Raymond Burr is so associated with his characterization of television lawyer/detective Perry Mason that his rich and varied career in film, radio, and television is often ignored. His face, in the words of Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner, was cow-eyed. He was broad-shouldered, heavy, robust, but excelled at playing introverted rather than extroverted characters. This may be, in part, why Burr accomplished the rare television feat in which actor becomes almost thoroughly identified with character, the performer inseparable from the role. Just as William Shatner is James Kirk, Peter Falk is Columbo, and Carroll O’Connor is Archie Bunker, Burr is Perry Mason.

Burr began as a stage actor who performed small roles in radio. His early film work was remarkable only in the sense that he rarely played anything other than the villain in such films as Raw Deal (1948). Burr even managed to play the “heavy” in comedies, such as the Marx Brothers’ Love Happy (1949). When he was in the courtroom drama A Place in the Sun (1951), he assumed the role of the relentless district attorney. During these movie years Burr continued to work in several radio series such as Pat Novak for Hire (1949) and Dragnet (1949–50). In 1954 he confirmed his villainous persona with his appearance as the menacing wife-killer Lars Thorwald in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

In 1955, when he learned that the lawyer/detective drama Perry Mason was being cast for television, Burr was requested to audition—but for the part of district attorney Hamilton Burger, another “villain.” As the story goes, the producers at Paisano Productions (the Perry Mason production company) allowed Burr to try for the title role simply to secure his audition for Burger. Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the original Mason novels and co-creator of the television series, is said to have taken a look at Burr during the audition and declared “He’s Perry Mason.” This was the role Burr played from 1957 to 1966 and reprised in a successful series of made-for-television movies from 1985 until his death in 1993.

At the time of Perry Mason’s popularity, Burr was one of the highest paid actors in series television, commanding a yearly salary of $1 million. Yet he was well known for his philanthropy. Between television production seasons, he would take the time to journey to Vietnam on his own—not to perform but to meet and visit with those serving on the front lines. Burr was comfortable with self-deprecating humor and appeared in numerous television send-ups of his own career and characters on shows such as The Jack Benny Show and The Red Skelton Show.

What happened to Burr was a classic case of an actor being blended with a character he or she successfully plays. During his time on Perry Mason, Burr and his character gradually merged so much that when the series was recast in 1973, with Monte Markham in the title role, the audience refused to accept anyone else as Mason. The Markham version was canceled after 15 unsuccessful episodes. The Burr-Mason association was so strong that Burr even received an honorary law doctorate from the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California.

This connection between character and actor was a burden to Burr. He continued to be associated with Mason, even when he starred as a wheelchair-bound policeman in another successful series, Ironside (1967–75). In this series, Burr portrayed Chief of Detectives Robert Ironside, crippled by an assassin’s bullet in the pilot episode. Although urged to retire, Ironside worked to ferret out criminals—this time from the prosecution’s side. The show was pure crime drama common to the late 1960s, mixed with “hip” dialogue and situations relevant to the time. As Richard Meyers argues in TV Detectives (1988), Ironside was the perfect “armchair detective.” It was still rational detection, in the Perry Mason mode, that was Burr’s strongest asset.

Burr tried several other series, but after the twin successes of Perry Mason and Ironside he was unable to capture the unity of character that a television series needs. In 1976, he had the title role of a lawyer in Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence, a pilot that never went to series. Next he played an investigative reporter in Kingston, which aired as a series for less than a season 1977, and another lawyer in The Jordan Chance (1978), also a failed pilot. Through the early to mid- 1980s Burr was a pitchman for a number of products such as the Independent Insurance Agents association.

Only when he revisited the role of Mason in the made-for-television movie Perry Mason Returns (1985) was he able to renew his success in American television. He also reprised his role as Chief Ironside in The Return of Ironside in 1993. The original cast returned for what was planned to be a new series of made-for-television movies, but only the first movie was completed. Burr finally succumbed to cancer on September 12, 1993.

To every character, Burr brought a cool calculation and intensity. In his three most notable roles—as Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Perry Mason, and Robert Ironside—his acting is introspective and low-key. He portrayed Thorwald as stony-faced and deliberate, thoroughly menacing. That same focus was present in his Mason and Ironside characters, but in those roles it transformed Burr into the hero rather than the villain. While his Thorwald could level a stare across a courtyard to frighten voyeurs looking out their rear window, his Mason could stare down a witness and bring a quick and heartfelt confession. Burr’s stare still reveals more than the ranting and pacing of most other actors.