At the dawn of the television era (ca.1950), many Hollywood stars looked askance at the new medium. Then, in 1951, B-picture regular Lucille Ball became a sensation in I Love Lucy, followed by poverty-row leading lady Gale Storm's success in My Little Margie (1952). Suddenly, top names like Charles Boyer, David Niven, Dick Powell, Ida Lupino, Loretta Young, and Jane Wyman, Queen of the Bs Ann Sothern, second-string leading men Robert Cummings and Robert Young, comic Red Skelton, and character actors Eve Arden, Spring Byington, and Walter Brennan scored with hit series.
Perhaps the most unlikely movie veteran to find television acclaim was Raymond Burr (1917-93), who as Perry Mason (1957-66) personified America's best-known fictional defense lawyer. The entire original series has just been released on DVD and prompts a look at his career. While Burr excelled as Erle Stanley Gardner's brilliant attorney, unequaled at saving his client by exposing the true killer, on a personal level he hid his homosexuality by inventing a tragic past as a husband and father.
Burr was born in Canada. His parents divorced when he was young, and he and his mother moved to Vallejo, California. He made his screen debut in 1946, eventually appearing in over 60 movies and many television shows before stardom arrived. He often played heavies in important films – prosecuting Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951), or trying to murder James Stewart in Rear Window (1954) – or leads in cheapies: battling Godzilla: King of the Monsters. (1956). Gardner was present when actors auditioned for Perry Mason, and reportedly took one look at the big, beefy Burr, and pronounced him perfect.
The show was formulaic, yet audiences loved it. Mason, assisted by his secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale) and private investigator Paul Drake (William Hopper), defended a client accused of murder. Police Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) and District Attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman) always thought they would make the charges stick. Things looked hopeless for Mason's client, but at the last minute during a dramatic courtroom confrontation, he would reveal the true killer. Viewers were surprised and delighted. Robert Redford was among the young actors to appear in the series. In 1963, Bette Davis starred in an episode. The show earned Burr two Best Actor Emmys.
In 1967, he returned with another hit, Ironsides, which ran until 1975. He portrayed a San Francisco Police Chief of Detectives who was disabled and used a wheelchair, a television first. It earned him six Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations.
In 1985, he and Hale were reunited for a television film, Perry Mason Returns. Mason was now a judge, and she was charged with murder. Hopper was dead, so Hale's son, William Katt, joined the cast as Paul Drake, Jr. The movie proved so popular that he would make 26 more, the last three airing in 1993. Guest stars included Debbie Reynolds, Jerry Orbach, Jean Simmons, David Hasselhoff, Regis Philbin, Polly Bergen, and Valerie Harper. In 1993, he also made The Return of Ironsides for television.
In 1949, Burr had been briefly married, but with his newfound celebrity, he invented a more sympathetic heterosexual past. He claimed that his first wife, Annette Sutherland, a Scottish actress, had been killed in the same plane crash as actor Leslie Howard (1943). As late as 1991, he maintained that his 10-year-old son, from a third marriage, died of leukemia, but none of those assertions have been verified or are likely to have been true. In the late 1950s, he often dated Natalie Wood, who was also a beard for gay actor Tab Hunter, then involved with Anthony Perkins. Burr reportedly resented that Warner Bros promoted the Hunter/Wood "affair," rather than his "romance" with her. Veteran Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas said that Burr's sexuality was an open secret. Ironically, some sources say that Hopper, whose mother was the fiercely conservative gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, left one of his wives for a man.
In the late 1950s, Burr met actor Robert Benevedes. In 1960, they became a couple and remained together for 33 years, until Burr's death. They owned a successful Sonoma winery.
Burr had lived through the horrendous late 1940s and early 50s, the years of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy's witch-hunts and the Red Scare, which linked communism to homosexuals out to destroy the American way of life. When fame came, he feared public knowledge of his sexual orientation would destroy his career, and he was likely right. It was a vile period in American history. Even today, few gay leading men are out of the closet. Perhaps over the next few years, actors and producers will trust audiences to accept that what they see on screen is a scripted performance, not a reflection of the star's libido. Until that happens, however, Burr will be among the many stars who are part of a sad chapter in entertainment history.