In the discussion called, “Old TV Shows,” posted in The Lounge, “alans233” mentioned “Perry Mason,” a character played by Canadian Actor Raymond Burr.
Saturday night TV in the fifties consisted of eagerly watching the owl eyed, slab-sided terror of the TV courtroom, with the name of Perry Mason, strut about a courtroom. For those of you whom are two young to remember this fictitious man of law in the longest running lawyer series in television history here is a description.
Perry Mason was the first of a long procession of never loose Lawyers who made Judges look like ignorant gavel bashers, and turned hostile witnesses into snivelling spineless wimps.
Raymond Burr played the part of Perry Mason, an American Lawyer, but in the real world he was the oldest of three children and was born in New West Minster, British Columbia. His father was William Johnston Burr, an Irish hardware salesperson from County Cork, Ireland, and his mother was Minerva (nee Smith) a concert pianist and music teacher who had immigrated to Canada in 1914.
Young Raymond spend some of his time in China when his father worked there as a Trade Agent. His parents divorced and he, his siblings, and his mother moved to California to live with his maternal Grand Parents. At 18, Raymond became the breadwinner for his family and worked on a ranch and also was a photo salesman.
In 1937, Burr took an acting job at the Pasadena Playhouse, and in 1941, he landed a Broadway role in “Crazy with the Heart”. In World War Two Burr joined the Navy, but after two years he was wounded in the stomach while at Okinawa.
Between 1946 and 1957 he appeared in over 60 movies, including “a Place in the sun” (1951), co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, Burr played a prosecutor.
In 1956 Erle Stanley Gardner created a new courtroom drama called “Perry Mason” for the CBS television network. Raymond Burr auditioned for the part of the district Attorney Hamilton Burger, and William Talman for the title role of Perry Mason. Mr. Gardner, who was in charge demanded that the actors switched parts.
Also hired was Barbara Hale, a 1940’s movie actress, an old friend of Burr’s who played Masons secretary, and B-actor William Hopper as Masons private investigator Paul Drake. Actor Ray Collins was cast as the homicide detective, Lieutenant Arthur Tragg.
For those who did not see the first airing of this show, or subsequent showings in re-runs, or on DVD, the plot of every show was that Perry Mason built a defence case with extraordinary precision, and succeeded in proving his clients innocence, often provoking an emotional confession from the true culprit.
Mason never smiled, and never lost his temper. Private investigator Paul Drake with his silver pompadour and loud sports jackets was ever ready to run errands for his boss. “Paul get over to city hall and find out how many males between the ages of twenty six and thirty nine applied for a firearm permit in the last six months.”
Perry’s Girl Friday and gofer, ever present, ever perky, Della Street was his sidekick. Good old dependable Della was always alert, and perennially permanented. She was capable of handling any situation from a sharp client to a dull pencil.
Always on the far side of the courtroom was the inept man with the record as the District Attorney with the most courtroom loses in the history of jurisprudence. He was Hamilton Burger, aptly named, and who kept secret the reason that he remained employed for nine full years, and only won one case, if my memory serves me correctly.
Today the viewer will notice the acting was a trifle wooden and the plot a little contrived.
Later in a Newspaper interview, Raymond Burr said that his memories of the show were not of the ‘fond’ type. Mr. Burr said he had to live in a cheaply furnished, Spartan bungalow right beside the Perry Mason set. He was summoned at three thirty each morning to report to makeup, and then he worked straight through until seven thirty each night. He sounds like the nine years of performing the part of Perry Mason were not fun, culminating in the last year as a pure nightmare.
He recalled one day over lunch that his Producers assured him that there would be a tenth and final season, but the next day in the Newspaper he discovered that the season was cancelled. “I wore a wrist watch that they had bought me for Mason to wear on the show during the five or six years before,” recalled Burr. "I wore it on every show. I was in my dressing room no more than ten minutes after the last scene before the Produces came over and demanded I give them the watch, I gave them the watch and never saw any of them again.”
This was very poor treatment of an actor who had made himself a household word around the planet. On the other hand the series had made a small Canadian born actor from New Westminster B.C. rich enough to buy part of his very own tropical island and several other houses around the world.
Burr spent much of his spare time devoted to charitable causes, including his one-man tours of Korea and Vietnamese army bases that he funded himself. He supported two-dozen foster children, and made generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which is the one he partly owned.
Raymond Burr was a very private person, it is said he had been married to Annette Sutherland, who died in June 1st 1943 in the plane crash of BOAC Flight 777-A, the same flight that Leslie Howard died. There was no record of her on the passenger list, and it is believed she was fictional. He married Isabella Ward in 1947, but this marriage was annulled 3 months later. He lost his third wife, Adrina Laura Morgan to cancer in 1955, but she too is believed to be fictional. He also had a fictional son who was born in 1942 and died in 1953 of leukemia.
In 1958, Burr started living with his 30 year, long time companion, and business partner Robert Benevides, a former actor, who had a mutual interest in hybridizing orchids. Together they started Sea God Nurseries with orchid ranges in Fiji, Hawaii, the Azores Islands, and southern California. Over a period of twenty years their hybridization was responsible for over fifteen hundred new orchid varieties being added to their worldwide catalogue. The two companions also opened an Art Gallery on Rodeo Drive.
In late 1992, Burr was stricken with kidney cancer, but insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace. In the last weeks of his life he refused to see anyone except his closest friends, throwing “farewell” parties to keep their spirits up. Two days after telling his long time companion, and business partner Robert Benavides’, “If I lie down, I’ll die,” and at 76 years of age he did just that on September 12, 1993. He is in New Westminster, B.C. in the town where he was born, and also now is the home to the Raymond Burr Performing Arts Centre, housed in the town’s historic Columbia Theatre building.
Raymond Burr’s life came to a close leaving his memory and a quote of his own creation: “Try and live your life the way you wish other people would live theirs.”
Source:
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/burrraymond/burrraymond.htm
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/P/htmlP/perrymason/perrymason.htm
Quiz:
http://www.meredy.com/burrtriv.html