late 1970s and early 1980s.^[39]

In 1983, he made a rare stage appearance when he starred in the thriller Underground at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto and after a UK tour, at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London.^[40]

On January 20, 1987, he hosted the television special that later served as the pilot for the long-running series Unsolved Mysteries.^[41]

Personal life[link]

Burr married actress Isabella ("Bella") Ward on January 10, 1949. They lived together for less than a year and divorced after four years. Neither remarried.^[42] At various times in his career, Burr or his managers offered biographical details that appear spurious or unverifiable. These include marriage to Scottish actress Annette Sutherland, supposedly killed in the same plane crash as Leslie Howard. A son, Michael Evan, was said to have resulted from another invented marriage to Laura Andrina Morgan. Burr provided the only evidence of the boy's existence and death from leukemia at age 10.^[43] As late as 1991, Burr told Parade magazine that when he realized his son was dying, he took him on a one-year tour of the United States. He said, "Before my boy left, before his time was gone, I wanted him to see the beauty of his country and its people."^[1] His publicist knew that Burr worked in Hollywood throughout the year he said he was touring with his son.^[44] As with Burr's claims to have served in the U.S. military, many of these fictions were believed and widely reported.^[5][45]

In the late 1950s, Burr was rumored to be romantically involved with Natalie Wood.^[6] Wood's agent sent her on public dates so she could be noticed by directors and producers and so that the actors could present themselves in public as heterosexuals. The dates also helped to disguise Wood's intimate relationship with Robert Wagner, whom she later married.^[46] Burr felt enough attraction to Wood to resent Warner Bros.' decision to promote her attachment to Tab Hunter instead. Robert Benevides later said: "He was a little bitter about it. He was really in love with her, I guess."^[47][48]

Sexual orientation[link]

In the mid 1950s, Burr met Robert Benevides (1929–present), a young actor and Korean War veteran, on the set of Perry Mason. According to Benevides they became a couple about 1960 and he gave up acting in 1963^[49][50] and later became a production consultant for 21 of the Perry Mason TV movies.^[51] Together they owned and operated an orchid business and then a vineyard,^[52] in the Dry Creek Valley. They were partners until Burr's death in 1993.^[51] Burr left Benevides his entire estate, including "all my jewelry, clothing, books, works of art,...and other items of a personal nature."^[53]

Later accounts of Burr's life explain that he hid his homosexuality to protect his career. In 2000, AP reporter Bob Thomas recalled the situation:^[49][54]

It was an open secret...that he was gay. He had a companion who was with him all the time. That was a time in Hollywood history when homosexuality was not countenanced. Ray was not a romantic star by any means, but he was a very popular figure...if it was revealed at that time in Hollywood history [that he was gay] it would have been very difficult for him to continue.

Art Marks, a producer of Perry Mason, recalled Burr's talk of wives and children: "I know he was just putting on a show....That was my gut feeling. I think the wives and the loving women, the Natalie Wood thing, were a bit of a cover."^[55] In 2006, Dean Hargrove, who worked on Perry Mason Returns, said: "I had always assumed that Raymond was gay, because he had a relationship with Robert Benevides for a very long time. Whether or not he had relationships with women, I had no idea. I did know that I had trouble keeping track of whether he was married or not in these stories. Raymond had the ability to mythologize himself, to some extent, and some of his stories about his past...tended to grow as time went by."^[56]

A 2007 memoir by actor Paul Picerni described several experiences with Burr about 1951 on the set of A Place in the Sun, when he felt Burr expressed sexual interest in him. He wrote: "I saw him staring at me. With his big blue eyes. And with this strange expression on his face. For the first time in my life, I felt like a DAME. Then it hit me: He'd been giving me all this bullshit about his wife and his two kids in London, when in fact he was gay, and he was makin' a move on me!" He remembered Burr "was a great guy and very subtle in his homosexuality."^[57]

Hobbies[link]

Burr had many hobbies over the course of his life: cultivating orchids, collecting wine, art, stamps, and seashells. He was interested in cooking, flying, sailing, and fishing. According to A&E Biography, Burr was also an avid reader with a retentive memory. He was also among the earliest importers and breeders of Portuguese Water Dogs in the United States.^[58]

He developed his interest in cultivating and hybridizing orchids into an orchid business with Benevides. Over twenty years, their company, Sea God Nurseries, had nurseries in Fiji, Hawaii, the Azores, and California, and was responsible for adding more than 1,500 new orchids to the worldwide catalog.^[49] Burr named one them "Barbara Hale Orchid" after his Perry Mason costar.^[59][60]

Raymond Burr Vineyards

Together Burr and Benevides cultivated Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Port grapes, as well as orchids, at Burr's farmland holdings in Sonoma County, California. After Burr's death, Benevides named the property after Burr: "I finally decided it should be called Raymond Burr Vineyards. He didn't want it named after him, I know that. We had talked about that possibility and he didn't like that at all, but we're making great wines now. It's a memorial to him, to his idea, and I think it deserves to be named after him."^[49] The land is still in production and is known as the Raymond Burr Vineyards.

In 1965, Burr purchased the Naitauba, a 4,000 acres (16 km²) island in Fiji. There, he and Benevides oversaw the raising of copra (coconut meat) and cattle, as well as orchids.^[49][60] They spent two months a year there and Burr planned to retire there permanently. Medical problems made that impossible and he sold the property in 1983.^[61]

Philanthropy[link]

Burr was a well-known philanthropist.^{[62][63][64][65]} He gave enormous sums of money, including his salaries from the Perry Mason movies, to charity. He was also known for sharing his wealth with friends. He sponsored 26 foster children through the Foster Parents' Plan or Save The Children, many with the greatest medical needs.^[11] He also gave money and some of his Perry Mason scripts to the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California.^[65] Burr raised money for the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum in Sanibel, Florida, donating a considerable collection of Fijian cowries and cones from his island in the Fijis.^[65] In 1993, Sonoma State University awarded Burr an honorary doctorate.^[66] He supported medical and education institutions in Denver, and in 1993, the University of Colorado awarded him an honorary doctorate for his acting work.^[67] Burr also founded financed the American Fijian Foundation that funded academic research, including efforts to develop a dictionary of the language.^[68]

Burr made repeated trips on behalf of the United Service Organizations (USO). He toured both Korea and Vietnam during wartime and once spent six months touring Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. He sometimes organized his own troupe and toured bases both in the U.S. and overseas, often small installations that the USO did not serve, like one tour of Greenland, Baffinland, Newfoundland, and Labrador.^[69] Returning from Vietnam in 1965, he made a speaking tour of the U.S. to advocate an intensified war effort. As the war became more controversial, he modified his tone, called for more attention to the sacrifice of the troops, and said: "My only position on the war is that I wish it were over."^[70] In October 1967, NBC aired Raymond Burr Visits Vietnam, a documentary of one of his visits that received mixed reviews, ranging from "The impressions he came up with are neither weighty nor particularly revealing" (Chicago Tribune) to "His questions...were intelligent and elicited some interesting replies." (Los Angeles Times).^[70]

Illness and death[link]

During the filming of his last Perry Mason movie in the spring of 1993, Raymond Burr fell ill. A Viacom spokesperson told the media that the illness might be related to the malignant kidney that Burr had removed that February.^[33] It was determined that the cancer had spread to his liver and was at that point inoperable.^[71] Burr threw several "goodbye parties" before his death on September 12, 1993, at his Sonoma County, California ranch near Healdsburg.^[5] He was 76 years old.

Burr was interred with his parents at Fraser Cemetery, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. On October 1, 1993, a gathering of about 600 family members and friends of Burr mourned him at a memorial service at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California.^[72] The private memorial was attended by Robert Benevides, Barbara Hale, Don Galloway, Don Mitchell, Barbara Anderson, Elizabeth Baur, Dean Hargrove, William R. Moses, and Christian I. Nyby II.

R. William Ide III, president of the American Bar Association, paid tribute to the way Burr's Perry Mason presented lawyers "in a professional and dignified manner" and helped "to educate many people who previously had not had access to the justice system." Though lawyers once complained of the character's implausibly perfect track record, Ide complimented Burr because he "strove for such authenticity in his courtroom characterizations that we regard his passing as though we lost one of our own."^[21] The New York Times added that Mason "made the presumption of innocence real...[and] also made lawyers look good.^[21] Not long before Burr died, Mason was named second after F. Lee Bailey in a poll that asked Americans to name the attorney, fictional or not, they most admired.^[21]

Because Burr had not revealed his homosexuality during his lifetime, initial press accounts gave it sensational treatment. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that People magazine was preparing a story on Burr's "secret life" and asked: "Are the inevitable rumors true?"^[6][7] The Sunday Mail invented a feminine Burr "wearing a pink frilly apron and doing the ironing. He fussed around like the woman of the house."^[73]

Burr bequeathed his estate to Robert Benevides and excluded all relatives, including a sister, nieces, and nephews. His will was challenged by a niece and nephew, Minerva and James, the children of his late brother, James E. Burr, without success.^[74] The tabloids estimated that the estate was worth $32 million, but Benevides' attorney, John Hopkins said that was an overestimate.^[75]

Recognition[link]

Burr won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Drama Series twice, in 1959 and 1961, for his performance as Perry Mason. He was also nominated a further seven times, once for Mason and six times for Ironside. For the latter role, he was also nominated twice for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama.

The Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, awards the Raymond Burr Award for Excellence in Criminal Law.^[21]

Burr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6656 Hollywood Blvd.^[76]

In 2008, Canada Post issued a postage stamp in its "Canadians in Hollywood" series featuring Burr.^[77]

Burr received the 2009 Canadian Legends Award and a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto. The induction ceremony was held on September 12, 2009.^[78]

The garden at the entrance to the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum in Florida honors Burr, who was a benefactor and fund-raiser for the Museum.^[79]

The Raymond Burr Performing Arts Centre in New Westminster, British Columbia, opened in October 2000, near a city block bearing the Burr family name, and closed in 2006. Originally a movie theatre, under ownership of the Famous Players chain (as the Columbia Theatre), it was an intimate, 238-seat theatre. Initial plans included expanding the venue to a 650-seat regional performing arts facility. When in operation, it was the custom to have a picture of Raymond Burr included somewhere on each set, with the first toast on the opening night of every production always dedicated to his memory. The Centre was commonly referred to as the "Burr Theatre," or simply as "the Burr." It is owned by the City of New Westminster, which placed it for sale on 15 June 2009.^[80]

Selected filmography[link]

See also[link]

• List of celebrities who own wineries and vineyards

References[link]