Raymond Burr was a Canadian-American actor, known mainly for his title characters in the Perry Mason and Ironside TV dramas. Burr’s early acting career included appearances as a villain on Broadway, radio, television, and film.
His depiction of the accused murderer in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Rear Window (1954) is his best-known role in film, though he is also remembered for his appearance in the 1956 film Godzilla, King of the Monsters! In the 1984 film Godzilla, which he repeated in 1985. He won the Emmy Awards for portraying Perry Mason’s part in 1959 and 1961, which he performed for nine seasons (1957–66) and repeated in a series of 26 Perry Mason TV films (1985–93).
His second Ironside Television series won him six nominations for Emmy and two for Golden Globe. Burr died of cancer in 1993 and his personal life came into doubt when certain aspects of his biography appeared unverifiable. TV Guide magazine in 1996 ranked him number 44 among the 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Raymond Burr’s Bio, Wiki, Age
Raymond William Stacy Burr was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, on 21 May 1917. His father, William Johnston Burr (1889–1985), was a seller of hardware; his mother, Minerva Annette (née Smith, 1892–1974), was a pianist and music teacher.
His parents divorced, when Burr was six. His mother and his younger siblings Geraldine and James moved to Vallejo, California, while his father stayed in New Westminster. Burr graduated from Berkeley High School and attended the San Rafael Military Academy in San Rafael, California for a brief time.
Burr openly fabricated tales of a healthy childhood in later years. In 1986, he told the journalist Jane Ardmore that his mother sent him to New Mexico for a year to work as a ranch hand when he was 12 years old. He was already his full adult height and very big and “had fallen in with a group of college-age children who didn’t know how young Raymond was and let him tag with them in way too complex practices and circumstances for him to manage.”
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He developed a passion for rising things, and served his youth with the Civilian Conservation Corps for a year. In his teen years he did acting work, making his stage debut with a Vancouver stock company at the age of 12.
Raymond Burr’s Career
During the Great Depression, Burr came up and wanted to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse but was unable to afford the tuition. He formed a Toronto repertory theater group in 1934, which toured throughout Canada, then formed another company that toured India, Australia and England.
He attended Long Beach Junior College briefly and worked as a radio actor and singer for a semester at San Jose Junior College, working nights. In 1937 he started associating himself with the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1940, Burr moved to New York and made his first appearance on Broadway in Crazy With The Wind, a two-act musical revue produced by Kurt Kasznar which quickly folded. His first starring role on the stage came when he was an emergency replacement in a Quiet Wedding production of Pasadena Playhouse in November 1942.
For 18 months he was a member of the Pasadena Playhouse drama department, and over the years he appeared in some 30 plays. He returned to Broadway for The Duke in Darkness (1944) by Patrick Hamilton, a psychological drama set during the French Wars of Religion. His success as the imprisoned protagonist’s best friend led to a deal with RKO Radio Pictures.
Raymond Burr’s Movies/ Films
Between 1946 and 1957, Burr acted in over 50 feature films, producing an array of villains that established him as a film noir icon. Movie historian Alain Silver concluded that Burr’s most important work in this genre was in ten films:
Desperate (1947), Sleep, My Love (1948), Raw Deal (1948), Pitfall (1948), Abandoned (1949), Red Light (1950), M (1951), His Kind of Woman (1951), The Blue Gardenia (1953), and Crime of Passion (1957).
Silver described Burr’s private detective in Pitfall as “both reprehensible and tragic,” a portrayal which was also cited as a prototype of film noir by film historian Richard Schickel, in comparison to the glamorous television characters for which Burr later became popular. “He tried to make you see the madness under the surface, even if the pieces weren’t big,” film historian James Ursini said. “He was able to add some depth and various layers to certain characters, and to create compassion for his characters even when they did reprehensible things.
” Other titles in Burr’s film noir history include Walk a Crooked Mile (1948), Borderline (1950), Unmasked (1950), The Whip Hand (1951), FBI Girl (1951), Meet Danny Wilson (1952), Rear Window (1954), They Were So Young (1954), A Crr Young (1954), The villains have featured in Westerns, period dramas, horror movies, and adventure movies.
In the right hand side of the law, Burr’s sporadic positions include the violent prosecutor in A Place in the Sun (1951). His appearance in the courtroom in that film impressed Gail Patrick and her husband Cornwell Jackson, who had Burr in mind when they started casting the role of Los Angeles District Attorney Hamilton Burger in Perry Mason’s CBS-TV series.
Raymond Burr’s Radio
Burr appeared in national radio dramas that transmitted in nearby San Francisco by the age of 12. Burr weighed more than 300 lbs as a young man, which limited his on-screen appearances. “But this posed no problems on radio, despite the magnificent nature of his voice,” The Globe and Mail reported.
He played romantic leads and challenged villains with equal authority and gained a consistent and secure salary. Burr was a leading player on the West Coast, working steadily on radio since the 1940s, sometimes uncredited179–185.
He had a recurring part in Jack Webb’s first radio series, Pat Novak for Hire (1949), and played Joe Friday’s boss, Ed Backstrand, chief of detectives, in Dragnet (1949–50).
Burr worked on many Los Angeles-based series including Suspense,[Screen Directors Playhouse, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Family Theatre, Hallmark Playhouse and Hallmark Hall of Fame. He appeared in five episodes of the groundbreaking radio anthology series CBS Radio Workshop, and in “The Silent Witness” (1957), in which his only voice is probably his best radio performance.
In 1956 Burr was the star of Fort Laramie by CBS Radio, an adult Western drama produced, written, and directed by Gunsmoke’s creators. He played the part of Lee Quince, captain of the cavalry, in the series set at a post-Civil War military post where illness, fatigue, the weather and the uncharted terrain were the greatest enemies of “ordinary men living in extraordinary times” The half-hour transcribed program aired on Sundays at 5:30 p.m. ET 22 January-28 October 1956.
Burr told columnist Sheilah Graham that after the first broadcasts he had received 1,500 fan letters, and he continued to receive letters praising the honesty of the series and displaying human dignity. CBS announced in August 1956 that Burr would be appearing in the TV show Perry Mason.
While the network still wanted Burr to continue working on Fort Laramie, it took an exceptional commitment from the TV series and the radio show ended. Known for his integrity and historical knowledge, Burr has gone out of his way to hire his radio colleagues in his TV programmes. During the first season alone some 180 radio celebrities appeared on Perry Mason.
Raymond Burr’s Television
In the 1950’s, Burr debuted as a prolific character actor on television. He made his television debut in 1951 and starred in episodes such as Stars Over Hollywood, The Bigelow Theater, Family Theater and Dragnet’s debut season. He continued to appear in programs such as Gruen Playhouse, Four Star Playhouse, Ford Theater, Lux Video Theater, Mr. and Mrs. North, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars and Playhouse 90. In 1956, Burr auditioned for District Attorney Hamilton Bu.
In the pilot season, Robert T. Ironside, chief of detectives in San Francisco, is shot by a gunman during an attempt at his life and, during his recovery, uses a wheelchair for mobility, in the first crime drama series to feature a disabled police officer. The show received six awards for Burr Emmy -one for the pilot and five for his series job and two awards for the Golden Globe.
Raymond Burr’s Married, Wife
Raymond Burr married on 10 January 1948 the actress Isabella Ward (1919–2004). They met in 1943, while at the Pasadena Playhouse where Burr was teaching, she was student. They worked again with a theater group in 1947, while she was in California. They were married shortly before Burr began working on Pitfall, the 1948 film noir.
In May 1948 they appeared together on stage in a production of Pasadena Playhouse based on Paul Gauguin’s story. They lived in a large house in Hollywood in the basement apartment which Burr shared with his mother and grandparents. Within months the marriage ended, and Ward returned to her native Delaware.
They divorced, and neither remarried in 1952. Burr met Robert Benevides, an actor and veteran of the Korean War, on Perry Mason’s set in 1960. Benevides gave up acting in 1963, and he became a production manager for 21 of the Perry Mason TV movies.
They owned and managed an orchid company and then a vineyard in Dry Creek Valley, California. Both were intimate partners until 1993 when Burr died. Burr legated his entire estate to Benevides, and Benevides renamed the Raymond Burr Vineyards Dry Creek property (as allegedly against Burr’s wishes) and operated it as a commercial enterprise. The land was sold in 2017.
Raymond Burr’s Death Cause
- Cause of death:- Kidney cancer
- Place of death:- Healdsburg, CA
- Date of death:- September 12, 1993
- Wife :- Isabella Ward
- Partner:- Robert Benevides (1960–1993)
Raymond Burr’s Net Worth
The net worth of the popular TV Actor Raymond Burr is $105 million before he died, according to NetWorthsPedia, Wikipedia, Forbes, IMDb & Various Online Ressources. Being a professional TV Actor, he earned the money. He is Canadian.
How rich, then, was Raymond Burr? But some Sources reported his estimate net worth at $15 million as of mid-2016, largely raised through a productive television career. Besides that, Burr also had various roles in the plays, on the radio and on stage. From 1957 to 1993 he was part of the “Perry Mason” franchise, and everything protected his wealth role.
Brother James Edmond
His brother was James Edmond, born in Walkerton, Ontario, Canada on 7 February 1924. He was an actor known for Black Christmas (1974), Mars Devil Girl (1954), and Specials ABC Weekend (1977). He’d been married with Shirley Faessler. He died in Paris, Ontario, on 4 November 2000.
Raymond Burr’s Height
Raymond Burr has a perfect body figure that compliments her perfectly round cute face. He is decently tall around 6 feet in height and he maintains perfect figure with a body weight of 70 kilograms. He has attracted with black eyes are captivating and blonde hair makes her even more handsome and enchanting.
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