Raymond Burr

Raymond William Stacy Burr was a Canadian actor born on May 21, 1917, in New Westminster, British Columbia. His father, William Johnston Burr, worked as a hardware salesman, and his mother, Minerva Annette Burr, was a pianist and music teacher. His parents divorced when he was six, after which he relocated to Vallejo, California, with his mother and younger siblings Geraldine and James. He attended San Rafael Military Academy and later graduated from Berkeley High School.

Burr made his stage debut at age 12 with a Vancouver stock company. Though he aspired to study at the Pasadena Playhouse, he could not afford the tuition during the Depression years. By his own account, he joined a repertory theatre company in Toronto in 1934 that toured Canada, then traveled with another company through India, Australia, and England. He briefly attended Long Beach Junior College and taught for a semester at San Jose Junior College while working nights in radio. He began his formal association with the Pasadena Playhouse in 1937, eventually joining its drama faculty for 18 months and performing in approximately 30 productions there over the years.

Burr moved to New York in 1940 and made his Broadway debut in Crazy With the Heat, a two-act musical revue produced by Kurt Kasznar. The show featured veteran performers Willie Howard, Luella Gear, and Gracie Barrie but closed after three months. He returned to Broadway in 1944 with The Duke in Darkness, a psychological drama by Patrick Hamilton set during the French Wars of Religion, in which he played the loyal friend of an imprisoned protagonist. That performance led directly to a contract with RKO Radio Pictures. Also in 1944, he appeared in multiple productions during a summer residency at Elitch Gardens Theater in Denver, Colorado.

Between 1946 and 1957, Burr appeared in more than 50 feature films, building a reputation as a villain in film noir. Film historian Alain Silver identified ten films as his most significant contributions to the genre, including Desperate (1947), Raw Deal (1948), Pitfall (1948), The Blue Gardenia (1953), and Crime of Passion (1957). He portrayed the suspected murderer in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and appeared in the 1956 film Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, a role he reprised in Godzilla 1985. His occasional appearances on the right side of the law included an aggressive prosecutor in A Place in the Sun (1951), a courtroom performance that caught the attention of producer Gail Patrick and her husband Cornwell Jackson as they began casting the CBS television series Perry Mason.

Burr had worked steadily in radio since the 1940s, often uncredited, and was a leading player on the West Coast. He held a regular role in Jack Webb's first radio show, Pat Novak for Hire (1949), and played Joe Friday's boss, Ed Backstrand, in Dragnet (1949–50). He also appeared on Suspense, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Hallmark Playhouse, Hallmark Hall of Fame, and CBS Radio Workshop, among other series. In 1956 he starred in CBS Radio's Fort Laramie. From March 1951 through June 1952, he appeared approximately 30 times under the name Ray Hartman, primarily on Dangerous Assignment, The Lineup, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

Burr won Emmy Awards in 1959 and 1961 for his portrayal of the title character in Perry Mason, which he played across nine seasons from 1957 to 1966 and then reprised in a series of 26 television movies between 1985 and 1993. His second major television series, Ironside, earned him six Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations. TV Guide ranked him 44th on its list of the 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time in 1996. Burr died of liver cancer on September 12, 1993.