Raymond Burr, Actor, 76, Dies -  Played Perry Mason and Ironside - NYTimes.com
Raymond Burr, Actor, 76, Dies; Played Perry Mason and Ironside
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: September 14, 1993
Raymond Burr, the burly, impassive actor who played the defense lawyer Perry Mason and the police detective Robert T. Ironside on television, died on Sunday at his ranch in Dry Creek Valley, near Healdsburg, Calif. He was 76.
The cause was kidney cancer, said his doctor, Paul J. Marguglio.
Mr. Burr started his career playing Hollywood heavies, most notably in Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rear Window." But he captivated television audiences with his portrayal of the Los Angeles trial lawyer Perry Mason, who won his first case in September 1957 and continued an unbroken winning streak that lasted nine seasons.
Gravelly-voiced and unrelentingly stern, with a habit of exhaling resonantly through his nostrils, Mason got to the bottom of seemingly unfathomable mysteries every week, relying on the private investigator Paul Drake (played by William Hopper) and his faithful secretary, Della Street (Barbara Hale), to defeat the hapless prosecutor Hamilton Burger (William Talman). To pull off his last-minute courtroom triumphs, Mason often broke down witnesses on the stand or produced surprise witnesses that left the prosecution's case a shambles.
One year after "Perry Mason" went off the air in September 1966, Mr. Burr stepped into the role of Robert Ironside, the chief of detectives for the San Francisco police department, who worked from a wheelchair after a would-be assassin's bullet left him paralyzed from the waist down. A Peripatetic Youth
Mr. Burr was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, not far from Vancouver. His father was a hardware dealer, and his mother was a pianist and music teacher. Soon after he was born, the family moved to China and lived there for five years. When Raymond was 6, his parents divorced, and his mother took him to live in a hotel that her father owned in Vallejo, Calif. He attended the San Rafael Military Academy but dropped out at 13 to help support his family in the Depression. After a year working on a cattle and sheep ranch, he returned to school, but he quit before completing junior high school.
After leaving school, he ran a weather station for the Forest Service and for a time worked in China, where his family owned property. He took extension courses, taught school, worked as a traveling salesman and wrote short stories.
Mr. Burr made his stage debut at 12 with a Vancouver stock company, and throughout his teen-age years he picked up occasional acting work.
In 1941, he made his Broadway debut in the musical "Crazy With the Heart." He also appeared in "The Duke in Darkness" on Broadway in 1944 before entering the Navy.
Mr. Burr left the Navy in 1946 weighing nearly 350 pounds, and he immediately landed work in films as a villain. His first screen role, in "Without Reservations" (1946), starring John Wayne and Claudette Colbert led to steady work. In all, he appeared in 90 films.
He first made an impression in "Pitfall" (1948), a suspense film starring Dick Powell, and won critical praise as the district attorney who hounds Montgomery Clift in "A Place in the Sun" (1951) and as the murderer in "Rear Window" (1954). One of his most unusual credits was an appearance in the first Godzilla film as a journalist who relays an account of Godzilla's rampage.
His other films include "San Quentin" (1947), "The Adventures of Don Juan" (1948), "A Cry in the Night" (1956) and "Desire in the Dust" (1960). More recently, he appeared in "Airplane II: The Sequel"(1982) and "Delirious" (1985). Landing His Biggest Role
In 1957, Mr. Burr was chosen over contenders including Fred MacMurray and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. to play the starring role in "Perry Mason," a CBS-TV series based on the mystery novels of Erle Stanley Gardner. In the 1960-61 season, the show was among the five most popular on television, and Mr. Burr twice won Emmy Awards for best actor in a series.
Even after the show was canceled, Mason lived on in syndication. Mr. Burr recreated the role in "The New Perry Mason" in 1973, and in a television movie, "Perry Mason Returns," that was the second-highest-rated television movie in the 1985-86 season. It led to 25 more Perry Mason vehicles.
After appearing as Ironside on NBC from 1967 to 1975, Mr. Burr played a journalist in "Kingston: Confidential" in 1977. The next year, he appeared in the mini-series "Centennial," and in the late 80's he also was one of the hosts of "Unsolved Mysteries."
In August, he completed location work in Denver for "The Case of the Killer Kiss," a Perry Mason television movie.
According to the reference work Current Biography, Mr. Burr was married three times. His first wife, Annette Sutherland, an Englishwoman, was killed in 1943 when the plane in which she was traveling was shot down by the Germans. His second marriage, to Isabella Ward, ended in divorce, and his third wife, Laura Andrina Morgan, died of cancer in 1955. His only child, Michael Evan, by his first marriage, died of leukemia in 1953.
Mr. Burr, who was a cooking enthusiast and once owned an art gallery in Beverly Hills, Calif., bought a ranch and vineyard in Sonoma County in 1981, where he raised orchids, tended his vines and fruit trees, and kept sheep.
He is survived by a sister, Geraldine Fuller of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Photo: Raymond Burr, right, with William Talman in "Perry Mason." (CBS, 1966)