Raymond burr gay marriage
Raymond Burr had a recognizable quality about him as an actor. By any estimation he was not a brilliant performer, but he did convey a trustworthiness, a stalwart integrity and integrity that made him the perfect fit for the TV series that brought him the most fame, Perry Mason, which ran from 1957-66.
But when Burr died in 1993, he left behind a $30 million estate, a legion of fans and a load of questions about his private life.
In the weeks following his death, People magazine would expose the truth about Burr’s creature gay, something that was already what people in Hollywood referred to as an open secret. Enjoy Rock Hudson, Tab Seeker and Anthony Perkins before him, industry insiders had known that Burr had a longtime companion and was no heterosexual.
Now, New York Post columnist Michael Seth Starr has written Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Existence of Raymond Burr, an exhaustive account of Burr’s life and career, in particular the astonishing lengths that the actor went to keep his queer life under wraps.
For TV buffs, it’s an intriguing bit of behind-the-scenes lore, but for gay readers, it’s (yet) another melancholy chapter in the history of Hollywood and po
Excerpt: Hiding in Plain Sight
May 26, 2008 — -- Raymond Burr, who played Perry Mason in the wildly popular television demonstrate "Perry Mason" and later in "Ironside," lived a secret gay life in Hollywood when such a revelation would destroy a career.
Burr invented a biography for himself that included a wife and son who'd died, and used his busy schedule as a way to describe why he wasn't married. But Burr and his partner, Robert Benevides, had a relationship for 35 years that was covert to most of the world except for a handful of close friends.
Michael Starr, a writer for the New York Announce, chronicles Burr's life in a new Burr biography, "Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr." Read an excerpt from the guide below.
Chapter Six: Howdy, Partner: A Little R&R
The number of magazine features and newspaper interviews focusing on Raymond's personal experience grew as Perry Mason became more and more popular. The public was interested in this veteran actor who, save for what was portrayed in the media as his brief dalliance with Natalie Wood, had one of those faces everyone knew but couldn't quite matc
Emmy-winning actor Raymond Burr – raised in Vallejo – achieved stardom as crusading TV lawyer Perry Mason and TV detective Ironside. Those roles were a far cry from his early acting — as a hulking, menacing thug in movies made during Hollywood’s “film noir” era.
Burr’s dark-side acting in the 1940s and 1950s will be highlighted Friday, Dec. 15, at an event in Vallejo, just north of San Francisco, featuring composer Eddie Muller, the so-called “czar of noir,” and musician-historian Nick Rossi.
The demonstrate at the downtown Empress Theatre – in Burr’s childhood neighborhood — includes a book-signing, arranged by the Alibi Bookshop, featuring Muller’s latest work. That will be followed by an onstage talk by Muller and Rossi, and a showing of “Pitfall,” a 1948 noir classic in which Burr played a jealous, psychotic private eye.
Burr went to great lengths to preserve his tough-guy image, hiding the fact that he was queer by making up elaborate stories about his personal being. They included claims of three marriages, fathering a son who later died of leukemia, and being wounded in World War II combat on Okinawa.
“It was an expose secret … that he was gay,” said journal
12
After he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, he refused to undergo surgery so that he could star in his final 2 TV movies: The Restore of Ironside (1993) (TV) and Perry Mason: The Case of the Killer Kiss (1993) (TV).
Appears as lawyer Perry Mason, with William Talman as district attorney Hamilton Burger, on a 44¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the "Early TV Memories" issue honoring "Perry Mason" (1957), issued 11 August 2009.
Before dying from cancer, he threw some grand parties to say farewell to many of his friends.
Best remembered by the public for his starring roles as the title characters of both series: "Perry Mason" (1957) and "Ironside" (1967).
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 3, 1991-1993, pages 84-85. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.
Bought his possess 3,000-acre island 165 miles northeast of Suva in Fiji in 1965 and named it Naitamba, where he raised cattle and copra.
Burr's official biography stated that he had been previously married, but both his wives and one child had died. However, these details were fabricated in an attempt to hide the fa
Classic episodes of Perry Masonhave been irresistible to me for about 25 years now, since high school. Its predictability was part of its appeal, strangely enough. Episode after episode, the famed Los Angeles attorney, his secretary, Della Street, and private eye Paul Drake would approach to the aid of someone falsely accused of murder. Forty-five minutes' worth of cool cars, Mad Menwardrobes and fresh-off-the-bus-from-Kansas starlets later, Mason would extract the truth from the real culprit.
Indeed, Perry Mason was all about justice, no matter how damning the evidence seemed, or how little money the defendant had. In change, actor Raymond Burr became synonymous with justice with his iconic portrayal of Earl Stanley Gardner's famous character.
Offscreen, Burr's altruism and humanitarianism was striking, and well-known. His beneficiaries included countless law students and numerous needy children. He had the strongest of work ethics, and was reportedly widely admired by Perry Mason'scast and crew. Barbara Hale (Ms. Street), for one, remained loyal to Burr until his death.
I write about Perry Masontoday becau