Raymond Burr

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Raymond Burr
Birth name Raymond William Stacey Burr
Born May 21 1917(1917-05-21)
Image:Flag of Canada.svg New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Died September 12 1993 (aged 76)
Healdsburg, California
Resting place Fraserview Cemetery, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Years active 1940-1993
Spouse(s) Isabella Ward (1948-1952)

Raymond William Stacey Burr (May 21 1917 – September 12, 1993) was an Emmy-winning actor and vintner, perhaps best known for his roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

The oldest of three children, Burr was born in New Westminister, British Columbia, Canada, to William Johnston Burr, an Irish hardware salesman from County Cork Ireland, and his wife Minerva (Smith), a concert pianist and music teacher[1] who immigrated to Canada from Chicago, Illinois in 1914.

[edit] Early career

Burr began his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1937. In 1941, he landed his first Broadway role in “Crazy with the Heart”. He became a contract player at RKO studio, playing mostly villains. He had roles in over 60 movies between 1946 and 1957. Burr received favourable notice for his role as a prosecutor in A Place in the Sun (1951), co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, and perhaps his best-known film role of the period was in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly.

Burr also emerged as a prolific early to mid 1950s television character actor. Burr made his guest-starring television debut on an episode of: The Amazing Dr. Malone. The part led to other television roles in the programs Dragnet, Chesterfield Sound Off Time, Four Star Playhouse, Mr. & Mrs. North, Schlitz Playhouse of Stardom, The Ford Television Theatre, Lux Video Theatre and many others.

In 1955, he took on the character of Steve Martin in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, a role he would reprise again almost 30 years later in Godzilla 1985.

[edit] Perry Mason and Ironside

In 1956, Burr originally auditioned for the role of Hamilton Burger and William Talman for the title role of Perry Mason, a new courtroom drama that had been created by Erle Stanley Gardner for the CBS TV network. However, Erle Stanley Gardner was present and immediately demanded that the actors switch parts...he had found his perfect Perry Mason! Raymond Burr was then cast in the title role of Perry Mason instead and TV history was made! Burr, recognized for his role in Godzilla, won the part, which eventually became the role Burr was most closely identified with in the public mind. Also starring were 1940s movie actress and old friend of Burr’s Barbara Hale as Mason’s secretary, Della Street, and B-actor William Hopper as Mason’s private investigator, Paul Drake. William Talman played the district attorney, Hamilton Burger (who was destined to lose every case, at least against Perry Mason) and Ray Collins was the Homicide Detective, Lt. Arthur Tragg. On every show Mason built a defense case with extraordinary precision and succeeded in proving his client's innocence, often provoking an emotional confession from the true culprit.

Both Burr and Talman were professionals but both were kind-hearted enough to realize that new or inexperienced actors were many times very nervous or scared when filming scenes, thus frequently missing lines. In order to calm the scared "newbies" both Burr and Talman would purposely also occasionally miss lines...showing that sometimes professionals can miss lines too. This would usually relax everyone and the scenes would go faster and smoother.

Burr won two Emmy awards for his role as Perry Mason. The program originally ran from 1957 - 1966, and has been re-run in syndication ever since. In 2006, the first season became available on DVD.

Burr moved from CBS to Universal Studios, where he auditioned for the title role in the television drama Ironside. On the pilot episode, San Francisco Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside was wounded by a sniper during an attempt on his life but survived and was paralyzed and wheel-chair bound for the rest of his life. This role gave Burr another hit series, the first crime drama show ever to star a disabled police officer. The program ran from 1967 to 1975. In 1977, Burr starred in the short-lived TV series Kingston: Confidential.

In 1985, Burr was approached by producers Dean Hargrove and Fred Silverman to star in a made-for-TV movie Perry Mason Returns. Burr loved the idea but only agreed to do the movie if actress and long-time friend Barbara Hale would return too, to reprise her role as secretary Della Street. Not only did Hale agree, but for the first time in the show's history she ended up being the accused when Perry Mason Returns aired in December of 1985. The rest of the original cast had died, but Hale's real-life son William Katt was cast in the TV movie as Paul Drake, Jr. Expected to only be a one-time thing, the success of the first movie led to Burr making twenty-six more before his death eight years later in 1993. Four more TV movies were made after Burr's death from 1993-1995, with other supposed lawyer friends of Perry defending the accused. Even though Hale and Moses were still there, without Burr the "magic" was gone. The last TV movie aired in April of 1995.

In 1988, after 3 years and 9 Perry Mason TV movies, William Katt left to do other projects. A new leg-man for Perry was needed. Actor William R. Moses was hired to play Ken Malansky, a young and up-n-coming lawyer that goes to work for Perry after Mason clears him of murder. William R. Moses finished out the TV movies from 1989 to 1995.

In 1993, as he had with the Perry Mason TV movies, Raymond Burr decided to do an Ironside reunion movie. In May of 1993, The Return of Ironside aired, as Burr returned to the wheel chair--reuniting the entire original cast of the 1967-1975 hit-series. However, as Burr was already in his last days with liver cancer, this would be the only Ironside reunion.

[edit] Other works

Raymond Burr co-starred in such TV films as Love's Savage Fury (1979), Eischied: Only The Pretty Girls Die (1979), Disaster On The Coastliner (1979), The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (1980), The Night The City Screamed (1980), and Peter And Paul (1981). Burr 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). In 1985, Burr made a comeback as Perry Mason and made a series of 26 two-hour movies that were enormous ratings blockbusters, the last being completed only a few weeks prior to his death. By this time he was largely wheelchair-bound (in his final Mason movie, he is always shown either sitting, or standing while leaning on a table, but never standing unsupported), as his character in Ironside had been, but this time due to his real-life failing health. He also reprised the role of Ironside not long before his death, having to dye his hair red and shave off his trademark beard in order not to look too much like Perry Mason.

Burr also worked as as media spokesman for the now-defunct British Columbia-based real estate company Block Bros. in TV, radio, and print ads during late 1970s and early 1980s.[2]

[edit] Personal life

In his younger years, Burr was rumoured to be romantically involved with Natalie Wood. "When I was talking to Dennis Hopper about that," Wood biographer Suzanne Finstad says, "he was saying, I just can't wrap my mind around that one. But you know, I saw them together. They were definitely a couple. Who knows what was going on there?".

Burr's official biography stated that he had been previously married, but both his wives and one child had died. In 1942, while working in London, he met Annette Sutherland, an aspiring actress from Scotland and that year they married. Despite protests from her husband, Sutherland insisted on fulfilling her contract and traveled to Spain with the tour company while Burr returned to America. Shortly before her death, Burr received a letter that Sutherland was working in Spain and would return to England and then America; Sutherland then boarded a flight from Lisbon to London and it has been widely reported that Sutherland then perished on BOAC Flight 777-A, the same flight that claimed actor Leslie Howard. However, Burr’s biographer Ona L. Hill writes that “no one by the name of Annette Sutherland Burr was listed as a passenger on the plane” and that Sutherland was on a separate commercial plane traveling between Lisbon and London around the same time as Flight 777-A, which was also shot down by the Germans.[3] In truth, however, only one of Burr's wives, Isabella Ward, can actually be documented. The other two, including Annette Sutherland, do not seem to have ever existed (Sutherland was said to be a British actress, yet British Equity has no record of anyone by that name). The same goes for Burr's "son," who is said to have died from an incurable disease sometime in the 1950s. Since Burr was already a known presence in Hollywood, it would seem logical that this tragedy would be widely reported in the press, as was the tragic death of Red Skelton's teenaged son Richard from leukemia in the late fifties. Yet there is no record anywhere of the "son's" birth, existence, or death, which strongly implies "he" never existed. One possible explanation for this cynically bizarre deceit is that by claiming such a heart-rending personal "history," Burr could scare reporters into backing off from digging into his personal life (the actor was rumored to be gay, which at the time was ruinous for a popular TV star).

Burr's parents, William and Minerva, remarried in 1955 after 33 years of separation. Burr had remained very close to them, both during their separation and after they remarried. In early 1974, Minerva died of cancer at 81, and eleven years later, in 1985, his father, William died at 96 of natural causes.

"Perry Mason" started in 1957, shortly after actor Tab Hunter was arrested in an infamous homosexual raid. During the run of the series, Burr kept fairly private, perhaps because his co-star William Hopper (Paul Drake) was the son of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Still, author Robert Hofler alleges in his 2005 book, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson, that Burr and Rock Hudson hosted gay parties at a rented home in Palm Springs, California. The truthfulness of this book has been disputed by reviewers on Amazon.com.

Around 1958, Raymond Burr became friendly with former actor Robert Benevides. Benevides, who is credited as production consultant in 21 Perry Mason TV movies, was described as Burr’s "long-time companion" in a 1993 TV Guide article.[4] They remained together as business partners for 35 years until Burr's death. Sonoma County residents were well acquainted with Burr and Benevides, who together owned and operated first an orchid business, then a vineyard,[5] in the Dry Creek Valley. The residents, who are far away from Los Angeles, did not gossip about the personal business of Burr and Benevides. After Burr died one of his nieces in Canada had a public feud with Benevides questioning whether or not he should be given the bulk of the estate.

Burr was devoted to his longtime hobby, cultivating and hybridizing orchids. He later developed this passion into an orchid business. Burr even developed an orchid he named the Barbara Hale Orchid.[6]

Burr bought 4,000 acres (1600 ha) on the island of Naitauba, Fiji in 1965 which he later sold in 1983 to self-proclaimed guru Adi Da.[7]

In January 1993, Burr was diagnosed with kidney cancer in his left kidney. He refused to undergo surgery, as this would have interfered with the shooting schedule of his final two TV movies. After shooting, he went back to visit the doctors and discovered the cancer had spread to several organs, making it inoperable. Burr died on September 12, 1993 on his Sonoma County, California ranch in near Healdsburg, California at age 76.[8] Burr is interred with his parents at Fraser Cemetery, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. The WGS84 coordinates of his grave plot are N49° 13.338 W122° 53.892.

On October 1, 1993, friends of Burr and Benevides mourned Burr at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. The private memorial was attended by Barbara Hale, Don Galloway, Don Mitchell, Barbara Anderson, Elizabeth Baur, Dean Hargrove, William R. Moses and Christian Nyby.

[edit] Hobbies

Raymond had 10 hobbies over the course of his life: throwing cocktail parties, flying, cultivating orchids, collecting wine, collecting art galleries, cooking, donating money for charities (see philanthropy), sailing and fishing. According to A&E Biography narrator Harry Smith, on several episodes of Ironside, he was also an avid reader with a selective memory.

[edit] Quotes

Raymond: "Try to live your life the way you wish other people would live theirs." (Source: BrainyQuote.com)

Raymond: "Perry Mason is a marvelous show because it has so much to do with peoples' lives and television. People were buying television sets. When Perry Mason first went on, and it all goes back to that nostalgia." (Source: TV.com)

Raymond: "I'm a fine guy to be an actor. Can't stand to have my picture taken." (Source: PerryMasontvshowbook.com)

Raymond on reprising his role as Perry Mason in 1985: "When I sat down at the defense table again, it was as if 25 years had been taken off my life. I don't think there's anything wrong with returning to a character. I played MacBeth when I was 19, and I would do it again. But of course, I wouldn't do it exactly the same way. Similarly, I hope there's been a progression in the way I play Perry Mason." (Source: TV.com)

Raymond on being typecast as Perry Mason: "I find myself resorting to tricks and devices. I do things for the sake of the series that I never before would have done as an actor." (Source: PerryMasontvshowbook.com)

Raymond about the people of their own needs: "You can imagine what happens with people who are really handicapped and really crippled, that they have to spend hours in wheelchairs. The only time I had any back trouble in my life was from the time I had to spend in a chair. Yet, I was grateful for the opportunity." (Source: CNN.com)

Raymond on his short fling to Natalie Wood: "I was very attracted to her. I think she was to me." (Source: PerryMasontvshowbook.com)

Raymond: "I'm too busy to sleep. Actually, my stand-in, Lee Miller, does my sleeping for me." (Source: PerryMasontvshowbook.com)

[edit] Philanthropy

In contrast to the "bad guys" and hard, unbending heroes he often played, Raymond Burr was in real life a generous man who gave enormous sums of money (including his salaries from the Perry Mason movies) to charity. He once sponsored 27 foster children through the Christian Children's Fund. He would take the children with the greatest medical needs. Burr always insisted that TV executives and directors treated his co-stars with the same respect shown to him. He also gave generously over many years to the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California including the donation of some of his Perry Mason scripts.[9]

Burr was heavily involved in raising money for The Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum in Sanibel, Florida.

[edit] The Raymond Burr Performing Arts Centre

The Raymond Burr Performing Arts Centre in New Westminster, British Columbia opened in October 2000 near a city block bearing the family name of Burr. Originally a movie theatre under ownership of the Famous Players chain (as the Columbia Theatre) and at present a 238-seat intimate theatre, plans exist to expand the theatre to become a 650-seat regional performing arts facility. Since the theatre began producing plays, it has been the custom always to have a picture of Raymond Burr included somewhere on each set, and the first toast on the opening night of every production is always dedicated to his memory. The Centre is commonly referred to as the Burr Theatre, or simply as "the Burr".

Raymond Burr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6656 Hollywood Blvd.

[edit] Burr in popular culture

In the episode Tokyo Grows of Pinky and The Brain, a man repeatedly appears interjecting with the phrase "Yes, I see." This is a parody of the Godzilla film Godzilla, King of the Monsters! where his most common line seems to be "Yes, I see."

He was referenced in Beastie Boys' B-Boy Bouillabaisse from the Paul's Boutique album: "I ride around town like Raymond Burr". In an episode of Married...with Children, Al Bundy confuses a TV Guide cover shot of Delta Burke as that of Raymond Burr

In the animated television series Home Movies, the episode 'Definite Possible Murder' features a plot mirroring Rear Window and features a character named Raymond Berland who takes Burr's role.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.burrtheatre.com/raymond.html
  2. ^ Headlines from the first 100 issues of REM. Real Estate Magazine (03 Aug 2005). Retrieved on 2007-06-14.
  3. ^ Hill, Ona L. (1999). Raymond Burr: A Film, Radio and Television Biography. Hill McFarland & Company, 19-20. ISBN 0-7864-0833-2. 
  4. ^ Murphy, Mary. "With Raymond Burr During His Final Battle." TV Guide, 25 September 1993, pp. 34-43
  5. ^ [www.raymondburrvineyards.com Raymond Burr Vineyards website]
  6. ^ Kristine M. Carber. "Not all attractions in Bay Area cost a small fortune", San Francisco Examiner, 23 February 1997. Retrieved on 2007-01-15. 
  7. ^ Don Lattin. "Guru hit by sex-slave suit", San Francisco Examiner, 3 April 1985. Retrieved on 2007-01-15. 
  8. ^ William Grimes (14 September 1993). Raymond Burr, Actor, 76, Dies; Played Perry Mason and Ironside. The New York Times. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
  9. ^ Profiles in Leadership - Raymond Burr - Perry Mason Saves the Day

[edit] External links

fr:Raymond Burr gd:Raymond Burr it:Raymond Burr ja:レイモンド・バー no:Raymond Burr pl:Raymond Burr fi:Raymond Burr sv:Raymond Burr

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